Ugo the pink shitbox

[botfch]

I’ll be honest I’m not really sure why I’m making this thread as it might not go anywhere but maybe it's interesting to someone.

Whilst my beemer was out of action I picked up this 1.2 mk3 as a cheap run around, The paintwork is awful but mechanically it is in pretty good condition and also came with 4 new tyres.

Initially I'd planned to just sell this on but after driving it the last few weeks I'd forgotten how nice it is to have a car you don't care about so I've decided to keep it as a spare vehicle to take all the places I don't want to leave a nice car.

So it's got a few issues that need fixing, a snapped front spring and it's not getting up to temperature properly.
But before all that I figured I'd do the oil to see if there's any glitter surprise in there that would make the rest of it a waste of time, £35 for oil and filter all looks pretty good.

Disposed of the oil in a responsible way, 5ltr water bottles always handy for this.

 

[Clio_fool]

Holy s**t a clio thread! Kudos sir 👍.

 

[botfch]

Moving on I ordered a new thermostat off eBay for £17 and picked up a bottle of type e coolant.
At some point this has had a coolant change to red coolant so when I uncovered the thermostat It was a bit powdery.

Coolant dropped some went in the bucket most went on the floor.
Cleaned up the face with a razor blade to get the crud off and fitted the new thermostat.

At this point I inspected the belts and noticed they are quite cracked, so I thought f**k it I may aswell change the water pump as well whilst the coolants drained, so ordered up up some parts to collect on Saturday.

 

[charltjr]

I keep reading the title of this thread as “Up the pink shitbox”, which changes the context a bit.

Not sure if disappointed or relieved that it’s about a car.

 

[botfch]

Stripped off the scuttle panel to get to the top mounts and was met with a nice pond and a blocked drain.

Pretty amazing amount of dirt in there so it must’ve been blocked for a while.

Got to say I’m impressed with the generally lack of rust but wire brushed a few bubbly spots and gave it a coat of chassis paint.

Refitted the struts with new shocks and springs, also gave the rusted bracket a coat of paint to tidy it up.

Brakes look ok but will probably need a bit of a clean up pre mot, but I’ll leave that for now.

 

[botfch]

Gearbox oil changed, getting the plastic bung out was a complete nightmare, stupid design. But the existing oil looked decent so has been changed at least once in it’s life.

Then swapped the plugs, cylinder one was full of rust which not ideal but dry so I suspect some water had got in there previously either from a leak or over zealous cleaning.

 

[JamesBryan]

Gearbox oil changed, getting the plastic bung out was a complete nightmare, stupid design. But the existing oil looked decent so has been changed at least once in it’s life.
View attachment 1688285

Then swapped the plugs, cylinder one was full of rust which not ideal but dry so I suspect some water had got in there previously either from a leak or over zealous cleaning.
View attachment 1688286

Get some ignition coil grease on the inside lip of the boots.

 

[botfch]

Best thing and worst thing about cheapo clios is how cheap the parts are.

Engine fully stripped down for the belt and water pump change.

New pump and belt installed.

Engine built back up and first run, always a nervy moment no matter the number of times you’ve done it.

Took me a second to work out the whistling was because I’d left the vacuum hoses unplugged.

Left it to come up to temperature, nice solid 4 bars on the dash so new thermostat working as it should.

With that most stuff seems to be now working, definitely needs some new wiper blades and I also think I might get a 2nd hand seat with height adjustment.

 

[botfch]

So took it for a test drive and noticed it’s down on power and feels like it’s misfiring.

Played around with the HT leads and narrowed it down to cylinder 2.
Swapped the spark plugs over just in case but same result so figure it’s one of two things the coil pack or an injector.

The injectors are faff to change on 1.2s as getting access without taking of the inlet is a pain so I elected to test the coil pack first.

Took it off and soon as I tried to remove the rubber boots the plastic just crumbled.

Annoyingly tested it on the meter all came back within spec…, damn.

So next up need to swap the injectors over to see that’s my issue.

I also imagine the boots are going to stay down with the spark plugs if I reuse this coil pack and it’s going to be fun picking those out.

