New Bling from the bay of snot. Broken, but being fixerated.

[Talbot]

MOT? Fail, naturally. No chance of anything actually being easy or straightforward in my life at the moment, so of course it's a fail.

Brake lamp out, tyre rotation incorrect, siezed rear brake pressure limiting valve and rear brakes out of balance.

 

Could be worse, but I now of course cannot find a T30 bit to remove the rear drum speed screws to check over the rear brakes. Naturally.

 

One day I will have all my tools organised and where I can find them. That day is not today.

[Braddon81]

I am seriously considering the 120hp remap for this one.  90hp is surprisingly good in what is basically a large box of air, but 120hp would make it very quick!

This would have the Siemens injection system. A total bitch to remap as opposed to the pre face-lift Bosch system... ive owned my own 2003 Blingo for 13years now and have been turned away by numerous remapping specialists who have said its either a complete bitch to do or nigh on impossible. I gave up in the end.. though I've got to say.. the more miles I've piled up on her.. the faster she has got! ☺️

[Talbot]

I'm not convinced... I've heard of several 2003-07 2.0HDI engines in various vehicles (Bling, Picasso, Xantia, Pug 206 etc.etc.etc.) that have all been remapped to one degree or another.  I will have to speak to a couple of people on Citroen Car Club who have had it done and where they had it done.. If I'm successful I'll post it back here.

 

Also....

 

MOT pass.  That is all.

[bigfella2]

This would have the Siemens injection system. A total bitch to remap as opposed to the pre face-lift Bosch system... ive owned my own 2003 Blingo for 13years now and have been turned away by numerous remapping specialists who have said its either a complete bitch to do or nigh on impossible. I gave up in the end.. though I've got to say.. the more miles I've piled up on her.. the faster she has got! ☺️

This company has been remapping the Siemens ECU's for as long as I can remember.

http://www.hdi-tuning.co.uk/index.html

[Braddon81]

This company has been remapping the Siemens ECU's for as long as I can remember. http://www.hdi-

tuning.co.uk/index.html

Looks Excellent news....looks like my old war horse might be getting a bit more sprightly this year at last!! ☺☺

[Talbot]

........ aaaaaaand it's broken.

 

Only a bit though.  Fan won't work on fresh air, but does work on recirc air, which says to me the switch is a little duff.  I was going to swap it over with the switch from the old berlingo, but it turns out that +AC models have a different fan control system.  Bleddy typical.  May have to actually splash out and buy a new one, as having no heater fan in wet/cold/miserable weather is a bit of a safety issue.

[Talbot]

Today I got a phone call from Mrs. Talbot, saying it had tried to overheat. She'd caught it before the needle went too high, and re-filled it with as much water as would go into the cooling system, but combined with it using a little water and seeming to over-pressurise, that says OMGHGF to me.

 

So. Looking into it, it's a 15-hrs-of-labour job to get the Head off-and-back-on. Alledgedly the turbo has to be removed first, which has to come out from below, which means removing the front subframe. Sod that. On Frenchcarforum there are some sketchy reports of people having pulled the head with the turbo still attached, but I can't confirm.

 

I do also have the old Red Berlingo referred to previously in this thread.. a 2004 model with the same engine, which has lunched the clutch release bearing and actuator arm through the pressure plate, and is hence toast. But the engine was always a good one.. powerful, economic etc.

 

Between this and the red one is a decent car, with (IMO) the best specification of body/roof/engine/AC. It would be a bit of a task to get it done and I am considering it.

 

I'm also tentatively offering the whole lot up for sale if someone wants to do it, as my time is quite limited these days, I have no driveway and it's cocking cold outside at the moment. So, on offer is:

 

This Berlingo. Details in the thread. Drives brilliantly other than the OMGHGF. Even the AC works (well, the clutch engages. It's too cold to test the cooling capacity of it at the moment) Has plenty of MOT.

 

The other Berlingo. Basically an engine donor now, but is a complete car. Even still has valid MOT.

 

Also any and all spares I can find for Berlingos, as I have broken another in the past. I kept the Webasto roof, loads of interior panels, the gearbox, door mirrors and various other bits. All shoved in.

 

I can also deliver all of this, as the Red berlingo is currently on my trailer and ready to go, and the Beige one will either go on the trailer for another journey, or will drive with some care.

 

I really don't want to be doing this, as Mrs. T loves her Berlingo, and this one is the perfect specification for her/us, but this really needs to be done by someone with at least some hardstanding, or preferably a garage/workshop. Neither of which I have right now.

 

£500 will buy the lot. Delivery negotiable and may be thrown in to secure the deal.

[Talbot]

Well, given the massive market there is for two fucked Berlingos, I suspect I am just going to have to get on with it. Given that the Red Berlingo has given 3+ years of fairly sterling service, and the faun/beige/gold/yellow/brown/whateverthehellcolouritis Berlingo has had a fairly sheltered life, is a lovely specification and was £peanuts, it makes sense to actually do something, as the cost to get an eqivalent vehicle of what we will have once it's all done would be quite significant.

