[misc_work] Peugeot 309 Style 1294Cc

[fairway1 5]

I own an early 1990 (G reg) phase 2, 3 door, 1.3 309 Style.

 

Thats right, not a Goodwood or a GTI, just a plain old 1.3 Style.

 

I bought the car in 2008 for a whopping £200....and that was WITH 6 month tax & 6 months MOT!!

 

The car does have an interesting history; it was bought new in February 1990 by guy as a present to his wife to get to work etc in it as she'd only just passed her driving licence at the time.

 

When the car was 18 months old it was involved it some sort of head on collision with a lorry & the car took a fair amount of front end damage.

 

The insurance company obviously felt the majority of the damage was superficial so they had the car repaired & put back on the road.

 

Unfortunately, the owners wife refused to drive the 309 again because she said it gave her flashbacks of the accident or something....so in 1991 the husband sold it to his uncle, who lived in the next street & was just retiring at the time.

 

From that day to the day I got the car in 2008, he NEVER took it on a motorway, never went above

40-45mph (the dawdling silly old t**t), never smoked in it & only really went to Asda & the post office in it.

 

Between the 2005/6 MOT tests he covered 489miles and just 267miles between the 2006/7 tests.

The reason he did so few miles in the last 2 years he owned it was because he began suffering with altzheimers & started to loose the car in supermarket car parks & he became a danger on the road so his son stepped in & said the car has to go.

 

His wife was going to have the car just taken away as scrap(!!!!!) which was when I stepped in & offered her £200. She thaught she'd won the pools & almost bit my hand off.

 

The car had just over 76,000 miles on the clock when I bought it and had been garaged for the majority of its life. It had also been well looked after & regularly maintained by the same local garage since 1991.

 

My aim is to restore the car to how it looked when it left the showroom forecourt in 1990, keeping everything as origional as I can.

 

I'm not a qualified mechanic, but I've worked on, and driven, buses, coaches & lorries so I have a LITTLE know how. I also have a dry & secure garage & a good selection of tools!

 

 

 

 

Edited January 12, 2012 by fairway1

[fairway1 5]

 

 

[fairway1 5]

Almost immediately after buying the car I had problems with the fuel system. I would start the car in a morning & it would tick over fine (if a little too high) but it would stall instantly when I pressed the accellerator, which made me late for work which really pissed me off.

 

I took it on the M62 several times for a good thrashing to try & clear everything through but this had little or no effect & sure enough at 7am the next morning I was back at square one.

 

After speaking to a mechanic friend I was instructed to take the carb apart & clean it. When I took the top of the carb off I found it was all bunged up with fuel that had gone mankey & turned waxy, almost like Vaseline.

 

After cleaning everything however, I was alarmed to find rust in the bottom of the carb. (Apologies for the poor quality mobile phone camera pic below)

 

I've never heared of another case of a carburettor rusting from the INSIDE out but this is the best reason I could come up with.........

 

 

The car did very few miles in especially the last 2 years before I got it.

 

When it was used it was driven only short distances at 30-40mph by someone who was in 5th gear by the time he got to 25mph.

 

So, half a tank of fuel was lasting several months.

 

I believe condensation / moisture was forming in the tank which was only half full for long periods.

 

When been driven for such short distances this moisture was being sucked into the fuel system & the carb.

 

As the car was stood for long periods & then being driven so gently I think the moisture just sat in the carb & has eventually began to eat away at it.

 

I dont doubt that if this car had been given a thrashing every so often over the years I wouldn't have this problem!

 

I cleaned the carb up the best I could & put it back together & had the car krypton tuned (mainly to sort the high tick over out) by a good friend of my dads who does electrics & tuning on cars & commercial vehicles, aswell as a full tank of fuel & some Redex.

 

This was great for about 2 weeks then the tick over began to go too low & then it refused to tick over at all (drove OK though).

