I wish I had bought a 106 Rallye when they were new !

[steveg]

Without realizing I had a problem I have recently bought another 106. I test drove a phase 1 Rallye when they first came out and decided not to buy one and have had an itch ever since.

With the cost of fuel now (I know it's a poor excuse) I decided to buy something small and economical to get to work, looked a a few nearly new cars and then decided I needed a 106. Rallye's are expensive now so when I spotted this low mileage Zest I thought it would be worth a look.



Apart from the hideous wheel trims It wasn't in bad condition considering it had been hit both ends at some point in the past the main selling point was the mileage, just 8000 miles from new.

I had to fit better wheels so this is what I ended up with. Saxo steels and a nice set of Michelin tyres.

[Paul H]

A good choice for an economical runabout. I commute 40 miles a day in a 106 1.1, over the South Downs, and am getting 45 to 50 mpg, which I think is not too shabby for a petrol engine, and that works out at over 400 miles from a full tank (I think the most I've managed before filling up is about 450 but by that stage, the petrol light would have been on for quite a while). My Amazon has the same size tank, and struggled to better 200 miles... In a straight line, it will annihilate the Peugeot, but with the same width tyres and a lot more weight, the laws of physics are very much in the Peugeot's favour in the corners.

Despite the low power, they are still a hoot to drive, due to the excellent feedback through the steering. The previous owner of mine (late grandfather) was horrified when I told him that I'd taught it to overtake... He claimed to be getting mid 50s mpg, but that would have been driving specifically for economy.

[steveg]

I fitted a set of better speakers and a head unit and made the battery go flat. I needed to use the car so fitted a slightly oversize one I had in stock. Some of the air intake tube was in the way so this has fixed it !

[steveg]

Jun 14, 2022 21:15:04 GMT Paul H said:

A good choice for an economical runabout. I commute 40 miles a day in a 106 1.1, over the South Downs, and am getting 45 to 50 mpg, which I think is not too shabby for a petrol engine, and that works out at over 400 miles from a full tank (I think the most I've managed before filling up is about 450 but by that stage, the petrol light would have been on for quite a while). My Amazon has the same size tank, and struggled to better 200 miles... In a straight line, it will annihilate the Peugeot, but with the same width tyres and a lot more weight, the laws of physics are very much in the Peugeot's favour in the corners.

Despite the low power, they are still a hoot to drive, due to the excellent feedback through the steering. The previous owner of mine (late grandfather) was horrified when I told him that I'd taught it to overtake... He claimed to be getting mid 50s mpg, but that would have been driving specifically for economy.

I've had a couple of AX's one was a diesel, another 106 and a Saxo I have given my daughter as her first car. I was a bit shocked to find a lot of bits such as bumper aren't easily available new now. I managed to find a replacement unbodged tailgate but need to get a front and rear bumper painted to sort out the scuffed since repaired ones it has at present. My route to work is 60mph at most so it's quite happy at that sort of speed. Quite enjoying it so far.

[astranaut]

Snap, well nearly, I bought a 1.1 Saxo to make a couple of quid on for 50 quid a few months back, it's soo good on juice I decided to keep it and have a bit of fun with it. Your 106 looks really clean, so easy to fix as well. Any plans with it or just enjoy the go kart ness?

[steveg]

I might fit some unrated shocks and a bigger rear arb but don't want to go too mad and ruin the ride. I need to sort some of the previous body damage out and try to stop it going rusty. I had the front end apart on Sunday to straighten the front panel as the lights didn't fit very well. Might try to get a straight one and paint it to match the car. The rear end is a bit untidy and I need to paint the rear edge of the boot floor and the inside of the boot. It's had a new rear panel fitted and it's just not painted well enough.

The brakes aren't great so I might investigate fitting some bigger diameter vented discs from a larger engine model.

[jake899]

My S2 sitting in the garage waiting for a full rebuild. Hopefully done over this coming winter. She has done 350k kilometres, has a blown head gasket and plenty of rust. But I paid 1100euro for it, so that's fine, I can take my time on the back to stock rebuild. Wonderful cars. If anyone knows of a set of the original S2 steelies, please let me know!

