2002 Xsara VTS

[Ben_w]

Every cloud.....silver lining etc? You betcha.

Having got over having the hump, I managed to fish the captive nut plate out of the sill (I say nut, it's actually a short length of threaded tube, inset into a plate, which then appears to be welded to the inside of the sill) and get it back into position and hold it there with a cable tie.



No idea how they'd want to fix it, whether they'd drill 3 small holes to allow it to be spot welded again or cut out a sqaure around it, weld it to that and weld the square back in....no idea. I'm not a welder. Yet.

There was a reason I bought a couple of Tupperware boxes when I broke that Ph1 last year.........



I kept pretty much every nut and bolt I took off the damn thing and, low and below, a seat bolt with a non chewed up head....! One less thing to worry about.



Attention then turned to the radiator......now, I'd been considering an alloy rad with fixings welded on for these bolts that go through the slam panel and fan shroud. Should work, but expensive.

I know the rad is almost the same as a GTi6 item so with the spare one from the Ph1 Xsara knocking about, I thought I'd try it for fit. Initially, it didn't fit. Something on the bottom right corner was stopping it.....

The Ph2 Xsara rad looks like this in this corner...



The Valeo one I had from the Ph1 had what looked to be a small pipe attachment but it was blanked off and didn't do anything and wasn't connected in the Ph1....hello hacksaw....



Ta-daa! It fits.



Once all together the radiator was fairly stable but still a bit of a wobble.....I then though could I make some fittings and Epoxy resin them to the rad. A quick look suggested yes, the header tank side will need a bit of work in terms of filing the base to fit the tank profile but it's do able.....other side is dead flat so no issue there....so I opened up the eBay app and bought a 250mm length of 20mm diameter Delrin.



I figure I can cut that to length, drill holes (won't bother tapping, I'll let the bolt do it itself) and the epoxy resin them into place (the right place!) on a GTi6 rad and we should (I apply a very hopeful overtone to that word!) be in business.........

Watch this space.