General my £200 '95 Mk1 75sx 'Paddy Punto'

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General my £200 '95 Mk1 75sx 'Paddy Punto'

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Apr 5, 2013
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Hi all,
just thought I'd finally get round to posting up some photos of my beloved Mk1 Punto.
Dunno if anyone wants to hear it but here's some back story anyway...

Picked it up as a temporary car from our family mechanic for £200 quid over the summer of 2012, for me and my sister to use while home from Uni. I'm currently studying Mechanical Engineering but whilst being massively into cars from an early age I didn't have any knowledge or practical experience with them, and this car presented a brilliant opportunity to get some.
Picked up a Haynes manual for it off Ebay and started learning more about the car and doing basic maintenance, progressing further to a point where I discovered sources of niggling problems and could fix them myself with help of this brilliant forum :worship:. Also did a fair bit of cheap aesthetic customization as well.

These aren't up to date photos but will add more when i get home from Uni for Xmas.

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Stuff currently done to it:

- New alloys (+wheel bolts +locking bolts)
- Steering wheel cover
- Colour coded rear bumper
- Head Unit Stereo
- Amp and Sub installed
- Spay Painted instrument dial surround
- Spray Painted steering wheel buttons
- Floor mats
- New aerial
- Centre console from a GT/Sporting
- Clear indicators and side repeaters
- new gear knob
- cigarette lighter USB
- Phone dashboard mount
- new white LED interior/courtesy light
- headlight brows
- restored blackness of exterior plastics with heat gun (lol)

Planned/Potential Mods:
- K&N Pod Air Filter (already bought off ebay £20)
- front upper strut brace
- new brake discs and pads
- light window tint on rears
- restore badges (spray black or chrome)
- fix dents
- spray and colour code rear boot spoiler
- colour coded front bumper
- new rear number plate
- clean up and spray brake calipers
- paint rocker cover
- maybe smoke rear lights
- LED's in footwell wired to interior light
- new white headlight bulbs
- spray some random interior plastics
- push start ignition button (just for laughs)

Just passed it's MOT last week with a brand new exhaust, silencer on previous one blew wide open on a long journey, botch fixed with Gun Gum but still sounded like a monster truck :p
Clocked 120,000 miles a few weeks ago, still runs pretty smooth.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
 
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and in the best colour too (y)

regarding your future plans, i would just get new badges rather than painting or whatever, they not alot and do make any car look a whole lot fresher.
And i would try find a widemouth bumper rather than paint the narrow mouth one on there, they look so much better.

here is a pic of my GT with widemouth bumper incase you don't know the difference (GT's came with the headlight washers too but if you get one from a sporting instead it won't have them if you don't like them)
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haha yeah it is a lovely colour, was in a state when i got it but a pressure washer, claybar and shampoo combo got it closer to that nice deep blue.
been a fan of your one blu73 since first seeing it on the forum, have set it as a final goal of sorts (y)

yeah i was thinking the wide mouth bumper was the way to go, looks great, and spraying the current one would be too much effort for the cost of all the paint and lacquer. alwys keep my eye out on ebay for them, thats how i got the CC rear.
not too sure about the newer fiat badges, i've always preferred the look of the ones already on it. i might try restoring the chrome lines and then doing black in between them, and if that fails maybe think about a new one.

thanks for the feedback guys much appreciated!
 
thought i'd share a few pics of what i got up to over christmas, happy holidays everyone!
had a go at doing up the front end fiat badge, masked off the chrome bits and sprayed black then clear coat. ended up looking good but some of the paint flaked off when removing the masking tape :( probably didn't sand the plastic enough beforehand but was nearly impossible to get wet n dry paper between the chrome bits (n)
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and the beautiful flaky finish:
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on the car (looks good from far away haha):
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might have another go at some point but fine for the moment
 
oh and was reseating my Punch P3 subwoofer in its box so thought i'd colour code the sub surround while i had the spray gear out
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been a while since posting, busy final year at uni but all finished now and time for some tinkering haha. for anyone who's interested......

first off got some black Plasti-dip to tidy up by badges, and also do the bits of the doors to go with the line of the windows. Its really great stuff and saves the hassle of sanding etc. if you want a matte finish. hopefully should last a while but we'll see

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The V12 badge was a birthday present from a mate, had to oblige haha (theres a GTR stricker on the other side of the boot :cool:)

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little present from the dad:
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few little presents from me to be done in the coming week hopefully:
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planning on getting some ARB bushes soon as mine look crusty, anyone know the inner diameter for my model punto? i think its 19mm but not certain

also got a knocking sound from the rear right of the car on certain kind of roads, i hear this is a classic problem on these cars, could anyone enlighten me?