 

So the first thing to do is heave the engine and box out of the Red bling to investigate it's condition, and to allow me to learn how not to wreck the other Berlingo while getting it's engine out. A few issues with this:

 

I have no garage.

I have no real driveway.

My tools are in dis-array.

It's march, so the weather will be variable*

 

Made a start on it regardless, as the weather was not too bad:

 

 

However, the weather took a turn for the worse, and more rain is forecast, so the next thing to do, having scraped away the mud and crap from where there used to be some sembelence of driveway at the back of our garden, is to get hold of a Gazebo in order to keep the worst of the weather off while I am trying to work.

After a request on various Arsebook Free-up-and-reuse pages, I am now the owner of two gazebos. I didn't realise it to begin with, but one of them is a bloody massive hexagonal thing that won't actually fit in the area I have available, so I'm glad the other one is a cheapo 6' square one with a inoffensive green tarp as the weatherproofing.

 

What better to be doing at 10PM on a sunday evening than assembling a slightly tatty old gazebo frame, with no instructions or identification on the poles, with no light other than a streetlamp hidden behind a hedge:

 

 

With that assembled and the tarpaulin bit fitted to the frame, it transpired that this was not in it's first flush of youth, and has been the victim of some weather in the past. One leg was buggered, so it got a splint, courtesy of some scrap timber and zip ties.

 

 

So now I have an area that at least won't get any wetter. Extension lead and LED floodlamp to be able to see* what I am doing:

 

 

Well, it's awful, but about a thousand times better than I was expecting.

 

The Gazebo is without doubt the wobbliest thing in the entire world. It has all the structural integrity of wet toilet paper, and a fairly mild sneeze would see it a tangled mess of plastic sheet, steel poles and guy ropes wrapped up in the hedge. I will have to add some sort of bracing to it for it to stand any chance of seeing this project out.

 

As for the Berlingo. The coolant came out a fairly good shade of Pink (OAT) which is nice, and the radiator looks like it's worth saving. Most other things came out with remarkable ease, and nothing has yet been too siezed to undo (other than one crappy bumper bolt, but it did the decent thing and sheared off, so no problems there)

 

There's a number of detail differences between this engine and an AC-equipped engine, so I will have to play swapsies with the bits in question. Most obvious is the sump, as the non-AC is a pressed steel pan, but the +AC model is cast aluminium with the mountings for the AC compressor built into it, just like XUD engines. Also, some of the coolant pipes take a different route to avoid the AC pipework, but that should be easy enough to swap when I have both engines out together.

 

The main thing I am not looking forward to is the exhaust-to-turbo clamp. The access looks non-existant.

[SierraMikeHotel]

The really mind-boggling thing here is...

 

 

...you two bought a house without a drive???

[Tadhg Tiogar]

The really mind-boggling thing here is...

 

 

...you two bought a house without a drive???

All he needs now is a banner tied to the gazebo which reads Sponsored by Hagerty Insurance

[Talbot]

The really mind-boggling thing here is......you two bought a house without a drive???

I know. I would have loved to have at least a driveway from day 1. There is space for a driveway as the property has side access, so the driveway would be at the bottom of the garden rather than the front/side of the house, but that (along with a number of other things) has not been done yet.

 

I think it may have to happen this summer though. It's not like I haven't got a cement mixer to be able to do it all myself.

[tooSavvy]

"I think it may have to happen this summer though. It's not like I haven't got a cement mixer to be able to do it all myself."

 

Ooooh dunno :/

 

Garage/driveway bases are a thing on here.... Cement 'always' comes off a truck

 

 

TS

[Talbot]

Not always. I mixed and laid my own shed concrete base. It's about 6" thick with another 6" of smashed bricks/blocks/etc underneath. The only experience I've ever had with readymix was that it came much to stiff, and there was more than I could deal with in a day. Mixing concrete myself means I can just mix as much as I can deal with and I get the exact amount I need.

 

Also readymix where I live is remarkably expensive.

[Talbot]

Small update on the Bling. Well, not the one in question, but the red one, which is donating it's engine to the cause. The "good" car is currently be nursed along by adding about 1L of water to the coolant every day. Until I get the Xantia sorted, then it will have to be that way.

 

So. Get the engine and box out of the red one.. and do a bit of a post-mortem on what happened with the clutch:

 

Get out.

 

 

No, get RIGHT out:

 

 

Right. The clutch actuating arm shouldn't really be at this angle:

 

 

And pressure plates don't usually look quite this fucked:

 

 

The catastrophic failure of this clutch caused the idling engine to stall. I think I can see where that energy went:

 

 

And these were the only reminants of the release bearing I could find. There were a couple of loose rollers that fell out when I took the gearbox flywheel cover plate off, but quite where the rest of it went is anyone's guess.

