[AWX85]

Hi,

A few months ago I had to get a new car and I wanted a step up from a focus, my dad has had a couple of puma's and always raved about how much fun they are so I made my decision that I would own one. I drew up a shortlist of a thunder, millennium or a black, I viewed a fair few over a couple of weeks all of which were in an absolute state, I eventually found a millennium that according the description it was in perfect condition and could not be missed, So my mate and I headed up to Norfolk one rainy Sunday morning In the hope of me returning home with a perfect puma. Things did not go so well as it turned out the puma was far from perfect. I was beginning to feel downhearted but before heading home defeated we had one last look on auto trader and a puma black had appeared on the Friday that I hadn't seen so we made our way to deeper into Norfolk to find this car. It turned out to be in very good condition, it had the ford standard wheel arch rust but this is not something I was worried about as I had already had a plan to correct this issue. The car had a full ford service history but it wasn't clear if the cambelt had been done. After a some haggling with the owner I was the proud owner of a Puma black with 58k on the clock.

After getting the car back and a couple of phone calls to the garage that had serviced it for the previous 5 years I found that the cambelt hadnt been done, so this became a number one priority, and with the help of this site I found a local garage that would be able to do it that week and for a little over £200.




The first thing I wanted to do to the car was clean up the engine, paint the rocker cover and fit K&N filter {cheers MogsMex}





Unfortunately my steering wheel had suffered the melting and this made it horrible to hold as the faux leather kept balling up in your hand so I acquired a new{ish} on from a local ford breakers the gear knob was also badly scratched and scuffed so I decided to get this rotary polished and paint the black numbers back in. I also decided to fit smoked side re-repeaters as they blend so well with the car.



After a trip out in a friends ST which had a black interior including the roof lining and pillers I decided I wanted to replicate this in my car. I bought some faux suede, contact adhesive and vinyl paint for all the plastics. I set about removing the roof lining, sun visors and coat hooks. With the help of my flat mate the roof lining only took about 40min to cover and the painting of all visors and pillers was easy enough, The adhisive recomended leaving it for about 10min before maximum adhision was achived but we left it till the end of the day before re-fitting.





The interior is now exactly as I want it. The next step for the exterior will be coilovers, alloys and getting the rust treated and the rear arches painted.

This post has been edited by AWX85: 22 July 2009 - 11:08 AM

[luke]

good stuff, i like the roof jobby? how does the lining come out? did you leave the original one on or have you peeled it off?
also have you painted the dash board?
keep up the good work mate

[FlashBastd]

Really impressed with that headlining, got a link to the material you used?

Did you just stretch it to fit, or did you have to trim fillets out of it?

Any chance of more of a how to?

[AWX85]

good stuff, i like the roof jobby? how does the lining come out? did you leave the original one on or have you peeled it off?
also have you painted the dash board?
keep up the good work mate

The lining is really easy to remove especially if you get someone else to do it (Glyn ). Its still the original lining just covered.

Here are the instructions for removing the lining.

** Link Removed **

Really impressed with that headlining, got a link to the material you used?

Did you just stretch it to fit, or did you have to trim fillets out of it?

Any chance of more of a how to?

I found the material on ebay, The seller had tons of it you could specify the quantity you wanted.

It was just stretched as much as possible, but for the boot end we had to cut the cloth in to allow it to curve into the bowl that reaches the boot pillars.

We found the best way to go about it was to do small sections at a time, starting at the back and always pushing the material to the front. Although the adhisive is very strong and takes staight away its also quite forgiving and you can pull the material back up in small sections to remove small creases or stress marks.

This post has been edited by R5CPD: 26 July 2009 - 06:36 PM
Reason for edit: Reproduction of information on Ford eTIS site or TIS discs is not allowed.

[AWX85]

I have been considering covering my parcel shelf just like the head lining, the only thing thats been putting me off was the extreme lines of the shelf. Anyway last night I decided it would be worth a go as the parcel shelf currently matched nothing. As it turned out it was easier than I thought the only tricky bits were folding the material over the lip and avoiding getting the glue on the underside.



The last photo isnt that great it makes it look like a charcoal grey rather than black.

[zara014]

Looks fantastic

[FlashBastd]

Lovely job, have you been changing steering wheels too?

[Mogsmex]

looks quality Adam, very nice work

and thanks for your old headlining I have even stopped smoking in the car now


are you going to update the thread with your new window mod as well

[AWX85]

Lovely job, have you been changing steering wheels too?

Yes the one that came with the car was badly melted, thankfuly there is a ford spares place just round the corner from where I work and they had one in good nick.

looks quality Adam, very nice work

and thanks for your old headlining I have even stopped smoking in the car now


are you going to update the thread with your new window mod as well

Thats alright.

Getting the message 'Glyn says you will have to put your window through' nearly brought tears to my eyes.

Its safe to say I won't be doing that again.

[T1ny]

very tidy mate

[BurfyBoy]

Looks very smart! Nice work

[FlashBastd]

It was just stretched as much as possible, but for the boot end we had to cut the cloth in to allow it to curve into the bowl that reaches the boot pillars.

When you say "cut the cloth in", do you mean you left like a V-section in the middle and cut it in?