 

I used some of that choke & carb spray & let my dads tuning friend have a look at it again & hey presto, it was OK for about 2 weeks then the tick over went too low & then wouldn't tick over at all, back to square one basically.

 

Cutting a long & boring story short, my solution was....

 

Every so often I'd have the car on the M62 doing 70 or 80mph, open the choke fully & depress the accellerator to a bit more than 3/4 of the way down, holding it for 10 seconds then closing the choke. I've found doing this just keeps everything flushed & clear & since doing this perhaps once a month I've had no other problems!!

 

Edited January 12, 2012 by fairway1

[fairway1 5]

The first MOT it went through under my ownership wasn't too bad. It failed on a couple of only very minor things -

 

Drivers seat belt buckle broken (replaced buckle)

 

Rusty fuel pipe (cleaned & painted with underseal)

 

O/S/F inner wheel arch holed (plate welded on, cost me £25 by my mechanic friend)

 

Track rod end (replaced)

 

Too much handbrake travel (adjusted)

 

Uneven front braking effort (N/S/F starting to sieze basically) (My mechanic friend freed off the caliper but did warn me this was a temporary fix & it would fail in the not too distant future. True to his word it did but we'll come back to that later.)

 

In 2009 I got my own garage which is a good, solid sry & secure garage, with some air vents to let day light in, the only draw back being theres no electricity.

 

As we where coming upto winter I thaught it would be wise to sort out some underside protection.

 

I had the car steam cleaned by a local firm that specialised in taxis, vans & lorries (£15 cash).

 

I had the engine running while it was being done but I insisted on having the underneath of the engine bay done (against advice from the guy doing the steam cleaning seeing as its a petrol car) & sure enough the engine cut out but it did start a couple of sprays of WD40 later & after some spluttering it was fine.

 

We where both impressed with how sound & tidy the car looked underneath - and I wanted to keep it that way!

 

After letting the underside dry for a couple of days & put the car on axle stands & removed the wheels for access.

 

I wirebrushed every nook & cranny of the underside of the car best I could, especially the inner wheel arches.

 

I bought a pressure spray gun, and, using a mixture of B&Q Rust killer / Metal restorer + vinegar I gave every millimetre of the underside of the car a good soaking at least 3 times over as many days, taking care to wrap the brakes in plastic bags to keep them dry.

 

After letting everything dry thoroughly I gave the inner wheel arches, underside of the boot floor & anywhere else that could rot 3 very thick coats of black Tetroseal underseal.

 

I did take some pics at the time but unfortunately they've been lost. Sorry about that.

[fairway1 5]

As I mentioned earlier the N/S/F caliper was freed off by my mechanic as a temporary fix to get it through its MOT.

To be fair it lasted 5 months, but, true to his word it did begin to fail again. At the time I was having money difficulties after being made redundant & I simply didn't have the cash to get it sorted.

I kept running the car & the brakes deteriorated & began grinding which became louder & louder over time & at one point I was using the handbrake to stop as much as I could.

Soon after I was back into work & got my feet back on the ground financially & I had BOTH front calipers replaced with reconditioned ones which cost me about £120 all together (front brakes are Lucas, rear brakes are Bendix on my 309!), obviously discs & pads also got replaced.

 

 

 

July 2011 I SORN'd my 309 & put it away in the garage to work on it, as my new scooter had been delivered I'm using that to get around on a daily basis still to this day.

 

One of the first jobs was that I'd noticed the N/S/R shock absorber was wet / leaking so I replaced them both with a new set off eBay.

 

The bottom nuts on the shockers where obviously on well tight & rusty & refused to budge, and I was recommended by a friend to buy a set of 'nut splitters'. Untill then I'd never heared of them, but for a set of 2 splitters for less than £5 (free p&p) off Amazon I thaught I'd give them a try. Well impressed! I highly recommend them If anyone is doing a similar job to this......