 

 

As for the friction plate, well I think that may well have had it's chips too. It does also explain why it was able to slip if you provoked it:

 

 

 

... and whilst on "parts that are utterly worn out", I suspect this belt may well have been a little overdue for changing:

 

 

Although I am very glad to see that the Basically-an-XUD-block still has the timing/locking pin and hole in the flywheel so that you can undo other bits of the engine without it rotating:

 

 

 

And then it got dark and cold, and I was working by LED floodlamp again:

 

 

So I gave up and went inside.

 

More thrilling* adventures next time!!!

[artdjones]

I think those bearings are plastic which explains why they fall apart,also probably why you can't see much in the way of remains.

[chaseracer]

Forgot to ask at FoD: how's it running, Dave?  Did you get the remap done?

[Talbot]

Well, time for a small update on this. Despite (or more likely because of) the blisteringly hot weather we've had recently, I've managed to get very little done on this project. The list of jobs as long as my arm might have something to do with it too. Maybe.

 

Forgot to ask at FoD: how's it running, Dave?  Did you get the remap done?

No. And I still haven't done the engine/head gasket. It's still having a litre of water added every day, and continues to bimble along quite happily, needing a top-up of water about every hour of driving. I shudder to think what condition the cooling system is in, but it just keeps on going. Starts and drives really well still.

 

Until I got a panicked phone call a few days ago.. "It's broken!". Shit, thinks I: It's going to have overheated and siezed or something similar.

 

No actually, turns out this had happened:

 

 

Suspecting a snapped clutch cable, I hot-footed it the 15 or so miles to where the car was broken down. Sure enough, the gearbox end of the cable had snapped off. What to do now? Well simply drive it home obviously. Mrs. Talbot didn't quite understand what I had planned, so I just shoved her into the Merc (the irony of her car being broken and only having two pedals, and then her having to drive a car that only has two pedals by design was not lost!) and got her to drive that home, despite much protestations of general disgust at having to drive my "shitty old massive crappy automatic car", while I re-aquainted myself with the somewhat lost art of driving a car with no way to actuate the clutch.

 

So, after a fair few very gentle speed-matched gearchanges, and a few rather embarrasing crank-the-engine-over-in-first-gear to get moving starts, I get it home. Luckily, I kept the clutch cable out of the old Berlingo. Very glad about that, as although my local motor factor had one in stock, it was over £50+VAT. A few cheaper on ebay, but we needed the car fixed post haste.

 

Old cable out and new one in wasn't too hard with the car on drive-ons. Definitely broken then:

 

 

And with the new* cable installed, three pedals has been restored:

 

 

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that I've removed the assister* (silly) spring from the clutch pedal. These were never a brilliant idea, and barely offer any actual assistance to the pedal. The action of the pedal is noticeably smoother and less squeaky with it removed, and it's no heavier. Quite who thought it was worth the additional manufacturing cost to install them, I really don't know. It was actually the silly spring that was holding the pedal down in the first picture above, so if the cable were to fail again, the pedal would now come back up again (as there's another normal return spring on the pedal) but just do nothing.

 

So, just need to sort that OMGHGF now....

[Talbot]

Just to add the photos from my phone:

 

The red Bling, once stripped of it's engine and various other useful bits, was essentially in the way. Time to get rid. There was almost nothing left of any value whatsoever, so the localish metal merchants was about to get a visit.

 

Filled it up with all my random other scrap first of course.

 

Grab:

 

 

I can fly!!!

 

 

Then something happened that has never occured before when I've been scrapping a vehicle at a metal merchants. Normally, they just put the car down somewhere and I'm on my way. This time their baler was running when I got there, so it just got lobbed straight in to be squashed. It came out like this:

 

 

 

I used to quite like going to a metals place. I'm beginning to find them quite depressing now, as the stuff that gets crushed often hasn't even been stripped for parts first and is often newer and in better condition than my own car. Such a miserable waste:

 

 

Although there's always some utter shite there too:

 

 

Net result: best part of £100 in my pocket (well, in my account. This yard works properly and does not give cash) and the trailer back in use again. The trailer was important, as I had something else to be moving on it very soon.

 

OMGHGF on the other Berlingo continues to get worse on a daily basis.

[Maurice Marina]

What is SVO?

 

I’m fairly sure it isn’t speciall vehicle operations in this case.

 

Could be wrong.

[Jim Bell]

What is SVO?

 

I’m fairly sure it isn’t speciall vehicle operations in this case.

 

Could be wrong.

Some veg oil.

 

 

It's not. But it should be.

[Guest Hooli]

Some veg oil.

 

 

It's not. But it should be.

Close.

 

Straight veg oil I think, meaning new stuff. You also get WVO which is used veg oik from chip pans etc.

[Talbot]

On 1/19/2019 at 8:52 AM, Hooli said:

Close.

 

Straight veg oil I think, meaning new stuff. You also get WVO which is used veg oik from chip pans etc.

This. Straight Veg Oil or Waste Veg Oil. There are a few other abbreviations used on the vegoil forum, none of which I can ever remember.

[djoptix]

I have a Berlingo, it's had the remap, can confirm it goes like greased weasel shit.