New member in Oz + tips for other little lions

[Poesis]

Hello everyone - not a CC but a 2001 206 gti with the same engine, EW10J4 - I am calling it the French Wench...(in polite company, otherwise it has a few other less polite names). It was purchased for my youngest son as a first car - newly minted licence. It is proving to be a challenging little lion - we brought it cheap with what we thought was a blown head gasket. The two litre engine is crammed into a space hardly big enough for a swallow's nest. We have learned a lot about this little peugeot, through all our trials and tribulations (not yet on the road - sigh...) and could probably offer quite a bit of advice to other forum members. For instance, when removing the head it is not necessary to remove the exhaust manifold (many hours of pain and suffering, skinned knuckles, swearing and beseeching of various French gods later) - just undo the single nut on the flange bracket which joins the exhaust manifold to the main exhause pipe and lift the head off with manifold attached - very easy to remove manifold on work bench, almost impossible in the car (even the swallows can't get in there). Before replacing the head gasket you might want to check the condition of the oil cooler - a little doughnut shaped pancake which the oil filter attaches to and which can easily be removed and checked first. Once the oil cooler is off, seal up one coolant pipe and blow through the other, if it is faulty air will leak out of the oil cooler where the oil is meant to be... We discovered this only after replacing the head gasket, having the head pressure tested and machined, replacing oil and coolant several times because we could not believe that the two were still mixing together. While we were at it we thought we might as well replace the timing belt, tensioner pulleys and the water pump. Over zealously tightening the water pump to the 'plastic' housing - why was it made of plastic? - led to a hairline crack in the housing, which again was not possible to see until we had the pump off several times, which meant belt on and off several times. Clearly Peugeot have realised that this was not a good idea because the plastic housing has been replaced by a cast aluminium housing which cannot be purchased separately - comes with the new pump (so now we have a spare pump). With all the repeated flushings of the colling system the rubber seal in the radiator pressure cap gave up the ghost and split into three pieces - new cap required. The dip-stick for the oil, which has a yellow plastic puller that appears to behave more like bakelite, crumbled into the oil tube - new dip-stick required. So.... what we thought was going to be a cheap fun little project car - orange in colour, is now beginning to look a little more like another member of the citrus family. After putting the little lion back together, we have an oil leak, coming from somewhere....grrr Coming back to the oil cooler - which places a thin aluminium divider between coolant and oil - I suspect the reason this failed was because a previous owner failed to follow the Peugeot specs and only use 'waterless coolant', instead a water based coolant (or topping up with water) led to the deterioration of the thin aluminium barrier in the oil cooler, eventually leading to something which should never be mixed - oil and coolant. If you want to preserve the life of your little lion and reduce the frustration and cost of unnecessary repairs always use waterless coolant - more costly in the short-term but think about your sanity....

[Capncol]

welcome to the forum.
Over here a youngster with a brand new license wouldn't get insurance on a car like that!
Once you get it on the road, it will be a lot of fun.
(Fully understand your comments about lack of under bonnet space. All modern cars have gone this way - GRRR!!!)