My 1992 126 BIS restoration project

[poxxxy]

Hi everyone,

So finally managed to move cars around on the drive into a more workable position and get some pics sorted of the car finally.

I'm hoping you guys won't mind playing a name that part/whats missing game by looking at the pictures? I'm unsure on what parts I may be missing...

I can see we have a broken thermostat housing lying in the boot. And from what I can see there isn't one installed on the engine in the position I think it should be?

I also think there is a bracket on the exhaust thats not bolted on properly... Am I missing a cap from the distributor? Where does the earth strap bolt up? lol.

I know i'm asking alot of you guys, but it would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway, heres the copious amount of imagery and puzzle solving. .

The car:







Random bits in the boot:





Boot+Engine Area


Whats missing here then eh?



Cooling rad switch and under air box missing?



- thread sizes perhaps anyone?

Earth strap that goes somewhere and a plug missing?


Alternator and connectors for starter perhaps?


Radiator fan and piping... whats going on here?



Exhaust bracket that needs bolting up?


Connector on offside (drivers rhd), unsure on where its meant to go .


Really appreciate it if I can get some help on my guesses and an experienced eye to see what i'm missing and need to hook up . Hope everyone is well, wish me luck getting her back on the road.

[Hazey-n-Marc]

The thermostat is at the bottom passenger side of the engine. Without taking photos of my car I can't tell you where the earth strap bolts on exactly. The connector may be for the solenoid kicker, but i cannot tell from the photos.

It might be easier to become a subscriber, the manuals cover pretty much everything.

Marc

[poxxxy]

I plan on becoming a subscriber asap, . I'm unsure on where the piping on the passenger side of the car should be or if its even on correctly because they don't seem to correspond anywhere.

I think i'm missing the bottom half of the air box to. But without having taken it apart myself in the first instance, and without having even seen a 126 in the flesh through my 25 years on the earth its difficult to know what and where to look for things! I've checked out a few images and that on other bis sites but they don't help much. Even looking at EPER is a little strange and i'm not sure if its correct although it should be!

[poxxxy]

Payment sent for subscribing if any mods are about .

[poxxxy]

Well... finally got round to sourcing a few parts for the bis.

Got a nice new oil radiator cap, distributor cap (think I need the clips for it though!), air box and heating radiator junction . Thanks to fischer in Germany and 126fan for the help and a polish friend for sourcing lots of useful information for me!

[poxxxy]

Just realised I've not updated this in a while!

Well... the car hadn't had the head done, as soon as I got it plumbed up I had to get another order over to Axel Gerstl for the copper head gasket, valve stem seals and a few others bits and pieces (mainly seals if I rememebr right. lol.) We removed the head and took it to a local engine repair center to have the head taken stripped and skimmed for £60 . Whilst this was being done, I actually ordered a CC700 head (big valves) but I decided to fit the skimmed head in the end... whilst I think about possibly tuning the CC700 head and fabricating a custom inlet for bigger carbs or perhaps a turbo!? lol. But for now I just want her on the road in stock form to get a feel for her and see what to do.

Had some teething problems and trouble getting her started but after adjusting points gap and setting timing correctly (after much previous work) she fired into life and purrs along nicely now!

The contacts on the rear lights connectors are bad causing all kind of behaviour... so I need to try and clean up the crimps I think inside the connector... wish me luck there. The circuit boards all ok.... and unfortunately the cheap plastic screws heads and lenses took some damage in removal (shattered to pieces through age and hot and old over time!) So I need to come up with a solution for there.

I had the carb apart whilst trying to fix the choke butterfly mechanism (ended up just removing it for now, no problem starting by caching the choke at just the right point)... and it all looks very clean inside.

I stripped the airfilter housing and repainted it along with the top of the carb to give the engine bay a much tidier look... and it definately has.

I bought some steelies and tyres from wsmitwil to replace the seicento sporting alloys for a much better fitment and no scrub... also bought some new locator pins for the rear drums with the latest order which also included a kingpin repair set which were put in over the last couple of evenings along with 3 new bushes either side. Rubbers are dry and cracked on the shock but they'll do for the time being.

I almost forgot the fuel tank also came off due to air getting into the system and stopping the pump from operating correctly (electronic one does sound a nice future option!), we replaced fuel lines and I also removed all flaking paint and gave it a coat in hammerite. Not to mention the nuts/studs that broke off whilst removing the tank (2 out of 3!), that was fun to fix on the floor .

