Moonstone HDi Phase 3, Coilovers, Replica Splits, Remap.

[geo7087]

Ok here goes.

Approximate 4-5 weeks ago i bought my 9th car. My previous car was a Seat Ibiza 1.8t, lovely car but in all truth it was costing me a little too much on fuel, mind you it was running 245bhp :\



So the spec for the new car as i bought it.
306 HDi 2.0
129,000 miles
Full service History
MOT Jan 2012 (now has fresh MOT for a year, more on that below)
Tax March 2012
Stage 1 remap by celtic tuning
Otherwise standard with all the usual Phase 3 extras

As the car arrived, a few dings here and there but gives me some things to get done over time!





A Friend of mine had a GTi-6 breaking at the time when i bought the car, i arranged to go and see him for some parts, i walked away with a really good condition set of GTI-6 half leathers, no bolster wear which i was amazed by! and a GTI-6 front bumper splitter for the costly sum of £100

Old cloth seats removed





New seats installed





Next up was to replace the rather disgusting gearknob fitted to the car when i bought it... it was replaced with a gearknob from a breaking Peugeot 307

Offending Item... :\



307 gearknob installed



Following this to continue some Interior modifications i fitted a 300mm steering wheel with Momo boss, not entirely sure what i'm doing with the centre as obviously a horn push is pointless! I removed the old wheel for 2 reasons, it was the size of a boat compared to my old 280mm Momo team in the seat, and me being a tall lad my legs were wrapped around the bloody thing!

300mm Wheel fitted



Onto the exterior,I decided to change the cyclone alloy wheels. They just weren't going to cut the mustard for me, so i bought from a friend a set of 206GTi 180 "Vortex" 17 Inch alloy wheels. They had seen better days.. so i filled the worst of the offending curb marks and set about a home based refurb.

The wheels were painted Ford graphite Grey and Laquered, they were then flatted, compounded with g3, and polished to shine. I then re-applied the Peugeot lions with sticky pads.

Cyclones removed



During 206 Alloy wheel refurbish



Final finish



Lions re-applied



Wheels fitted, whilst i was doing the change i painted the calipers red, and fitted new plates, the black masks i will get onto in a moment...



Now from the picture of the wheels fitted you can clearly see the tractor style ride height, lukily i had already ordered a set of TA Technix coilovers, yes they are cheap ones but at the end of the day this isnt a high budget or high performance motor. I had a local garage fit them and adjust the torsion bar to match, the end result was definately worth the garage bill!.

Ride height after fitting coilovers



Now the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the black masks, these were done by myself using my oven to sepeate the lights, being valeo units thy were an absolute pig! Whilst i had the Peugeot black paint at hand i thought i'd paint the Mirror bases, front badge surround and fuel cap trims

Black masks complete and fitted



Front badge painted and fitted



Painted mirror bases



Painted fuel cap trims

[geo7087]

Now with the above peugeot black items the spoiler looked out of place, now this i didnt fancy doing in my garage due to the length, lukily a friend of mine is a sprayer and did the job for very little money, depite the budget job it easily matches up to any bodyshop work I've had before

Phase 3 spoiler Peugeot black



To continue the Gloss black i sourced some vinyl from b and Q of all places! this was fitted to the B Pillars to replace the standard cracked b pillar vinyls. was a bit of a pig of a job but with patience and the right tools the finish was worth it.

Gloss Black B Pillars



I decided at this point with the black masks the front foglight units looked out of place, i decided to remove them and fit 306 Rallye foglight blanks, this tied in better with the headlights and helped the smooth front end of the car, whilst the front bumper was removed to fit them i fitted the GTI-6 front bumper splitter which i had also painted gloss black.

Rallye Blanks Fittted



This takes me up to the current point of how the car stands

Beading on roof following Poorboys nattys Blue paste wax



Engine bay cleaned, not bad for 130k!



As the car stands today.



And now onto the final part of this post, the cars future.. well I've always been a bit of a sucker for the stance and euro movements.. as you can see from my ibiza! So i looked into new wheels... again! I eventually found a set of Dare DR-B Alloy wheels. These are basically replicas of Borbet A splits. i bought a brand new set for £400 with the specs of 16x8 all round, et 20 all round.

Lukily from fitting the 206 wheels i have already rolled my arches and have full sets of hubsentirc spacers in 10mm, 15mm, and 20mm. so fitment shouldn't be an issue I'll be running 195/40/16 tyres all round.

Wheels purchased and delivered





With the wheels now bwing here i didn't want to simply run the standard silver, i decided a refurb to the centres was needed. After photoshopping various ideas i narrowed down to Graphite and Moonstone, after a much more detailed photoshop i decided on Moonstone. As i type this all 4 wheels have had the centres refurbished by myself with moonstone centres, as before they have been flatted, compounded and polished for flat surfaces with shine. Whilst i was painting i colour coded a peugeot lion for the front badge.