 

[TheBandit]

Suffered exactly the same, new coils sorted me out. I dialectic grease them + use coil pullers and so far I have avoided snapping them again 🤞

Hope it's an easy sort

 

[botfch]

It was annoying me so pulled the inlet off to take a look at the injectors.
Certainly looks like cylinder 2 injector could well be my issue as it’s more rusted than the others.

The likes of ecp want £70 for an injector or an eBay special for £30, I don’t particularly fancy either option.

Noticed a breakers selling a full rail for £25 so seems like the sensible choice worst case I get one good injector, best case I’ve got 3 spare injectors.

Once that’s delivered I’ll get it fitted along with my original coil pack see if I can get away with not replacing the coil.

 

[vtec-e]

Similarly, like you, I picked up a facelift 1.2 3 door base model as a cheap run around I could park anywhere and not be concerned where it is left, about 15 months ago and now drive it more than my newer Astra

First job was scuttle clear out and drying the interior. There was plant life growing in the scuttle, and a wet interior. This is now sorted fortunately. Next up was the belts and water pump as there was no history of it being done over 13 years and 50k miles, and it now runs smoothly down the motorway. Lots of TLC to tidy up the paintwork and checks behind the plastic arch liners for rust and muck, more TLC to tidy the engine / plastic covers (it looked liked yours when it arrived), and a couple of rubber strips fitted at the front of the rear windows now make it a pleasant place to be

I also noticed the seals around the engine fuse box were not in the best of health, so improved the sealing as water from the scuttle area does drip onto the fuse box. There was also a slight buildup of white oily emulsion in the breather pipes at the back of the engine (I dont think they have a PCV) so gave that a clean out.

Useful info about the gearbox oil change as I plan to do that job soon, and also replace the brake fluid.

Hope you get to the bottom of the misfire soon.

 

[botfch]

Similarly, like you, I picked up a facelift 1.2 3 door base model as a cheap run around I could park anywhere and not be concerned where it is left, about 15 months ago and now drive it more than my newer Astra

First job was scuttle clear out and drying the interior. There was plant life growing in the scuttle, and a wet interior. This is now sorted fortunately. Next up was the belts and water pump as there was no history of it being done over 13 years and 50k miles, and it now runs smoothly down the motorway. Lots of TLC to tidy up the paintwork and checks behind the plastic arch liners for rust and muck, more TLC to tidy the engine / plastic covers (it looked liked yours when it arrived), and a couple of rubber strips fitted at the front of the rear windows now make it a pleasant place to be

I also noticed the seals around the engine fuse box were not in the best of health, so improved the sealing as water from the scuttle area does drip onto the fuse box. There was also a slight buildup of white oily emulsion in the breather pipes at the back of the engine (I dont think they have a PCV) so gave that a clean out.

Useful info about the gearbox oil change as I plan to do that job soon, and also replace the brake fluid.

Hope you get to the bottom of the misfire soon.

White oilyness is just part of these engines in my experience.

Only advice I’d give on the gearbox is remove the plastic bung before you drop the oil just incase it won’t come out.

 

[botfch]

So swapping the injectors didn’t resolve my issue.

At this point I was getting a bit confused as the coil pack seemed to be fine on the multi meter. So I decided to do another compression test, This came back with 200psi ish across all cylinders.
However cylinder 2 whilst it got to the same pressure did require more cranks to reach full pressure.
So same pressure as before but I don’t recall if it required more cranks before as I just ran until the needle stopped moving and didn’t note it down.

Anyways at this point I’m not too sure either I’ve got a sticky valve or a coil pack issue.

 

[botfch]

Was indeed the coil pack, seems to be running fine now.

Also kudos to euro car parts for installing the cables the wrong way round.

 

[vtec-e]

Well done on getting to the bottom of the problem

 

[botfch]

Swapped out the cabin filter.

New bosh wiper blades.

Fitted a new brake pedal switch as it was flagging up on the code reader.
Took it for a run down the motorway, returned 55mpg pleased with that.

 

[Louis]

Swapped out the cabin filter.
View attachment 1689209

New bosh wiper blades.
View attachment 1689211

Fitted a new brake pedal switch as it was flagging up on the code reader.
Took it for a run down the motorway, returned 55mpg pleased with that.

BOSH