 

 

 

The O/S/R wheel cylinder failed very suddenly as I was leaving work one Friday afternoon a few months ago. The rear brakes on my 309 are Bendix (front brakes are Lucas!) & I had both rear cylinders replaced. The passengers side cylinder was slightly more expensive than the drivers side!

 

Also replaced rear brake shoes.

 

(Pic taken on a miserable showery day & on a crap phone)

 

 

All the time I've had the car, the front grille has never sat right. The plastic is slightly broken at one side so it sags slightly at the passengers side making it look like the car had recently suffered a stroke.

 

I've tried to duct tape it, glue it & tie wrap it & try as I diid I couldn't get it to sit straight.

 

Quite incredably, I found a MK1 grill (with that long metal strip that runs underneath the grille) that was in mint condition AND the correct colour on eBay & I got them for just over £20 including postage!

 

I've not yet got around to putting them on...........

 

 

 

 

Look carefully at the old front grille here......

 

Another two jobs I've yet to do.......

 

The drivers side front inner wheel arch had a little hole in it & got welded for its 2009 MOT.

Early 2011 I noticed my passengers side sill was filling with water everytime I drove in the rain. After some poking around I found the passengers side inner wheel arch now needs some welding. I've cleaned it up & the surrounding area seems ok.

 

The front edge of the bonnet is pretty rusty. The paint was bubbling so I've recently had a bit of a poke around.

Anyone know if this can be properly repaired or will I need a new bonnet?

[fairway1 5]

Last week I dug my 309 out of the garage for the first time in several months & took it to a car garage in Hull who I've recently discovered. We take our works vans for servicing & repairs there - its all 'cash in hand' work so no VAT or recepts so its very sensible prices & they do very good work be it bodywork / welding (they don't do paintwork unfortunately) or mechanical. I told them I was keeping the car long term as a classic & restoring it, when they finished falling about laughing at me they where keen to help me with anything that needed sorting.

If theres anyone in the Hull area would like their details I'd be happy to pass them on, just PM me pls.

 

I took it in to have the drivers side sill sorted. It had a patch welded on it by the previous owner back in 2002/3, possibly by Stevie Wonder as now its all rotted around where its been so poorly welded. I've tried in vain to find a replacement 309 sill to no avail, however the lads at my garage said they would make a new one using the old one as a pattern, which they did. Unfortunately, when they went to fit the new sill & began to scrape back at the under floor to find good metal to weld the sill to, they had to go back a bit further back than I'd realised they'd have to because there was a fair bit of corrosion going on hidden under all those pretty layers of underseal where the sill meets the floor.

Thinking back to 2008, only 2 or 3 months after I got the car I had to have a tiny bit of welding done to a small hole on the drivers side inner wheel arch so that corrosion inside the sill has been left to its own devices to eat away silently for a couple of years now.

I took these pics this week as I happened to be passing by their workshop, they told me it should be MOT'd and ready by the end of next week so will get more pics when I go back to collect it. I need my 309 MOT'd for the winter so I can recommission it at short notice if we get bad weather again because I won't use my motorbike with even a hint of snow / ice on the roads.

 

 

[fairway1 5]

Whoop, my 309 passed its MOT 9/11/11 with NO advisories! Yes, I too was quite lost for words when I found out and pleasantly impressed.

All the welding has been sorted (O/S sill & N/S/F inner wheel arch), as has the O/S/F ball joint & sticking O/S/F brake caliper (front pads & discs also replaced). I was also informed the steering rack will probably need replacing in the relatively near future but I'm not worried about that right now.

 

Well, my 309 thoroughly disgraced itself this afternoon by refusing to start & ended up having to tow it to a car garage just around the corner from where I work.

 

I've had problems with the car in the past refusing to start when its been stood outside wet / in the damp (i.e parked over a puddle or parked on wet grass or wet mud), however its been fine for months & I thaught it was just one of those things.

