I borrowed a wet vac and went to work on the interior which was very dirty. The pic is the second, much cleaner, bucket of water I got out of the interior - the first was almost liquid mud.

The door cards needed a lot of work with ingrained grime in the black cloth, but they came up a treat, as did the rest of the interior.

mik has attached the following image:

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Cherry Rallye SOLD

Got cam belt and water pump changed - used genuine parts from ebay, actually came from Peugeot dealer. Got a friend of a friend to do the work and now I can drive it without fretting about how it is due a cam belt.

The broken rear rear wiper arm and (non-working?) motor has been temporarily replaced with a 20mm grommet. I will get the motor tested and replace if necessary. Otherwise it will be the wiring or the stalk.

The driver's door check strap is done as well - I used the superb FAQ on here which was a huge help. Excellent service from '306breaker' on ebay.

Some of these tricky little things to get stuff apart are different from what I'm used to.

A key one is that, being a Rallye it has manual window winders. To remove the winder it looks as though a cover needs to be prised off. But no, it is a dummy, you simply pull the winder straight off as it is a press fit on a splined alloy bit (see pic).

mik has attached the following image:

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Cherry Rallye SOLD

Spent some hours with the car on the hoist today. Cleaned up and painted nearly all floorpan surface rust with POR-15. There is only the odd bit that I can sort without needing a hoist, but another session in the next few weeks should sort it. My boot floor is pretty good, where there was plenty of rust was near the front on the chassis rails either side of the exhaust tunnel (see pic), and on the cross-members just behind the front wheel arches. A bit of work with a chisel there removed a lot of dodgy underseal that concealed a lot of surface rust underneath.Having put POR-15 on I will overcoat it with Chassis Black paint from the same manufacturer for a satin rather than gloss look. The surface is not actually as pitted as it looks in the pic - that is dried stuff off the road. [EDIT - see comments about POR-15 performance later in thread]

There was an impressive pile of old underseal and rusty debris on the workshop floor after I had finished!

Had a quick drive afterwards during a brief shower of rain, had a slight "moment" and have truly discovered that the near-new "Doublestar" (cheap Chinese brand) tyres the PO put on the car are absolute rubbish in the wet. To be fair he did say they were not all that great but they are very squirmy under heavy braking and the ABS kicks in but with little discernible slowing down. These tyres grip the road about as well as a politician holds onto reality. I will replace them with something decent as soon as possible.

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Cherry Rallye SOLD

PM sent.

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Cherry Rallye SOLD

Factory speakers before removal...

Photos added to some posts above as well.

mik has attached the following image:

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Cherry Rallye SOLD

Good review on the alpine speakers Mik. Mine are due an upgrade soon, like you i don't want to go OTT with ice fitment.

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1999 Astor Grey GTi-6 OEM+ (now gone...)
2004 Aegean Blue 206 GTi 180 (also gone...)
2006 Skoda Fabia vRS in Sprint Yellow

Leave, you army? O and lovely Rallye btw!

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Did a gearbox and engine oil change today.

Read the FAQ on here and then took the car over to work...and undid some retaining bolt on the gearbox instead of the correct drain plug. Note to self: print off the instructions next time and refer to them before undoing anything. Well oil came out of it but only one litre or so and it didn't look like a drain plug once undone - it had a really long thread on it. Luckily I got it back in OK and it wasn't holding some critical part in position inside the gearbox, or if it was it did not fall inside when the bolt was undone - could have been an expensive mistake! I refilled the gearbox with the whole 2 litre container of oil but nothing came out the level plug on the side of the gearbox. But the factory quantity is 2.1 litres and there will be at least 100mls of oil clinging to the inside of the box so I can't see the point of putting more in - and yes the car was level. Might ring Pug tomorrow to check though, just in case. I used Total BV 75w80 from a Pug dealer. Definitely feels smoother now even though the stuff that came out wasn't that dirty.

I changed the engine oil with Total fully-synthetic 5w30, which is probably a bit thin but OK for now and I wanted to use fully synthetic. For the future I will use 5w40 synthetic, probably Castrol.

I was going to recoat my POR-15 painting on the underside. There were some rusty water droplets from the rusty subframe but looking closer in some places the rust was actually coming through the POR-15! The only explanations I can think of is that more than one coat is required as it is thin to penetrate into the rust, and/or that as POR-15 depends on being non-porous and specifically states not to shake it but to stir it instead (yeah I know, just like James Bond's martini before anyone else says it - schplendid Mish Moneypenny) - but I read that bit _after_ the paint was dry and so I think I might have caused bubbles in the paint allowing air to get at the rust. It is only in a couple of areas at the front where the rust was most aggressive, and either way I will scrape and sand it right back back to mostly shiny metal and recoat taking care not to shake it this time.