[joem83]

Jun 14, 2022 22:06:35 GMT steveg said:

I might fit some unrated shocks and a bigger rear arb but don't want to go too mad and ruin the ride. I need to sort some of the previous body damage out and try to stop it going rusty. I had the front end apart on Sunday to straighten the front panel as the lights didn't fit very well. Might try to get a straight one and paint it to match the car. The rear end is a bit untidy and I need to paint the rear edge of the boot floor and the inside of the boot. It's had a new rear panel fitted and it's just not painted well enough.

The brakes aren't great so I might investigate fitting some bigger diameter vented discs from a larger engine model.

don't know if the 106's are the same, but I fitted 306 TD calipers & disks to my UK 205 Rallye and the brakes were great. The calipers and disk are larger, with the bonus of vented disks.

Really handy guide here!
www.tapatalk.com/groups/forcedinduction/106-brake-upgrade-t210.html

[steveg]

Thanks for the replies. The last one I had was just starting to go a bit crispy and I didn't really have the time to sort it all out. I was going to get phase 1 Rallye wheels but they seem to go for a stupid amount now. The ones I got are new from Citroen but are only 5.5 wide and have round holes. The offset is 2mm different but close enough. The later wider ones are probably more rare.

I haven't looked at the brakes yet more than likely something will bolt on although I remember AX's had different mounting holes. That might have been a 3 stud, 4 stud thing.

[steveg]

I had my fathers day treat yesterday, a trip to a local scrappy with a 106!

I now have a good set of Veleo headlights (it's got Depo ones at present and ones is broken) a front panel, bumper that needs painting and an airbag that you can touch and not leave fingerprints in !

I had straightened out the front panel on mine but the bit by the headlights is S shaped and still not quite right. It's easy to tell against the undamaged one so I will have to get it blasted an given a coat of green paint. Hopefully then I can fit it and get the headlights to fit properly again.

[steveg]

Finally got round to painting the headlamp panel. Thought I would try this myself so bought some paint and dug out my decent face mask.A polythene lined kart awning made a suitable paint booth. A coat of etch and a couple of high build had it looking like this.

[steveg]

I bought some paint a few weeks back but the guy I got it from didn't have any samples for the colour. There was a choice of 2 and I initially thought it was the lighter colour.






After looking at it for ages I went for the darker one. it's a far better match for the headlamp panel at least. This is it after a couple of coats of basecoat and similar of laquer.






This is it in the sun, didn't want to touch it yet and take it outside.

[beansbeansbeans]

Ah yes 106s. I miss mine so much, it was a fantastic car. Although mine had the issue of 'kangarooing', where the ICV was playing up. It reared its ugly head right towards the last few months of ownership and I couldn't figure it out.

Looks nice with those steelies! I had a set of standard ones and had them banded, looked quite well lowered par the gap at the front.

[pseudonymous]

I recently backed my Quiksilver out of the garage after 6 years in dry storage. It came up well with a good wash and the design has aged so well. Great little cars, the sort of which they don't and can't make anymore.

No idea what to do with it though, I needed the garage space for something else, so if I decide not to do anything with it, it'll have to go.

[steveg]

I rebuilt the rear brakes but they still didn't feel great so after doing a bit of reading I fitted a pair of 266mm discs and matching calipers from a 206. They only just fit inside the 14" wheels but stop the car a lot better.

[steveg]

Here are a couple of pictures of the repainted headlamp panel.The paint match isn't bad but it's a bit shiny compared with the rest of the engine bay.

[steveg]

I finally have a more interesting update.



After a few viewings of different cars I bought what is a quite rare 106 XS to use as an engine donor. It's a bit of a shame really but the paintwork is in a terrible state with most of the top half missing it's clear coat. There are a lot of interior trim parts I can use but sadly the nice seats are possibly past saving.

