My wife and I have recently been looking for another car. My wife's had puma's before and, although they're too bloody small for us both to fit in, for some reason we decided it might be a good idea to get one. About a month ago we saw on a facebook selling group someone locally selling a puma for scrap money - £250. We went and saw it in the dark whilst it was raining and got it for £200 in the end. It's got a stupid personalised plate on it which will be sold when it's got an MOT on it (worth about £300 so we're quids in already).
So it's a S reg with 83k on the clock, a bit of rust here and there, a spoiler which was held on with wood screws, a couple of scratches in weird places and rust around the rear arches (but not that bad to be honest).
It was low on oil, the aux belt was knackered, the brake warning light was on, it was hesitating and bucking when you let off the throttle, but it was damn cheap.
Since it's been sat on the drive, i've been accruing parts ready to pop on when the weather gets better. Despite the weather being shite this weekend, i went ahead and did some work to it regardless. Not got pictures of everything though!
So first job was put on some better brakes. As I said the brake warning light was on and the old disks had seen better days (although the pads were fine). I got a set of Fiesta ST 150 brakes of eBay and put them on. A simple caliper swap, easy peasy. Here's the new disks when they were delivered at work, i've not got a comparison shot, but they're massive compared and don't half stop you well!
I plugged it into a code reader and we got an error on coolant temperature sensor out of testing range, which considering it was about 4oC above freezing, isn't unreasonable. We got an error on the heater on the first o2 sensor (pre cat) so I went down the scrap yard and got another o2 sensor, a load of fuses and relays and stuff, an aerial, a jack (mysteriously missing from this car) and some wheel studs (as I didn't know where the locking wheel nut key was, so had to smash 'em out). £20 quid for the lot so quite happy with that. I also got a spare ICV as you never know!
Incase you're wondering i found the locking wheel nut key the next day, wrapped in a tissue in the little hole next to the gear lever.
I took the plugs out and cleaned them up and regapped them, topped it up with oil and it sounds alot better now.
Next job was new timing belt, water pump, tensioner, rocker cover gasket & aux belt. Got it all stripped down and the timing bloody slipped when i was getting it to TDC so i'll have to get the timing tools. I was going to just mark everything up and be done with it but never mind. That'll have to wait now. It's all stripped down ready for the new belt though. Check out the old aux belt!
As we're had a lot of rain recently, i couldn't help but notice we'd inadvertently purchased a swimming pool:
So I took the interior out and found the leak (right up past the throttle pedal, in the corner were you can't get to it very easily. I'll stick a load of silicon up there if it ever stays dry for long enough. The seats are in the conservatory with the carpet now. I found a rust hole in the floor i'll weld up which it's dry (in there and outside . Sadly there's a fair bit of rust inside as this problem has obviously existed for a while and the previous owner didn't bother to do anything about it. All the sound deadening material is in the bin now as it was absolutely sodden.
A quick question:
Does anyone know the size of the front crank seal? I'll get one ordered from a bearing supplier as it seems to be a bit weepy there.
Is putting silicon on the inside really the best course of action? It's be better to get to it from the outside to stop it getting in in the first place surely?
Costs so far:
Car: £200
Cambelt kit and waterpump: £70
Brakes: £70
Rocker cover gasket: £15
Aux Belt: £15
Stuff from scrap yard: £20
Total: £390
Still to do:
Fix rust
Finish timing job
Replace tyre
Oil + Filter
Plugs
Burnouts
This post has been edited by Xenocide: 09 February 2014 - 09:07 PM