Finally I managed to get the rear wiper working. I installed the Ph1 / 2 motor after cutting 6mm off the (longer, water-dispensing) spindle so it would fit under the (non-water-dispensing) P3 wiper arm, and installed brand new arm and blade. Works a treat now but I took care to properly lube all the metal parts - spindle, alloy bush on the arm to stop it corroding on and even the wiper arm spring as a lot of road muck ends up there. At first it was making a high-pitched electrical whine sound which was even audible over the radio, but I persevered and after about 3 minutes continuous operation the noise stopped. Result.

I finally had a good look at the driveshaft gaiter and it is not actually holed or torn; the metal ring that retains it on the larger (wheel) side is gone, it has simply disappeared and the boot is sitting there not doing a very good job of keeping the grease in. Do these things make a bid for freedom often?? It is booked in on Fri to sort it and I got a boot kit for £18 from the dealer. Since I've got it I will get the new boot installed anyway, as if I don't replace it, I'm sure it would develop a hole next week.

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Cherry Rallye SOLD

Don't think mine had been done at all in it's 47k - difference was night and day!

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'98 Nile Blue 306 GTi 6

Spent the day on the car today and got the rear bumper off. And I only managed one bloodletting incident when pliers slipped and pinched some skin on my hand. Top tip - hold pliers correctly. I was using them to undo the screws at the bottom of the bumper that connect the arch liner and the bumper as no driver would get them out - so corroded I couldn't tell whether it was a hex or torx head!

I used the excellent FAQ on here, but what wasn't included was the plastic plug on each side were the bumper meets the wheelarch which is accessed after the arch liner is removed (which I hadn't removed as per the FAQ). I managed to push them out with a screwdriver and only broke one of them. They seem superfluous to me and won't be going back on. [EDIT: Yes they will as the top corners of the bumper do not sit quite right without them] With 8 10mm bolts, 2 press studs and 2 screws to hold the bumper on, the designers were clearly pretty determined to make sure it wasn't going to fall off.

One of the 2 10mm bolts at the bottom lip sheared, but I managed to cut the captive nut off with a hacksaw and get the remains of the bolt out of the hole. I'll get another captive nut attached.

Taking Coskev's tip I got some non-drip "Poppy" red enamel from Wickes that is almost an exact match for Peugeot Cherry Red (though Coskev didn't specify the brand). It is a better match than Halfords' Cherry Red touch up paint! The Rover metallic grey touch-up paint to match the same colour the previous owner painted the wheels is also too dark, to make sure it was not my imagination I painted some on the pack where it shows the colour of the paint and the actual paint is much darker than the supposed colour on the outside of the pack - same with the Cherry Red.

I got a intact front bumper (to replace my cracked one) and OE airbox from Thugpuggin last night, so now I just need to find a decent painter in the Bristol area. I will do as much of the prep work as possible to save a few quid.

I've also ordered a rear aux lead to connect an iPhone/iPod to the head unit and a patch lead so I can use the remote stalk. And I got some aero wiper blades from ebay for £6 delivered today.

Here is what greeted me when I got he bumper off at last. The paintwork is pretty good, with a slight bit of paint lifting along the lower edge and on some spot welds that has been sanded back and treated, and will be primed tomorrow.

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Cherry Rallye SOLD

Just visible is the end of the broken-off bolt.

mik has attached the following image:

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Cherry Rallye SOLD

Spent some hours today scraping off more rust in areas exposed by removing the rear bumper. I also scraped the POR-15 off where I'd previously applied it as rust started showing through it.

I also noted that, as the instructions say(!), it does not adhere at all well to painted surfaces. On the underside of the car where there are painted bits next to rusty bits, it requires a bit of care.

The way I will deal with this is to reduce the rust so it is almost bare metal, using wire brush and coarse sandpaper on paintred and rusty surfaces. I'll paint the rusty bits with the normal POR-15, and then paint over all of it with "Chassis Coat Black", also from POR-15, which can be applied directly to painted and unpainted surfaces and is non-porous and impervious to UV light (not that there is much of that under a car). It is also a satin finish which will look good - the normal POR-15 rust paint is gloss, and it fades if exposed to UV light.

A bloke at work looked at me doing all this covered in rusty muck and said - "I haven't got the patience for that". At times I think he's got a point!!

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Cherry Rallye SOLD