thanks for any help/feedback in advance, hope everyone's well
 
cheers man, yeah the black pillars really give a sleeker look to the car, more than i'd thought before doing them. only done the back pillars so far will upload when middle's are done.
haha yeah not too everyone's taste of course, think i'll peel the dip off so people won't think i'm not joking around :D. the GTR badge on the other side completes the look:
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makes me chuckle to think that there are probably people out there who put these on their car seriously haha.... :shakehead:
 
cheeky update, finally got round to ordering a new lambda sensor, old one's been unplugged for nearly a year after it started causing rough idle and acceleration lag.

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old sensor
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splice work of a previous owner me thinks
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new sensor in
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replaced split hose of what i believe is the MAP sensor coming out the back of the intake manifold.
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luckily timed these fixes right, along with spraying some brake cleaner into the throttle body, which all seem to have fixed having trouble i've been having this last week, with the engine stalling at idle and underload. went for a drive today and seems to have fixed the problem, fingers crossed (y)
 
gone a long time without a post, not sure if anyone's interested!

quite a lots happened since, can't remember it all off the top of my head, but anyway:
- FINALLY fixed my rough/lagging acceleration with a new ignition coil pack, which along with the new lambda sensor had the engine running superrrr smooooth. was very happy with the punto at that stage.

- eventually got round to fitting G-max lowered shocks and springs i picked up on Ebay months ago for £40, did the fronts one weekend, then the backs about a month later! the difference in handling was quite noticeable (i think) so much less roll and fear entering corners, car looked great as well, think the drop was 30-40mm but don't actually know
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- finally came across a colour coded bumper on eBay, got it for a fiver! looks tidy. also cleaned up and sprayed front brace beam(?) with some lidl paint i picked up.
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- started a new job last month, around 50 mile each way commute including m25, punto was holding up ok until disaster struck! overheated out of the blue one friday evening on the way home, should have stopped sooner as when i eventually stopped, most of the oil and coolant were gone. nursed it home, figured out the thermostat had failed and locked shut. replaced this but think water pump is leaking also, not too mention that i've probably blown the head gasket and warped the head :(

- by the monday after this catastrophe i'd bough a replacement car through Gumtree, a '99 Fiesta for 300 quid. will be using that while I fix the punto on weekends, most people have/will tell me to just scrap it, but I've invested a fair bit of time, effort and money in this car over the years so its got a lot of sentimental value, and I've been relishing a challenge! :slayer:

Anyways sorry for the essay, hopefully someone out there will find it interesting. will keep updating if/when i get the chance.

Out of curiousity, is anyone actually still restoring/modifying any Mk1's? seems all the threads i look at like this one are years old!
 
Don't worry about posting essays, some of us enjoy them. I am also pleased to see you looking after an elderly Punto. It is all too easy to scrap a car simply because it is old. When I was young, cars only got scrapped because of terminal rot (which started as they left the showroom). As your sign says, your car survived the scrappage scheme, which only served to boost the Korean car industry, so it deserves to be cared for a little longer.

It won't be long before Mk1 Puntos are classed as classics, but only if people like you take the trouble to save the ever diminishing number of survivors.
 
:yeahthat: you won't find anyone here saying it deserves scrapping for that!! quite the opposite infact, its a nice little punto and a head skim and some new gaskets is nothing money wise. Plus on top of it all you will have slightly higher compression than before so a smidge more power (prob not noticeable lol but it all counts!!)
 
cheers fellas, nice to know not everyone thinks i'm daft haha. i've always assumed i'll be the last owner of this car, so it might aswell have a few last interesting years!
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(random pic i found before new bumper and lowering, also accurate bird poo bombing not long after washing it!)

regarding head skimming, is it only very specialist places that do it? heard from other threads its around £30 to do (maybe old price now).

forgot to mention I created more problems for myself when i took off the timing belt to check the water pump for leaks, forgot bout the whole cam/crank alignment business so it wouldnt even start when i put it all back haha.
despite this, starting to relish the challenge of getting this punto going again, rather than dread it! (y)

P.S. blu, had wondered for ages what your avatar was from, started watching Archer a few weeks ago and only just realised!
 
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haha, Archer is brilliant - i need to catch up i think there is most of a series i have not watched now.

Have a search in yellow pages or what not for a local engine rebuilder or good engineering firm, they will be able to sort you a skim out. Its not a normal garage bit of kit really. Anywhere from about £25 to about £50 i would say for a skim depending on where you are and who you use etc.
 
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