Peugeot 206 CC Build

Since my climate control unit died (the fan died and was really stuck into place) and a bunch of other stuff broke, I decided to remove it (this happens later on the page).
In order to prepare it, I decided to already cut a bunch of cables and remove them to clean everything up a bit.
Please, do be more careful than I was, as I spent a good day or so trying to figure out my hazard lights because I cut them off by accident.
Due to the mid-dash also being gone (as that was the part that broke), I also have no radio head-unit and decided to also remove the radio wiring up-to the plug in the fuse-box.

The only wires that I kept were those for the hazard lights, which I rewired to the old radio control stick.
As this stick never worked for me (previous owner installed an aftermarket headunit), this felt like a good solution for now.

While this process didn’t give me much performance or anything, it just cleaned up a bit, made everything less likely to short-out and meant I didn’t have to deal with a bunch of cables when I eventually start removing the climate control unit itself.

The airfilter was replaced with a K&N 33-2813.
This didn’t give me any noticeable performance but I got it on sale for just 2 euro more than an OEM paper air-filter, so it’s not too bad.
And maybe it’ll give me some extra performance after mapping it later, who knows.

Because the interior weighs quite a lot but doesn’t do much for me personally, I’ve opted to remove most of it.
Additionally, this had the benefit of showing me some rust spots I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Sadly, I do not have pictures of removal of a lot of stuff so you’ll have to find this one out for yourself.
If you just gently pull at stuff, it should tell you where it’s being held in by more screws or bolts.
As for the removal of the carpets and a bunch of the insulation, I just carefully used a boxcutter to remove them.
Later, I also removed the speakers and the plastic bits holding them in place but I did not take pictures of that.

For the "door handles", I just used some OMP tow straps.
I’ll cover the doors in either some "cartonfibre", polycarbonate or something else at a later date.

In order to minimize risk of running into issues later, I opted to replace my ECU prematurely.
As I did not want to have to deal with re-doing any wiring harnesses for the engine, my only two options were the Megasquirt MS3 PNP from Pirata Motor and the VEMS PNP from DP Engineering.

Due to having limited experience with engine mapping and some weird things outlined on the site of the MS3 (such as CLT sensor not working as normal), I decided to go with the VEMS system.
That way, I at least had someone relatively local to turn to for help if need be.

For the options I chose:

Installation, however, required me to remove the original bracket and zip-tie the thing to some other bracket instead.
While this is not ideal, I’ll fix it at a later date…​ Maybe…​

After playing with the VEMS for a while doing some road-tuning, I decided to bring it to DP Engineering.
Since my setup at this time is really easy to reproduce if you buy a stock EW10J4 car, you can download my VEMS config here.
It should work with any stock EW10J4, though it may require very minor tweaks here and there.

Sadly, DP-Engineering could only get 132hp out of the engine, this is probably due to wear on the block.
I might have the engine rebuilt someday but it’s fairly unlikely I will.

While doing some data logging, I noticed that my speed read out double what it should be and the gears shown were also incorrect as a result.
Luckily, this was an easy fix as I just had to go to Inputs → Speed Sensor and set the Speed sensor divider on the First Speed Sensor to 2.

It might be that I need to change the Speed sensor trigger edge but I have not yet tested it.
According to the VEMS documentation, this should be set to Rising for most cars, however, the way I’ve done it works just fine for now but I’ll experiment with it later.

TODO: Upload new VEMS Config.

While working on the car, I accidentally broke the PCV breather hose.
This is due to the plastic having become brittle over the 22 years this car has been on the road and me trying to bend it away slightly.
As a new PCV hose would cost nearly €50, I decided to instead take the plastic off the old plugs and make my own.

After I had freed the plugs, I needed to get the hosing to put it all together again.
So first, I needed to figure out the outer-diameter of the plugs (which will be the inner-diameter of the hosing).
After some measuring, this is what I got:

I then ordered some simple transparent silicone vacuum hosing.
Since there was no 7mm hosing, I instead opted for 6mm hosing.
I could have gone for some nice looking blue hosing instead but this would have doubled the price.
In the end, this costed me about 21 euro including shipping.

About 5 minutes of measuring and cutting later, we have a new PCV breather hose.

Since the VEMS doesn’t control the EGR, the valve could be removed from the car.
The original valve is quite a hefty thing coming in at about a kilogram (guesstimate, not actually weighted) so this also saved some weight.
I ordered the valve from a Polish company called Tafmet since I do not have the means of making one myself.

On Tafmet’s website, they show it that you need to place it between the original EGR valve and the engine block, however, I found that using 2 shorter bolts (I do not know the diameter nor thread pitch out of my head) and leaving the EGR off completely worked like a charm.
I just need to find out what to do with the leftover wiring connector but that’s a problem for future me.