Photoshop



Lion painted



Wheel painted and complete



I do plan to fit flat centre caps (these are the same size as genuine borbet caps) I've found flat caps unbranded for £80 which i'll purchase at a later date. The wheels will be fitted with tyres at the end of the month then fitted to the car.


So that's my HDi! all comments are welcome and I'll see you all at FCS 2012!

[Hitchos]

Looking good mate but i do prefer the peugeot alloys but still looks nice

[Ed Doe]

WOW! Crikey you've been busy! lol

YHPM!

[4WayDiablo]

Wow! Good effort! Was it a rattle can job with the mirror bases and spoiler? Its a bloody good finish!
Bet your liking the 50-60 mpg now :-)

[Dum-Dum]

Thats gonna look pretty epic mate, your clearly a well practiced modder. Cant wait to find time to get all my shiny bits on mine.

Where you based out of interest

[Tom]

You in cornwall mate?
Swear i seen this car parked up in asda last night.. Looked good if it wasnt you yours looks good too And that ibiza is shit hot!!

[darrenjlobb]

Hey fella,

And to the above, yes hes from St.Austell

[cwspellowe]

What's the quality of the Dare replicas like? Think I know the guy you got them from, am looking at a set of their BBS RS reps for a similar price

[geo7087]

Apologies for the late reply!, Thanks to all who commented and yes im in St Austell in Cornwall I'm chuffed with the dare's only very minor complaint is the fake bolts aren't able to push out from the rear unlike my old RS reps on the Seat... anywho...

Update

Ok so decided to trial fit the new wheels and remove my coilovers helper springs as i knew with the 16's I'd need to adjust the ride height lower. So with some tools and some blocks of wood i got to work!!

Suspension strut removed (stupidly easy job!)





Helper spring removed



Then after re-assembly and fiddling with the ride height i trial fitted the wheels, in the pictures the wheels are fitted with 10mm spacers front and 15mm rear







I'm really happy with the way they're looking tbh! I've now ordered un-branding flat centre caps for the wheels and a full set of 195/40/16 falken Ziex 912 tyres

Also currently looking at a private plate for the car and debating having the car re-painted as the bodywork has unfortunately seen better days! Not sure I'f im going to have to modify my bumpstomps for lows at the front but I'll see what the result is after fitting my wheels with tyres on the car too.

Opinions welcome as always

[Foxy-jim]

Its going to look awesome! WIll it pass an mot without helpers in? I need to take mine out!

[Chris]

You shouldnt need to mod the coilies for the 16's tbh.
See my sig for them on the stops with 205/40/17's

Cant wait to see this done, although I'm not a huge fan of the wheels.

[Curt]

Wow, nice work, awesome looking car! I really like what you've done with the wheels with the Moonstone, subtle but different.

Will keep an eye on this, will look epic when the wheels are on

[Tom]

This car is cool as shit.. Glad its local so i will hopefully see it around

[geo7087]

Cheers for the responses guys

Chris the reason for removal of helpers is with 8j wide front the inside of the wheel would have fouled on the spring itself, with the helper removed the spring assembly will sit higher allowing the wheel to sit further into the arch than without removing the helpers

[Chris]

My ones are all the way down with no helpers, you'll have to space the wheels some more to give you clearance or you'll never get it low enough.
I'll be running 8's on the front of mine, with a ET-1, but I'm sure I could fit a higher ET in without it hitting on the strut, but my brakes wont allow me a higher ET.


FYI, my wheels are currently 7.5x17 ET9 and theres still room between them and the strut, so ET5 on the 8's should fit.

[Foxy-jim]

Mine are going to be et-10!

[geo7087]

I'm not sure what my final front et will be, will see how the wheels sit when tyres are fitted this week

[Matt]

Looks good mate, makes me think, my lensos need to go back on lol

[Foxy-jim]

Get rid of the lenso's and buy some bbs's!!!

[Matt]

Can't get them cheap enough lol and I really like them lol

[Foxy-jim]

Ye that's what stopped me from getting some!

[Matt]

I want some borbets now though

[Foxy-jim]

A's?

[Matt]

Oh yeah

[Foxy-jim]

You seen the guy on .ne who has them on his? Looks amazing!

[Matt]

Viscous_burger? There sweet, also like the op's wheels

[Foxy-jim]

Yep that's the one! He knows his stuff when it comes to wheels haha! I hope my banded steels look decent!

Sorry for the thread jacking btw!

[Matt]

Major thread hijack, and yeah he's sound, I was parked behind him at FCS last year, had a chat, sure it was his car which was drawing in the photographers, took a picture of his then saw mine and took a picture of mine lol

[Foxy-jim]

Haha it's awesome! I woul like someone to compliment mine, would feel well good! We should try and get a euro feature in performance French car haha.