What adhesive did you use, and have you been happy with it?

Apologies for the perhaps slightly dumb questions, but I am really taken with this and quite fancy having a go for myself.

This post has been edited by FlashBastd: 25 July 2009 - 12:10 AM

[AWX85]

When you say "cut the cloth in", do you mean you left like a V-section in the middle and cut it in?

What adhesive did you use, and have you been happy with it?

Apologies for the perhaps slightly dumb questions, but I am really taken with this and quite fancy having a go for myself.

OK first of all this is the glue I used, I bought this from Focus but you can get it from any DIY shop,



I only ended up using 1 can on the headlining.

Now for the cutting in.



So we started by sticking it at the back and pushing forward getting the flat area stuck without creases then we started to push back up the bowl shape trying to push the creases out, unfortunately we ended up with a excess material on both sides. Now we didnt want to cut this out in that bowl section so we pushed and stretched the material inwards towards the center of the headlining.

At this point we had the material bunched up here and simply cut through it and then stuck one sided on top of the other. Because the material is dark you would never know it was there.

There may be another way of doing this to avoid the material bunching up in this way,

It was only at the rear of the headlining that we had this issue the rest of it when on without an issue, I would suggest that if you do this, only attempt small sections at a time just to make it easier on your self. We broke it into 3 sections and this worked quite well.

I hope this helps.

[FlashBastd]

Cool, thanks.

Looking forward to having a crack at this.

[AWX85]

Sorted out a new number plate, I wasnt a fan of having the garage who had previously serviced the car on it so I got ford puma black on it in the ford typeface.

Ordered this from number one show plates, I placed the order phoned to check they got my pdf with the artwork about half an hour later, they said they had and the plates had been produced and wrapped for posting and they turned up the next day. You can't argue with service like that.

[PumaJay]

im liking those number plates very much!

[AWX85]

I managed to acquire a full stainless exhaust, which at first seemed like a straight swap....

Except the new stainless system had a swaged clamp pipe and the current exhaust & downpipe joined with a two bolt flange.
A friend made me a really neat stainless 2 bolt flange stub tube to enable me to make the new stainless system compatible.

[mello]

Class!!!

I think that the rooflining and A-pillar mod may have to "borrowed" somewhat, if you don't mind

Top quality geezer!!

[AWX85]

So with the bank holiday at my disposal I decided that it was time to do something about my pumas ride height. I purchased some Weitec GTN's from Rude Racing who are based in Witham here in sunny Essex, the service was excellent and they were ready for collection within a couple of days.

Upon collection I was like a kid a Christmas rushing home just to open the box.



I decided to make the most of the long weekend and get the the car being up on stands and decided to fit my new FRP splitter I had, clean, paint and service the brakes. The plan was to strip the car on the Saturday, clean & paint the brakes and fit the splitter leaving all day Sunday reassemble the lot and tweak the ride height.

As of 8 o'clock Saturday morning this is how the car looked



The first thing to come off was the front bumper, which took longer than it should have done, but this was mainly down me to being far to tired to operate a ratchet. The brakes and old suspension struts were next, again. took longer than it should, as every bolt seemed to be rusted to death.
The initial plan was to remove both the calipers and drums for cleaning however the rear ABS sensor's were well and truly rusted in place and could not be removed, so they had to be cleaned and painted on the car.



With everything off and ready for the next stage the car was looking very sorry for itself.


Next we decided to fit the splitter, its brand new but I had it machine polished this week to really make it shine.
For fitting the splitter we used the guide posted up by R5CPD - thanks http://www.pumapeople.com/forum/index.php?...itting+splitter. For attaching the splitter we used 35/25mm M6 hex flange head bolts, 25/20mm washers and M6 Locknuts as well as a series of brackets. We boared some 25mm holes into the ribbed under tray section of the splitter so that the washers would sit on the actual splitter, and due to the ribs being hollow the gaps were filled with RTV to waterproof it.





Next I started on cleaning the calipers for painting, I had decided the yellow would be the best contrasting colour for my car.



That brought the Saturday to a close.
This is how things began Sunday,

We only really had 5 hours to complete it in due to the F1 & BTCC .

The first job was to fit the calipers, and fully flush the lines with Dot 5.1brake fluid following that we fitted the coilovers which went it considerably easier than the old struts came out. Finally we put the wheels on and removed the stands, The height was perfect and I couldnt have been happier.

All that was left was a few finishing touches. I am going to replace the current wheels but keeping them 15inch as the car doesnt need a larger rolling radius, I will however get some slightly wider ones. Depending on the offset I may also opt for a pair of rear hub spacers but we will see. Whilst removing the wheels I decided I quite liked them without the centre caps so I fabricated some smaller caps to cover the hub nut using a carbon fibre effect vinyl, I also painted the puma badge on the rear window yellow to keep it inline with the brakes.




I havent as yet been able to stop smiling eveytime I look at the car, I think it looks brilliant. All this couldn't have happened with out the help of my flat mate Rob.

This post has been edited by AWX85: 01 September 2009 - 10:37 AM

[FlashBastd]

Looking good, how is the ride with the new suspension? Were all of your top mounts ok?

Rear axle spacers would help at the back, but again, you will need to remove your ABS sensors for those.