Peugeot 205 Automatic 1.6L XU51C: Prepared (part 3)

Introduction

There's more stuff that scares me about this car.. the leaking coolant fluid, the timing belt that might or might not be in bad condition, and other stuff like that that all combine to make a barely running tin can. I want to make it more reliable, to feel like I have a proper car before I really dive into it and have my fun with it.
this page shall focus on those scary boogeyman repairs i've never done before. Remember, that up until recently, i didn't even know that cars needed to have oil changes, so diving's into an engine bay like that and getting my hands dirty looks scary.

Let's get to it!

Diagnostics

One obnoxious thing about the car was that the blinker stick to the left of the steering wheel was faulty, and while the blinkers themselves worked, the headlights that were turned on by that same stick didn't. So while my good friend was taking apart the dashboard and replacing the faulty stick with a new one we bought at a junkyard, I started the car and was trying to find the source of the leak. Since the coolant fluid emptied, I dumped good old water in the expansion bowl (in the middle of january).

Well, it wasn't that hard to find the leak, you can see the coolant drip down from the timing belt cover, which leaves just one option, that it has to be the timing belt driven water pump. Which ends up pretty convenient, as I was planning to replace the timing belt and head gasket anyways, so I can do that at the same time. Moving on to the dashboard, my friend successfully replaced the stick, and it works, but they accidentally unplugged the speedometer, didn't notice that they did this and put the thing back together. So for now i don't have a working speedometer. Nice.

Now that stuff was figured out, I tried to empty out the cooling system the best that I could, since I put freezable water in there, and went online to buy the parts I needed. Cue 1 months of waiting for the parts to arrive because the web shop I bought the parts from forgot to ship my order (lol). Finally, they eventually arrived and I dropped by an auto store to buy some parts I would need, and off to work we were about to go.

The bad

So, just for context, we'll need to disassemble, re-assemble, and adjust a bunch of things on the engine to make the repairs that we wish to make. And, while you see the rest of this post, keep in mind that the highlighted red part in the picture above is the engine mount, that we couldn't remove it lest the engine slam on the ground below the car and that it covered what we needed to work on. It was a huge pain to work around, and you also should know that the entire side of the engine that's on the left side of this picture is what we needed to work on, and also that this side was 2 inches or less from the chassis of the car, making it even harder to fit my big fat fingers in there. Just wanted you to relate to the pain we lived through.

Time to pop the hood and get to work!
We had a lot of energy, full bottles of soda, and plenty of time.

To get to the cylinder head, the airfilter and other various stuff on top of the engine has to come off.

So far so good, let's hope that continues..

At this point, I pussied out. To get to the cylinder head and head gasket, i would have had to remove even more stuff on top of the engine, disconnect a bunch of hoses, readjust the valves and valve sprints after re-assembly, and pray that none of the 8 head bolts wouldn't snap, as if this happened, the engine and therefore probably the entire car would get trashed. It's bad, but I decided that i'll just pretend that it's new and have the head gasket done professionally someday, and like that I can have it resurfaced too.

This is also literally my first real car repair, and I think doing both the head gasket and timing belt in one go is maybe too ambitious, I know I should've done both at the same time, but fear's a crazy thing.

Now i'm taking the alternator belt off, innocently heading towards a lot of pain that's about to strike me.

Now that the belt is off, let's take off the crankshaft bolt and alternator pulley out.

To get myself more space to work with, i'm taking off the mud cover of the passenger side wheel

There we go. The thing I didn't plan for, the thing that's going to get in my way, the thing that i'll lose an entire evening over. That damn crankshaft bolt. First, I just innocently put a drill bit in the alternator pulley to stop the engine from cranking as i'll loosen the bolt, and now i'm pulling, pulling on the wrench, and it's starting to dawn on me that no matter how hard I pull, that thing is NOT moving one inch.

My face's stuck against the bumper, and i'm pulling as hard as I can with both of my hands on the wrench, and I can't get the thing to move. I'm starting to panic, I don't have an impact wrench, and I have no other tool that might get this screw loose. I just have to pull, but pull with all my might and the thing's stuck in good. What can I do then ? will I have to take the car to a garage ?

A light at the end of the tunnel

If I can't move the bolt with my arms, maybe my fat ass can ? after thinking around and trying to pull the thing loose for an hour, i had a crazy idea. What if I put the end of the wrench on something solid, like a brick, and just jump on the hood of the car with my big bottom ? What if my volumptuous behind could be heavy enough to significantly lower the front of the car, turning the angle of the wrench and forcing the screw loose ? I had nothing else to try at this point.

Let's set it up, and hope for the best..

That crack noise from the crankshaft bolt loosening felt so god damn good. Truly orgasmic, let me tell you.

I'm sure I did that entire crankshaft thing in a totally whacky method that's probably very bad, but the thing's off and I don't care anymore.

Now, to get into the meat and potatoes of the timing belt change. The thing doesn't look half bad, actually. I could've probably kept using it but i'm here so might aswell replace it. That is, tomorrow, after I get a good night of sleep.

I was very very nervous about making sure that the new belt would be properly aligned, cause if I got the new one off by just one teeth, I would risk the pistons giving a lil' kiss to the valves at high speed and trash my entire engine, so I marked just about everything and manually count the number of teeth and their alignment on the used and new belt.

Now that I made sure I can put the new belt in fine, I also have to make sure that I don't forget to replace the water pump.

When I took the water pump out and saw all of that coolant empty out, I slightly panicked because i really really hoped that this fluid hadn't froze in the block and warped or even cracked anything. Anyways, the water pump was off and it was time to put the new one in.

Finishing up

Long story short, putting the new belt on was actually really really easy, thanks to the marks I put on the belt and gears, and so was putting on the new water pump. I struggled some with the belt tensioner because there was a really really strong spring that I needed to compress to put the new one back in place, but I eventually managed it.

After putting everything together, before I could start the engine to check whether I trashed it or not, I wanted to get it filled with coolant fluid so that it wouldn't overheat if it ran, and also to check if it still leaked.

That was longer and more obnoxious than it needed to be, but powerful lungs to push the water in the system got us there faster.

Finally

Damn !!! the car runs ! I did it ! I replaced a sensitive part of the engine and i didn't fuck up, i feel like a real mechanic now! (not really, lol) And even better, i even got the new license plate to put on the car! Also i was glad that the water didn't seem to freeze inside of the engine.

I'm finally freaking done, i'm so glad, that truly was 2 days of pain, and I wish I was done with fixing the car... but i'm not. I still haven't plugged in the new heat sensor, so the cooling fans still aren't automatic, and with how poorly the carb is still set up, that car is a gas guzzler. On top of that, I recently realized that the headlights aren't correct at all and they need to be replaced. The car's also due for a brake pads change. I'm probably forgetting other stuff but my point is that the next blog entry will be about fixing stuff, yet again. But that's what i get for buying a beater car!