Peugeot 406 Coupe - 3.0L V6. Complete refurb... very slowly
Discussion
Well some of you might remember my old 306 that had...quite a lot done to it ( 1360cc and too much time on my hands ) - although Photobucket dying has rather killed that old thread.
At the end of that I mentioned I replaced it with a 406 Coupe, which I currently still have, it's been quite a journey as all sorts of issues came up over the years and the car now really needs a complete respray to finish it off, but I thought it was time to finally put up a thread detailing what I did to it over the years so far, it's not had anything too extreme more of an ongoing journey of maintenance and a few small tweaks.
I'll dump a few pictures of if and a few of the parts/upgrades along the way here and then flesh out stuff in further posts, you can have fun guessing what parts were what
It's got a touch more power, a touch less weight and slightly different geometery to standard, but mainly just work to keep it on the road and QoL changes.
At the end of that I mentioned I replaced it with a 406 Coupe, which I currently still have, it's been quite a journey as all sorts of issues came up over the years and the car now really needs a complete respray to finish it off, but I thought it was time to finally put up a thread detailing what I did to it over the years so far, it's not had anything too extreme more of an ongoing journey of maintenance and a few small tweaks.
I'll dump a few pictures of if and a few of the parts/upgrades along the way here and then flesh out stuff in further posts, you can have fun guessing what parts were what
It's got a touch more power, a touch less weight and slightly different geometery to standard, but mainly just work to keep it on the road and QoL changes.
Edited by PhillipM on Tuesday 14th February 15:30
Jhonno said:
Interesting. Always thought it would be possible, what material do you use? (If you don't mind me asking?)
Depends on the actual part, mainly a combination of high HDT polyurethanes or in the case of engines and exhaust mounts, a microfoaming polyurethane (like suspension bumpstops use, etc) - suspension bushes are generally multi-piece designs with TPU outers encasing acetal bearing surfaces, etc.Edited by PhillipM on Tuesday 14th February 16:30
PhillipM said:
Jhonno said:
Interesting. Always thought it would be possible, what material do you use? (If you don't mind me asking?)
Depends on the actual part, mainly a combination of high HDT polyurethanes or in the case of engines and exhaust mounts, a microfoaming polyurethane (like suspension bumpstops use, etc) - suspension bushes are generally multi-piece designs with TPU outers encasing acetal bearing surfaces, etc.Edited by PhillipM on Tuesday 14th February 16:30
Okay, so when I first got the car it made all the right noises, looked stunning after a polish, the only slight thing letting it down was the handling was a little floaty, a slight suspension knock, and these black mask headlights:
Which despite kinda suiting the car, had been pretty poorly done and had condensation and oxidisation on the inside of the lenses:
Fortunately I bought a load of random spares from a friend scrapping his car, so I had a set of old oxidised standard headlights, so I refurbed those and swapped them over before vs after here:
And it also turned out that some of the 'right noises' were because the backbox had got rather more holes in it than the usual two - the joints were gone on either end, rotted through.
Aftermarket replacements looked very shoddy, so instead I cut the box open, ripped out the remains of the baffles and then put a bit of perforated pipe straight through one side to the other, rewelded the casing back on, welded the intake pipe back up and since I had a little stainless tube hanging around, welded a couple of stainless tips on the end instead of the old oval single exit it had that was rusty anyway:
Which still left it fruity but a lot, lot quieter - it's a beautiful engine for that, it's got a little bark at full throttle but quite often when it's idling I forgot it was even on - it's smooth as butter and you can't hear it. Sometimes I had to check when it stalled (yes, we had a small random stalling issue, I'll get to that later).
Doing the usual Peugeot thing, after you fix two problems it has to break something else, it promptly blew a powersteering fitting off the rack when I was parking up one night, sprayed PAS fluid right over the rear exhaust manifold and set half the engine bay on fire. Fortunately, I always carry a fire extinguisher behind the seat (I know people will laugh but this is the 3rd time I've needed one!) so being a moron I opened the bonnet and put it out.
Because what's the risk of losing your face versus your shiny new ride? It'll heal, right?
So it got parked back up for a little while...after a fun morning neutralising and scrubbing down to remove all the extinguisher powder anyway.
Which despite kinda suiting the car, had been pretty poorly done and had condensation and oxidisation on the inside of the lenses:
Fortunately I bought a load of random spares from a friend scrapping his car, so I had a set of old oxidised standard headlights, so I refurbed those and swapped them over before vs after here:
And it also turned out that some of the 'right noises' were because the backbox had got rather more holes in it than the usual two - the joints were gone on either end, rotted through.
Aftermarket replacements looked very shoddy, so instead I cut the box open, ripped out the remains of the baffles and then put a bit of perforated pipe straight through one side to the other, rewelded the casing back on, welded the intake pipe back up and since I had a little stainless tube hanging around, welded a couple of stainless tips on the end instead of the old oval single exit it had that was rusty anyway:
Which still left it fruity but a lot, lot quieter - it's a beautiful engine for that, it's got a little bark at full throttle but quite often when it's idling I forgot it was even on - it's smooth as butter and you can't hear it. Sometimes I had to check when it stalled (yes, we had a small random stalling issue, I'll get to that later).
Doing the usual Peugeot thing, after you fix two problems it has to break something else, it promptly blew a powersteering fitting off the rack when I was parking up one night, sprayed PAS fluid right over the rear exhaust manifold and set half the engine bay on fire. Fortunately, I always carry a fire extinguisher behind the seat (I know people will laugh but this is the 3rd time I've needed one!) so being a moron I opened the bonnet and put it out.
Because what's the risk of losing your face versus your shiny new ride? It'll heal, right?
So it got parked back up for a little while...after a fun morning neutralising and scrubbing down to remove all the extinguisher powder anyway.
Edited by PhillipM on Wednesday 15th February 01:23
Great looking cars. I sometimes look at adverts of them for sale. I saw an advert on eBay for one that had had the OS corner of the front bumper cut out. I don't know if a 'group buy' for a part of such rarity would ever be a goer. There's one locally that I see now and again and was disappointed to see recently that's taken a knock to the NS front bumper corner.
carinaman said:
Are front bumpers too big and too much material to be able to 3D print?
You can get house sized 3D printers.The question is how expensive is it? Answer is too expensive. You'd be better off getting a good bumper, taking a fibreglass mould and remaking in fibreglass/carbon fibre if you're feeling fancy.
carinaman said:
Are front bumpers too big and too much material to be able to 3D print?
Too expensive, you'd be better just making fibreglass copies. 3D printing is very slow and very expensive compared to almost any other manufacturing process, where it wins is you can do internal geometry that's impossible any other way (Like in Cambs engine mounts he had off me above, there are internal voids and features to give it a progressive spring rate and some damping by pushing air between chambers inside) and that you don't need to invest in moulds up front for small batches.However, speaking of the bumpers, they do have a tendancy to fade with age and crack on these with small impacts - it's why everyone is searching for good ones. Mine were immaculate, but within 3 days of having the car, my next door neighbours brother ran into the front of it, and cracked the bumper. I was very happy.
I was even happier when he promised to leave his insurance details with my neighbour and then did nothing of the sort and just f
ked off (and, I later found out, always parked around the corner while visiting for a while so I didn't see him) - some people are very nice...Edited by PhillipM on Wednesday 15th February 13:17
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