Now almost ready to get her MOT'd!

Some pictures...










Freshly skimmed:


New water junction from poland (bargain!):


Gearbox cover prior to being stripped and painted (forgot to get pics of it painted along with the rest ):





Here is a video of the engine running for the first time prior to setting timing with a light!

[shielsy]

nice 1 looking good owen nw 

[Scarlettkitten]

  nice

[Gadge]

Nice work bud....... Sounds a little rattley though? Did you set the tappers up when refitting the head?

[poxxxy]

Yeah your not wrong, we did set the tappets... badly though it seems. . Today I decided it was time to get some more done to get it half way to passing an MOT... began by sorting out the connectors on the rear lights as the pins needed bending to make a better contact, still need to get reverse lights and fog lights working though! After getting this sorted I decided it was time to finally take that back panel off for the first time... very easy considering half the nuts were missing!






We proceeded to take off the exhaust to see what was going on, there was some kind of rubbish filler and plenty of holes so my dad went about plating it up... I didn't care too much about it being tidy, just functional and after getting it back on... its much quieter! .







I set about cleaning the centrifugal oil filter and it was so caked in thick horrible black crap it was quite a painstaking job lol. Came up nicely though afterwards and got to use a new seal I ordered months back!





We decided to take another look at the tappets and sorted them all out... on first run the tappety noise went completely but the timing was way out after the distributor got knocked when refitting the rear panel and engine mount and it was a struggle to start... whipped the strobe out and got it roughly timed back up and I couldn't resist taking it for a quick run to see how it behaved... I think the timing might not be set to the correct notch though still as my dad did it in a rush to get the drive back so will be taking another look tomorrow. But the tappets seem to be making a little noise again, although nowhere near where they were.

Seems to be a slight intermittent smoking at the minute... perhaps running too rich, but if the timings not right and we need to reset the idle rpm then it might be the cause? Hoping the new valve stem seals aren't naff .

[poxxxy]

Stripped it all down the other weekend then went camping... then had to wait for more parts to arrive! This evening I put a CC700 big valve head on and torqued it all up and installed the rocker/checked tappet clearances... Tomorrow i'll install the rest and plum it all back in, fire it up and see what happens!

[poxxxy]

Alas more woes... wondering what to do with her at the minute. I've spent pretty much what I paid for the car trying to get it running and semi road worthy to even contemplate going for MOT (Not to mention the hours, oh the hours!). But the engine is giving me grief and great big clouds of whiteish smoke that smells like oil, and my dads convinced its oil from sticking rings or something along those lines.
Anyway since having the car had the original head skimmed and assembled with a copper head gasket... was running but not great, the car ran fine from cold but as soon as warm has issues with white/possibly slight hint of blue smoke pouring out the exhaust and when finally up to temperature wants to cut out and die and can only be held on for a little while with throttle. Timing the thing is a nightmare and sometimes I wonder if any adjustment I make will stay . With the skimmed bis head compression was around 11-12:1 so quite high but seemed ok! Anyway in an attempt to try and fix the oil burning (perhaps?), I changed the head over (bought a new head gasket kit , that copper one was pricey!) with a CC700 one bought from Poland having replaced the valve stem seals on the CC700 head. Seems my dad got the valve clearance wrong on one of the cylinders exhaust valves and had readings of 0 on the compression tester. Now both cylinders are running at 9.5ish as expected but... the problems persist... engine cuts out when warm and while the engine heats up smoke being thrown out of the exhaust and up into the engine bay.

Really wondering what to do now... do I give up and sell her to someone?

Anyway decided to tot up what its cost me so far so here goes, a total of £875.65 and still at square one from when I bought the car for £450 from ebay.