 

My car has been sat at work since Saturday night (17/12) and when I went to it this afternoon (19/12) it refused point blank to start, but it was trying to. I soaked everything in WD40 & wiped clean all the leads, cap & arm, even took each of the spark plugs out & cleaned the ends but it still wouldn't start. By now I was cold, wet & miserable & the battery was becoming depleted so I walked just around the corner to fetch a mechanic from the car garage just around the corner. He came & basically repeated everything I'd done and connected my car to his van with jump leads but still no good. It was only when he removed one of the spark plugs & put it against an engine mount while I was turning it over did we see that the spark was extremely faint. You could hardly see it! No wonder my 309 has a hissy fit when theres the slightest drop of water under the bonnet!

 

We towed it to his garage & he's going to check & renew the coil, distributor, arm & leads etc (as necessary) tomorrow when the parts come.

 

Meanwhile I had to borrow a Corsa van to get home in from work : (

 

 

Had a tidy up in my 309 boot earlier & started to have a poke around & found this.......

 

 

 

I noticed the rusty patch & it needed only gentle encouragement from my front door key to fall through.

 

Makes you wonder how it was missed on the MOT back in November, this didn't just appear overnight I'm sure !!!

[Leon 24]

I did something similar last week - hoovered my boot and punched a hole through it.

 

Nice work, these don't half rot compared to 205s (which are also starting to get a bit crusty these days)

[fairway1 5]

 

 

 

[fairway1 5]

 

 

[fairway1 5]

Hi all!!

 

I currently have some unexpected time off work at the moment so I thaught I'd sieze the opportunity and bring my 309 back home to the UK from Holland, where it's been parked for several months. For those of you who perhaps are not familiar with my thread on here, the story is is that I started a new job back in January this year in Denmark, not far from Aarhus. I went over with a friend who was also starting work with the same firm, and packed all of our things (3 months of clothes, tools etc etc).

I flew home from Billund at the end of May to have a couple of weeks off at home & left the 309 in the long stay park there. Unfortunately, while I was home I was approached then harrassed, pleaded and begged to return to work for a Dutch firm I had been working for previously. I gave in & went back to work for them. The car was at Billund about 2 months before I had a weekend off. I flew from Amsterdam to Billund and drove it through the night into Germany and right over to Middelharnis, Holland, which is where our head office is. Again, the car had been there for 2 or 3 months until last week when I found myself home for two weeks. I went over on 2/11/12 as a foot passenger on the Hull - Rotterdam ferry & was kindly picked up by my boss who gave me a lift to his office. I collected the car and drove over to Amsterdam. I had previously booked a room at a B&B and stayed overnight there and had a fantastic time. I came back over on the Rotterdam - Hull ferry 5/11/12. I had several bags of dirty washing in the car, some tools and a box of ratchet & straps from work, however the UK border agency seemed to take a dislike to either me or the car and proceded to search the entire car - removing all of my things and also the rear seat and fuel tank sender caps (presumably to look in the tank & see if I was carrying drugs or anything), the spare wheel and both door cards. They found absolutely nothing illegal or dodgy and I made sure they put everything back again. To say I was pissed off would be an understatement. Anyways, the car is home now and I've began to strip it down.........

[fairway1 5]

A few pics before starting to strip -

 

Both rear wheel arches are just begining to bubble. Nothing drastic. The pic of the passengers side rear make it look better that it is.

 

 

 

Back in 2008 my then girlfriend had a slight bump in my 309 in the ice. She was only doing around 15mph around a right hand bend, but there was some bad black ice on the road and she lost the back end and swiped a parked car. She was a bit shaken but ok, the damage to the car was limited to the passengers side rear corner and wasn't that bad. I replaced the rear light with one off ebay (which is why one rear light is slightly darker than the other). The paint however was a close but not perfect match and as a result that area is a little more 'orange' then 'red' and stands out slightly in the sun shine.

