Hi all,

It's my first post here, so apologies for jumping straight in and saying I'm killing a gti6...

I might as well give some background on what I'm planning to do, at the risk of creating a very boring post:

I've got a Ph2 306 cabriolet 2.0 with a near-dead engine and a donor Ph2 gti6 with pretty poor bodywork (no MOT, starting to rust, cracked windscreen, bonnet so badly stonechipped it looks like it's pebbledashed, dented wing and cracked valence) so I'm planning to transplant the xu10j4rs into the cab.

I'm planning to keep the cab's 5 speed box (I used to have a Xsara VTS so I like the j4rs behind a 5 speeder), and lighten the cab as much as possible whilst keeping it as a daily driver. I've noticed the cab handles much better with the hard top on (much less scuttle shake) so I'm thinking about losing the rag top altogether and clamp the hard top on permanently.

I'll not be doing any other drastic lightening (from reading other threads on lightening 306s it sounds like you can remove a lot of comfort and lose very little weight), but I have already removed the spectacularly rusty spare wheel / jack / cradle and some weird dangly rubber-mounted weights at the back of the cab which don't appear to do anything (theory is they're some sort of resonance damper, but cabs are so rattly you wouldn't notice it anyway), and saved around 37kg. Removing the roof / hydraulics will probably save somewhere between 60-100kg, to be permanently replaced with the 60kg hard top. So in theory I could end up with a cab weighing as little as 1190kg!

I'm not planning to do anything to do anything too much in terms of changing the car's appearance since, with the exception of swapping the 6's front brakes over and maybe fitting lighter wheels, most bodywork mods seem to either make the car heavier, or make it less useable as a daily driver. Suspension mods (e.g. swapping over the 6's rear beam and anti roll bar) will also probably be out - I figure there's no point stiffening up the suspension if the car has a wobbly middle...!

I know the weight distribution on the gti6 is pretty darned good already, but has anyone got any ideas what the weight distribution on a cab is? I'm not sure whether the heavy roof / mechanism at the rear makes the weight distribution even nearer to perfect, or if it actually makes the car rear-heavy...

Also, anyone got a good name for what I'll be creating? It won't be a gti-6 (no -6 for a start!) but it won't be a cab either...

That's what I used to tell people my Ph2 Xsara VTS was, though 'startled goldfish' would have been more a appropriate name

I agree about the engine range, though the 2.0 twin cam (xu10j4r) is decent enough when it's not in the state mine's in... Not sure why they never fitted the j4rs to it, and not sure why they didn't replace the 1.6 with an HDi 90 diesel - both are possible and there are several cabs already converted like that, so it would have been an easy job at the factory. All I can think is they were worried about the effect scuttle shake would have with the more powerful engine, and maybe figured nobody would want a diesel cabrio?

Project thread would be a good idea - I've already got the start of one on the 306 cab site (though a lot of members aren't so keen on my roof ideas!) so I might well copy it over when I get the chance. Not much chance of the engine bay looking shiny and wonderful though - I'm trying to keep costs down as much as possible.

That'd certainly solve my floppy middle, but I'm not too sure what my back seat drivers would have to say about it

Done - http://www.306gti6.com/forum/showthread.php?id=161416