Technical Showing my car some love

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Technical Showing my car some love

306maxi

STOP! Hammer time!
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I can’t remember what I’ve actually mentioned, but January last year the box on my 500 started to clonk rather badly. Had an oil leak and the box ran without the necessary amount of oil and killed itself.

I intended to do it when the weather got better, but I got a new job that invoked an hour and a bit commutes so time hasn’t exactly been plentiful and weeks to to months, months turned to a year and a year turned to a year and a half. Some colleagues at work offered to help and I took them up on it.

As it had don’t 90something thousand miles I thought I’d do a few extra bits as well.

So today the aim was to do the following.

Change the front discs and pads which was easily done.
Remove the dodgy box, fit new seals in the replacement box, fit it and fill it with oil which we did.
We changed the rear drums, shoes and wheel cylinders. Unfortunately one rear pipe broke and we had to break the other, so new pipes are on order and I’m going to try and fit them next week.
Didn’t get to do the cambelt, tensioner pulley and water pump changed.
Nor did we service it either.

The pipes worry me, but the cambelt change should be simple and the service is easy peasy. Should hopefully be mobile next weekend.

When it’s mobile I’m going to get an air conditioning person to come over and change the condenser as it’s pretty much screwed and regas it as well.
 
Looking a bit sad at the moment but it’ll soon be on the road :)
 

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Took the front bumper off to access some bolts and removed the connector from the cross member to the front of the car to get the box out.

Got one of the broken rear pipes off today, will try and tackle the other tomorrow.

Flushed the cooling system today and got the bottom cover off the engine and removed the aux belt. Will probably crack on this Friday when the rear pipes arrive. Should be all downhill from here!
 
Good work, nice progress :)

I love that expression... “all downhill from here”... yep, I had one of those jobs go downhill very rapidly when I refitted an aux belt wrongly on the Stilo... last thing to go on and the first result was an unseated cambelt and all 20 valves bent as the strong new belt continued to turn :p with a deep sigh I wondered why I’d bothered changing the cambelt!

-Alex
 
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Check the condition of the cooling pipe that runs behind the exhaust manifold, if it looks in any way rusty replace it, it's probably far worse than it looks.

Coolant pipe going behind the exhaust manifold? Don’t think the 1.2 has one?
 
Coolant pipe going behind the exhaust manifold? Don’t think the 1.2 has one?

Yes it has, ours looked just slightly corroded but otherwise ok, I still replaced it and glad I did. Here's a pic to help identify it.
 

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Wonder if I’m just being blind and it is actually there...

My pic is looking down just behind the cooling fan, the pipe extends to the heater matrix (inside the car via the rubber pipe ) and has the bleed valve in it, it splits right beside the engine block to the rad entering the block above the oil filter
 
My pic is looking down just behind the cooling fan, the pipe extends to the heater matrix (inside the car via the rubber pipe ) and has the bleed valve in it, it splits right beside the engine block to the rad entering the block above the oil filter

Well bugger me, I do have a pipe there! It just looked vastly different in my mind to how it looks in reality!
 
Look what myherpes (not a typo) brought today.

Should get them fitted tomorrow or on the weekend at least. Will take it out for a drive (private test road of course) to make sure all is good and then it’s actually going to sit for a little while, we’re off to Spa for the 24 hours next weekend and then I’m off for 2 weeks. I also want to get the condenser replaced and the air con system regassed, so it might be mid August by the time I get it back in the road officially.
 

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Couple of photos to give you some data to go on.

Shoes after 90,000+ miles. Plenty of meat left on them, but I don’t use the brakes much.
 

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Clutch after the same amount of time. Probably at least another 50 if not 90 thousand miles left in it.

Pressure plate and clutch release bearing were both in very good condition also.

Have always maintained that I’m a mechanically sympathetic driver and I think that backs it up. I thought I’d taken comparison photos of new and old, but I haven’t.
 

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I had the same with my punto, I changed the clutch at around 110k miles as I was worried it might let me down soon and the amount of wear was hardly noticeable next to the new clutch. Changed the brake shoes about the same time, original fiat shoes most likely on it since new as I’d had the car from 3 years old and never changed them and it was fairly low miles when I got it.

I generally don’t slip the clutch and I use engine braking all the time so these things get little wear.

The one bad habit I have is sitting on the clutch in traffic instead of taking out of gear, so I have killed a release bearing once (although only had that car a couple of months so don’t think I can take all the blame for that.

I get very annnoyed following people who brake all the time for no apparent reason, and you get a face full of brake lights for every car going the other way, a cat walking along the path or a plane flying over at 30,000 feet.
 
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