Chris's HDi D Turbo

[C.A.R.]

Some of you will know me from way back in the day from the 'other forum', I was a regular at East Anglia meets and attended French Car Show and the Christmas Meet duly every year!

I then moved on to pastures new. The 1.8 Cabriolet I had was simply too slow and not involving enough to drive, so it was swapped out for a MK1 MX5 import. Fantastic car to own and drive, but ultimately a bit impractical for everyday use (memories turning up at a building site in it...) so I got something a bit more practical and much faster. The replacement was a Toyota Celica 190. Then, after just 6 months of ownership, we had the news that we were expecting the pitter-patter of tiny feet this October! Delighted, our attention turned to the rather pricey running costs of the Toyota (I liked to run it on super, it liked to drink!!) and insurance wasn't cheap either. I needed something practical and diesel.

This was when I made a critical error. What humble-yet-fun hatchback can I think of for a daily diesel? I f*cked up and bought a Focus TDCi Sport. Quite what made it sporty I don't know, but it's both the most expensive car and shortest lived car I've ever had!

Then I got my sensible head on again, tracked down and made an offer on a 306 HDi owned by someone local.

Here's a quick spec-
'Y' plate so cheap tax
Moonstone Blue
3 Doors, as should be the law
GTi6 Leathers
Smoothed front end (debadged)
Smoothed boot
Pro-Steve 125 Map
Boost Gauge

I think that's it.

Anyway, the car arrived in fine condition, but it really was in need of a deep clean. So today I set off with this -


First up gave the car a good clean over, two bucket method. I was surprised to see a couple of areas that the previous owner had clearly not noticed, but maybe I'm more pedantic!








Disgusting right?

Afters-









Then, my attention turned to the interior.

---

One of the first things me and Natalie noticed about the car was it's distinctive odour. It were'nt great, it was somewhat 'minging'.

Cue my mate George the Numatic upholstery cleaner!



^That's the drivers seat. The water was literally shit-brown. The final results?







Door cards, seats, headlinging and obviously carpet (including boot) are now all lemon-fresh! Highly recommend using one of these, has transformed the interior.

Will keep posting my updates as and when!

[Tom]

Wet vac's are a god send!

Edit: Car also looks lovely. And very very nice inside might i add

[Strikeforce]

Looks spotless inside lol
Nice car too

[Dum-Dum]

Looks tidy mate, feel free to come and start on mine.

[JamesG]

nice tidy example! Keep the updates coming

[C.A.R.]

First update...

Fitted the baby seat fixing points (ISOfix) brackets, these go under the rear seats.

It's not much of a fun job!





I found this connector. Does anyone know what it is? I have no idea. Everything on the car appears to work and the connector doesn't seem to reach anywhere, plus the actual plug is f*cked (looks like someone didn't know how to unplug it and used brute force) which is more worrying as that means that at some stage it was plugged in...



Fitted some new LED sidelight bulbs (looks incredibly bright in this shot)



And finally I've started running a wire from the boot lock position into the car, for my boot popper.



This junction is an absolute c*nt of a job. It's the same point where the wiring for the heated rear window enters, and it goes up behind the roof lining, then down the C-pillar trim.

Thinking of using a permanent live behind the dashboard, down near the headlight level adjuster switch. Is there a permanent live down there?

[Ruan]

I need one of these upholstery cleaners for my car... Should bring the carpets up a treat I rekon... I can never get the slight brown tint of mud out the carpets...

I just can't get along with floor mats, if there's one in the drivers footwell, I have to remove it before I drive, maybe it's me being paranoid about it getting caught under a pedal... They also just irritate me, I spend half my time kicking them back to stop them getting in the way... So my carpets end up a right state...

Looks proper good though... I've never liked smoothed bits on 306s really, think they always look awkward, but this looks good actually!

[Dum-Dum]

The wire is for the CD changer on a ph3 IIRC

[lolsteve]

Hired one of those rug doctors a lil while back and did the house and car with it. it really is disgusting what colour the water turns to after a quick run about about the seats.
I got the blue plug as well, it's unplugged and seems to hang around the lift pump area think it's excess loom maybe the gti6 has it plugged in?
Very tidy though, make sure to keep it that was and not covered in vom

[Ruan]

Is it sad that I chuckle whenever I see "Rug Doctor"....

[Matt]

^^ glad some one else does

Looks good mate

[Niall]

Haha nope I do when ever I see it

Blue plug is for the optional cd changer

[lewisdmz]

George looks awesome, does that just need a standard hose feed?

[C.A.R.]

No mate,

You fill a container with about 1.5-2 liters of warm water mixed with a solution (usually a few capfuls of carpet cleaner) I used 1001 Machine Cleaner for 99p!

Then it's like a normal vacuum cleaner but has two switches, one for the suction and the other for the pump to spray the solution through the end of the nozzle type thing. Piece of piss to be honest, well worth it if you can borrow one from somewhere.

[Poodle]

Very tidy, interior looks to be in good condition too, got a good buy there.

[C.A.R.]

I can finally get into my own boot!

Never underestimate the ability to access the boot on your own car.

In the end I used the Heated Rear Window button, as this is a momentary switch. I had bought my own switch to use but couldn't because there was nowhere suitable to mount it.