I went for this car as it has the earlier style inlet manifold so I might be able to use a cast Rallye one on it and a lot of the other parts can be taken straight off my original engine. Most 1.6 engined cars have a split drivers side drive shaft but this one doesn't. Not such a bad thing as they are a bit worse for wear, it does have the Rally/GTI style front strut anti roll bar though. Despite the horrible tyres and high mileage it corners better then my green car so I will probably end up fitting a lot of this stuff as well once it's all been tidied up.

I only picked this up a day ago and first job was to remove the Zest badge from the dash and replace it with the Peugeot one from the red car, it's sad but I now feel better, everything else will be a bit more work I think !

[steveg]

The first proper jobs I have done on the new car are to fit a dipstick and find out why the timing belt cover was rattling so much.

The dipstick was fairly easy. I now know exactly how little oil was in it so topped that up.

The rattle was actually the belt flapping against the inside of the cover. Lucky escape I think so I took the covers off and tightened the belt a bit. It will be getting a new belt etc but I wanted to go looking for oil leaks after I give it a clean off.

I've spent time this evening comparing drive shaft seals and hubs in the hope I can work out if the 1.1 driveshafts will fit into the gearbox. Looks like they are the same on that end even though the diff in the 1.6 is a bit beefier.

I bought a Peugeot Parts disc a while back but you can' search using the vin number. It is possible to go onto the official Peugeot parts site but you now have to pay a subscription. The only way to get a complete spec list of you car is to do this so I paid up for an hour and had a good look at everything. There is all sorts of useful stuff from knowing the rear antiroll bar diameter to the speedo drive gear ! I wanted the trim style as I quite like the XS seats. I think the chance of getting a replacement drivers seat are slim but I could get lucky if armed with the correct part number for the covers.

Hopefully the weekend will be dry so I can start removing and cleaning some bits of interior trim I want to fit to the green one. I'm still driving it everyday so don't want to go too mad pulling it apart just yet.

[steveg]

I've been a bit busy lately. Not a lot to show for it though.

Because we had so much rain I ended up buying a small car tent so I could get busy removing the engine from the red car. I managed to get the head off fairly quickly but it was obvious it was going to need one hell of a cleanup to look half decent in the green one.
Ideally I would have liked to get all the alloy bits vapor blasted but decided to give soda blasting a go using one of the small hand held guns. My compressor wasn't up to the job so first thing was to buy a half decent compressor and sort out some way of getting electricity to it. This involved some heavy duty cable and a suitable circuit breaker to allow for the initial high draw when the compressor starts.

My blast cabinet comprised of a few bits of cardboard box but the end result didn't look too bad even though it looked like it had snowed! I didn't get any pictures of the just blasted head but here are a few after it has been polished up with numerous Dremel wire brushes.







I took templates off the inlet manifold and opened the ports in the head slightly and left the cleaning tank at the engine place to get rid of the carbon it wasn't easy to get to. I haven't seen it yet but the machine shop have checked it all and re-cut the valve seats. So far so good.

Once I got the bottom end out I stripped it down and had a quick look at it. Bit of wear on the bearings and some marks in the bore. I got a phone call last week saying the crank was OK but it really needed new pistons but they couldn't get any. I've had this week off work and other then doing some shopping have spent most of my time on the phone trying to find some pistons, I think I might have got lucky today. I found a guy who used to race 106's who had been the same thing a few years ago and had actually got a number of sets made. They are slightly different as they are from a later engine (figure 1) and are slightly domed instead of the shallow dished ones it did have (figure 6). Considering the engine was in a bit of a state it drove OK so with a bit more compression it should be even better, well compared with the standard 1.1 at least !



I'm hoping that once I get the pistons it won't take too long to get the block re-bored, then I can start putting it all back together.

[60six]

I'm going to be spraying a car in the new year for the first time - Got any more tips on how you did a great job spraying metallic paint? Did you just erect a tent / pagoda in garden then covered the holes/gaps? what did you use for dust extraction? Really impressed with your paintwork.