The weather in The Netherlands can be quite moist at times, especially during winter.
This causes my shoes to be wet and as a result, the rubber on my pedals.
While this is generally not an issue, I personally like to drive with the idea that if I need to undertake actions like braking or using the clutch, my feet don’t slip off.
Especially since I use heel-toe downshifting a lot this might be a nice peace of mind.

In order to fix this, I just went to my local skate shop to get 1m of griptape (you don’t need this much if this is all you’re gonna do, I just have extra plans).
This costed me about 8 euro, which definitely isn’t bad.
Just note that they may look a bit surprised when you say it is for your car. ;)

Additionally, this is not a "permanent" thing.
Just like the rubber, the griptape will wear down over time and need replacement.
Additionally, it will cause more wear on the soles of your shoes.
This is not an issue for me, however, may not be desirable if you drive with dress shoes.

After you’ve acquired your griptape of choice, take off your pedals, you will need a T25 and an 8mm hex wrench.

Once you’ve taken them off, remove the old rubber.
This is completely optional, however, I just did it.
In hindsight, you might want to leave it on so dirt won’t get in from behind and loosen the griptape.

Once that is done, use some coarse sandpaper to get rid of the dirt and give the griptape something to grip onto.
Then, wipe it down with some rubbing alcohol to remove any oils and metal dust.

Cut up two squares of grip tape bigger than your pedals.
Then apply them and trim as needed, or trim as needed then apply, whichever you prefer.
Just make sure to leave as little overhang that may snatch and tear off the griptape.

Poke some holes where the screw will go through and screw the pedals back on.
That’s it, no more slippy feet!

My exhaust was due for some change as during the last APK (the Dutch version of the MOT), it was made clear that it would not be fixable when it inevitably would start leaking again.

While driving from a meeting to home, my exhaust actually fell off (mid-pipe slid of the cat) and I couldn’t put it back on myself (I do not have a jack in my car).
After almost two hours of waiting for the road-side service, they put it back on and give it kind of a band-aid fix.
As it now was hanging lower than usual, the man gave me the advice to replace it.

Since I wanted to have a custom exhaust made anyways, I decided that it would be more sane to just go for that right now, rather than get one from the junkyard and then later get a custom one.
And so, after some looking around, I made an appointment with RA-Performance and they had a new exhaust made.
The cost was 785 euro for a cat-back system made of stainless steel with a single damper at the end.
Here’s what the results sound like (sadly, I forgot to record the before so I can’t do a comparison).

That’s glorious, I hope the cops won’t start whining because I did not test the sound levels.

I decided to upgrade the Exhaust Manifold to to hopefully remove some more restrictions.
By default, this engine comes with a "log" (which are unequal-length), which "works" but tends to hamper performance.

Instead of going for something fancy and custom, I decided to just go with the manifold of the 206 RC instead which DP-Engineering just so happened to have laying around (lovely coincidence).
Additionally, since I’ll never add a turbocharger to the thing, this seems like a good solution.

While clipping off all the cables from the main Climate Control Unit, I had accidentally also clipped off the wire in charge of turning on the rear-window and side-mirror heaters, which isn’t ideal when driving in the winter.

Luckily, I found a diagram online that could help me out (diagram is only blurred out to make it easier for you to read, you can find a full copy of it here.
All I had to do was find the wire that pulled the relay closed and this allowed power to flow from LM01 to 813, 814 and 811, which was harder said than done.
My assumption here is that the Heater Panel is the little control box.
So in theory all I’d need to do is connect pin 20 on the BSI to ground through a little switch.
Pin 9 on the BSI seems to only be used to the little indicator light to inform the driver that the heater was on, so I can just ignore this for now.

While staring at the diagram some more, I realized that the little dots are very likely the plug I had unloomed earlier.
So all I would need to do is find the right pin and go from there.
Which, also turned out to be harder than I first thought as the wires I could have used to find it were already removed.

So, I just went with the good ol' "stab things with a multimeter until you find the right wires".
Disconnecting the battery, removing the BSI, unplugging the yellow cable and stuffing a little breadboard wire into pin 20.
After that, I stabbed the plugs with the lead and quickly found out it was the pin right above the yellow pin in the corner.
I added a blue wire (mainly cus I just had that still laying around), put the BSI back into its place and reconnected the battery.
After some testing, I found out that it only requires a simple pulse to activate, so any momentary button would do.
Now, let’s hope I didn’t remove the wiring going to the heaters themselves…​

Below a list of things I still want to do

Here’s just a quick list of other "maintenance parts" I use that might be helpful.
Please note that my "replace when" moments are not "manufacturer recommended", they are just my preferred moments to keep my car in good condition and probably seriously overkill for most people.