Behind the switch blank on a 3-door you have the wiring loom for the rear-window cutoff, despite there being no windows.

Just cut the two wires (red/purple) which I have seperated on the left of this picture (gives you your 'Normally Closed' and 'Common' terminals)



Bung a fuse in-between the permanent live and Normally Closed terminal (I used an inline fuse-holder, with a 10A fuse in) I ran my permanent live feed from the pink wire going to the stereo. There was probably one much nearer to where I was working but there are so many wires down there I was scared to move anything.

Now I have a functioning boot popper!



I added an emergency measure if the boot popper fails for any reason -


Also found a handbrake gaiter from my Mazda MX5, so tried it out for size -



That'll do!

I found a few horrors along the way, such as this coming from the stereo -



Impressive

Dug the soldering iron out and fixed the worst of it. GCSE electronics FTW!

[C.A.R.]

Sorted out the b-pillar vinyl today, was more time-consuming than I was expecting!

First, off with the old. It's really stuck down....



Once off, definitely doesn't look right without it-



The new stuff is gloss black, still not sure about it. Looks alright though -

[Kezzieboy]

They look so much better gloss black, since I did mine I've noticed that 95% of newer cars have gloss black pillars.

[Eeyore]

looks good! Ill be attempting my B pillars at some point! Good to see you doing a boot popper with the rear heater button. ive been thinking about that for a while. if you have dewipered it then you can turn the water jet upside down and squirt cars behind you with it!

[C.A.R.]

Cheers fellas.

Really liking how it looks now, I think the gloss black works well.

All wasn't without fail yesterday though.

Side repeater + Karcher pressure washer =


Bugger! Need some super glue lol. Maybe it's a sign because I didn't upgrade those bulbs to silver ones, instead I'm rocking the 'fried egg' look.

[C.A.R.]

Another critical update just applied in the company car park!

[C.A.R.]

Serviced the car at the weekend.

Not much of an update, the MPG over the last tank dropped to 51, but should now go back up.

Want to de-cat her and get a decent backbox put on, but I'm struggling to find anywhere locally who can do it.

Did this trying to get the wheel bolts off - it's time for a new brace methinks.



This has been broken since buying the car, just need to stump the £11.26 for a new one at some point



Finally got some conclusive evidence that a 306 looks substantially better than a MKIV Golf too -



This turned up in the post today, hope to get it fitted over lunchtime.

[Mattcheese31]

looking good . . . . .and loving the TLC for the 306 . . . . you know you've always loved them .

[C2K]

Looks tidy - you doing it all in a parking space or something?

When i'm back you're more than welcome to pop up to mine and use my tools even if i can't help with a job or two. If you can't find the right tool in my garage you don't belong near a car.

[C.A.R.]

Finally installed my iPod interface this evening...







OEM Yo!

Currently sits there but I'm not 100% happy. Does anyone know of a decent arm-rest setup? I'm put off the eBay ones as the quality isn't great...

[C.A.R.]

Bit more work this weekend.

Foglight glass was broken when I bought the car. No problem I thought, that's easy to replace.

What a ballache. The glass only cost me £5.00 from Carl Chambers, but fitting it requires taking the bumper off. Which is a right faff.

All done now though and didn't take any pictures of the process.

Now, with that done I was going to investigate the rear shocks. This meant loosening the wheel bolts.



You c*nt. You absolute arsehole piece of metal. So that put paid to progress on investigating the rear shocks.

So then I moved on to doing the front wheel arch liner on the passenger side, which had been half ripped-off by the previous owner.

This was actually an easy job and it even gave me time to have a brew.



Then my attention turned to sorting out the passenger side window. How the juddering f*ck do the windows work? Well the easiest way to work this out is obviously to take apart the one window which does work - on the drivers side of the car.

Now whoever said these were repairable without removing the door panel was having a giraffe. When the glass falls out of the rear clip (which breaks) and then drops forward, it falls out of the front runner. Can you get the glass back into the runner with the door card in place?

No.

So this was the scene at about 5:30pm



All was finished by half 6, but it was dark by then.

Next up is a new boost gauge. Does anyone know what this gauge is worth, complete with the drivers vent holder?

[Arron]

Them gauges are around £20 on eBay... they aren't the most accurate either but it gives you an idea, I.e if you gave a leak, the needle on mine flickers about on idle

Is the bolt stuck in the hub in the rear wheel? Wd40?

[Poodle]

How the hell did you butcher that wheel bolt so badly?

Windows are a bitch of a job, did lol though, who told you it was possible without taking door cards off? (i assume door card is what you mean by door panel...?)

[Tom]

Just buy another regulator windows are shit, it amazes me how they even work in a 306, i've had them apart countlesss times and im still speechless when mine actualy move..

[C.A.R.]

I would not get tired of repeatedly punching the person who designed these in the face tbf. I had no idea how I managed to get the metal circlip / bung assembly back together through the little hole in the door. It was like keyhole surgery lol

The wheel bolt is shagged, job for another day. I took that photo after just two tries (you can see the silver metal that came off) so a previous owner f*cked it up at some point!

Forgotten to plug the fog lights back in haven't I.
Can I get a face palm in here?