 

[fairway1 5]

The front end is particularly tired so I started here.

 

The bonnet is scrap but happilly I have another from a breakers yard (in silver) which is in mint condition and awaiting paint.

 

 

 

The long strip pannel above the bumper is bubbling pretty badly but again, will be scrapped as I have another from eBay, conveniently in the correct colour and in mint condition.

 

The front bumper was cracked by the previous owner who used to nudge the front wall of his garage each time he put the car away. This bumper will be scrapped and replaced by one I recently purchased from eBay which is mint, never been fitted / used and still has Peugeot Talbot stickers on the inside.

 

 

The shiney reflective silver lining inside both headlights has begun to peel and both headlights will be replaced to brighten things up a bit.

Edited November 9, 2012 by fairway1

[fairway1 5]

The passengers front wing seems to be in very good nic, however theres some nasty bubbling on the top of the drivers front wing which made me highly suspicious of what was lurking beneath.......

 

 

 

[fairway1 5]

With great trepidation I removed the drivers front wing and things where not as bad as I had expected.

 

The inner wing is a little tatty but not that bad at all.

 

The headlight pannel on the drivers side is very badly rotten.

 

Suprisingly, the passengers side headlight pannel is in much better condition and so far seemingly escaping with some minor surface rust which won't take too much effort to clear up.

 

Why one side has fared much better than the other is a mystery to me.......

 

 

 

[fairway1 5]

 

 

 

As you can probably tell, I began to run out of daylight. The lights in the compound where my garage is aren't great and I was cold and hungry so I decided to call it a day. (8/11/12)

[fairway1 5]

I removed the passengers side front wing this afternoon. It was an absolute BITCH to get off. I removed each of the bolts but it refused to move

.

I didn't want to damage the wing as it was in good condition but with all the pulling, twisting & lifting it took to get it off I've ended up creasing it

 

(You can clearly see a patch I had welded in on the inner wheel arch back in 2008, not long after I got the car. I'd forgotten all about it.)

 

 

 

The inner wing is in great condition, but I jumped the gun a bit when I said yesterday the passengers side headlight pannel is in good condition. It's a little more tatty than I initially thought but I think with a small amount of welding it can happily be saved.

[fairway1 5]

As far as I can see what was holding the wing on was this caramel coloured underseal stuff. It's extremely tough, thick & sticky and it's smothered with the stuff at the passengers side.

 

Strangely, I can't see any trace of it on the drivers side wing which is odd.

 

 

[fairway1 5]

A few pics I took of my 205 briefly reunited with the 309, just before I began the strip down........

 

 

 

 

[welshpug 1,621]

it will have had a drivers side bump at some point given the damage to the headlamp panel and that it came off without a fight, and that it was rusty which typically happens to aftermarket panels poorly prepared.

[fairway1 5]

it will have had a drivers side bump at some point given the damage to the headlamp panel and that it came off without a fight, and that it was rusty which typically happens to aftermarket panels poorly prepared.

 

Hi Welshpug!

 

Yes, my thoughts entirely.

 

The inner wings seem solid which I'm grateful for.

 

I'm quite happy so far though, I've seen 309's in far worse condition than mine.

[fairway1 5]

Some more pics so far in better day light today.......

 

 

 

 

[fairway1 5]

Edited November 10, 2012 by fairway1

[fairway1 5]

Today (10/11/12), I removed the rear bumper.

 

 

Both of the top side bumper mounting brackets where very rotten & fell apart when I began to unscrew the screws.

 

The drivers side rear corner didn't seem too bad, however I'm quite dubious as to what I will find when I strip all of the paint & the tough skin of underseal away.

 

 

The passengers side corner however is badly rotten. This area was damaged during the previously mentioned accident in 2008, clearly repair efforts where only concentrated on the exterior wing and this area received little or no attention & has been left to rot.

 

 

 

[fairway1 5]

Exhaust back box was only replaced a few months ago : )