November 2013
Bought Car on ebay £450

11/03/2014 - 126fan       Â£10.82 / 12.50 euro with postage
Oil filler cap = €2.30
Distributor cap new type = €3.50

12/03/2014 - Fischer 500   Â£32.88 / 38 euro
Air filter housing
Water Junction Distributor

01/04/2014 - Axel Gerstl    Â£40.44 / 47.10 euro
Exhaust Gaskets
Copper Head Gasket .8mm
Valve Cover Gasket
Oil Filler Gasket
Seal for Centrifugal Oil Filter
Valve Stem Seals

02/04/2014
New Water Junction        Â£18
(allegro through a friend)

18/06/2013 - 126fan      Â£36.57 / 44 euro with postage
4 x rear panel clamp V = €1.20
1 x kingpin repair kit= €13.00
2 x screw of- suspension pen mounting- lower = €1.20
2 x screw of vertical pin holder -upper = €1.20
2 x mounting of vertical pin = €6.00
2 x brake drum mounting bolts
1 x wheel bolt

11/07/2014 - Fischer 500   Â£82.12 / 99.50 euro
Valve Cover
Bis Contact Breaker
Bis Ignition Condenser
Gearbox Gasket Kit with oil-seal ring
Gasket kit for engine (big kit)

valve stem seals (micks garage - for cc700 head install)
£4.82 -

2 lots of 5l oil      Â£20

[poxxxy]

Well in an attempt to get to the bottom of things, decided to strip the engine down today and take a look at the piston rings... came to this:

Had the sump off today and pushed the pistons out... found some nasty looking rough surface on the cylinder 1  wall (unsure whats its been caused by, perhaps water/rust damage when the head previously died and overheated way before I bought it if water was sat in there? the head did warp on that side so might make sense?)... also the top edge of the piston may be slightly worn where it has been rubbing against... unsure if the piston rings are at blame to be honest, they seem ok unless they weren't span around the correct way to not allow blowby...

I'm wondering what the next steps are now! . New block? Or can I get liners? Perhaps just honing it out... I don't know... . If I could find suitable pistons i'd have it bored out a little for some more displacement. Perhaps someone can help (and maybe might have an explanation)! .

Attached pictures after another day of laboring away .

Cylinder 1 Wall





Cylinder 2 wall:


Pistons (Cylinder 1 piston on the right):



[youtube]Rjol_4Cad0Y[/youtube]

[poxxxy]

Thinking about going all out at the minute...

Today I removed the block from the bell housing, found some damage to both the bell housing and the starter where the bottom right stud from the block goes through... totally missing. Is the starter meant to be like that?

Also the rear crank bearing sounds a little noisy to me.

So parts list so far:

Piston Rings
Con Rod Bearing Shells
Crankshaft Bearing

Tempted by:

Bigger lighter pistons (if I could find some suitable without going custom!)
Hot cam
Forged crank















Most of the engine and ancillaries in a box (where they may stay!? hopefully not .):


If rebuilding the engine, best to do it in style while its in pieces... but could be an expensive lump of useless metal at the end of it lol. smallcox offered his time/balancing services if I manage to come up with something to take to him! No replacement for displacement though and sounds so tempting to go down that route if possible!

Alternatively, if I could find a brand new engine like Lupo TDI over on vwvortex i'd travel to Poland/Italy in my golf to pick it up!

[poxxxy]

Looks like I need to remove the front cam chain cover to get to this fire trap device and see it thats looking blocked although I doubt it .

I think the crank and bearings are actually all ok afterall...

Nanni ricambi's 82mm pistons and 130mm con rods are tempting (piston compression would be -12mm from original to counter the longer con rods) but i'm being told by all the aircooled people that aircooled hot cams and aircooled bigger pistons won't fit in the watercooled... whats the real deal? .

I tried to deglaze the bores a little with some tool my dad had to hand... pieces of emery cloth /sand paper that spin out to the bore... unfortunately to get it to go evenly the speed had to be quite high so a cross hatch wasn't really possible with the tool.

I decided to clean up the pistons & conrods today and weigh them... 4-5 gram difference between the two! They started to oxidise slightly after drying so gave them a soak in wd40... also snapped 1 piston ring , brittle thing... you live you learn was tempted before that to just throw it together after roughing everything up and seeing what happens... but now I definately need at least some new rings .

As for the damage to the bellhousing, it is a bugger for sure... and looks like something drastic as took place in its history lol. The bolt looks like its snapped off in the block so will be attempting to remove that tomorrow... may source a new bell housing or get my dad to fabricate a plate that will replicate the job!

Some pictures from today:

Cylinder 1 slightly deglazed but pitting still there... might be able to get away with it I guess:



Checking piston ring clearance... anyknow know what it should be?
Cylinder 2 slightly deglazed:


Con rods being cleaned in the sink for a while (Mr muscle oven cleaner and wire wool for afterwards...):



Afterwards:







Snapped piston ring :