306 Estate GTi6

[ronj]

Like I said in the newbies section I am building a 306 Estate GTi6 with some added modern twists. I'll try to outline what I have done with/to the car up 'till now. Warning: this is going to be picture heavy!


The 'baseline'.

A 306 Estate XT 1.6 in pretty decent condition, with a crooked eye.






First blood: interior upgrade.

I managed to find some nice full electric Citroen Xantia Activa V6 seats. This seemed like a nice upgrade over the standard seats which are not really to my liking.

This meant adapting a part of the body loom to provide the seats with some juice. Can you spot the addition? I was pretty happy with the result.










On a roll: fixing the front end.

As you could see on the first picture in this thread the drivers side (yup) fog-light was rusted. And the headlights were not in the condition I liked them to be in. I also cleaned the front bumper and added a GTi6 lip.








Tinted rear windows.






Small audio upgrade.

Added a nice Pioneer HU and some new Pioneer speakers. Also put a 1 TB HDD in the f*cking small glove compartment which contains all my music.










Look at dem wheelzzz.

The largest exterior modification I had planned, adding some 17" Challengers fitted with 205/40/17 Sportmaxx SP's. Still not sure if I should keep these or just add some C5 'steelies'.

[MY95]

Really looking forward to more updates with this!
Did you find new fog lights or clean the old ones up? One of mine is similar to yours at the moment

[ronj]

Electric stuff.

I am an embedded software engineer by trade, with an interest in electronics so did some modifications on that front as well.

First I modified the original radio-stalk to directly control the Pioneer HU without a stupid interface.





Next I added a 1.8" TFT screen filling the void in the dash where normally the indicator for the automatic box would be controlled by a microcontroller. It displays things like: speed, rpm, current gear, distance and time driven (three trip computers), instant and total fuel consumption, distance to tank empty, parking sensor info, sequential shift-light. The feature set is still in flux, I add things when I have some spare time.







Added a C5 auto-dimming mirror.



Refurbished the rear wiper motor and added a VW '99' relais as to control the interval.






Preparation for GTi6 transplant.

First off I wanted to fix the front suspension. Adding Bilstein's with Eibach springs. Refurbing the wishbones.










Getting there.

Now it was time to rebuild the 6 engine and start fitting that.

Last look at the old lump:
















And that's the current status for now. More will follow as we progress.

---

@MY95: I bought new fog's and new headlights. It was beyond saving. The previous owner had ripped out the plug, which in turn broke the seal letting water leak inside.

[Niall]

This is awesome!
Were the seats direct fit? And did the screen in the dials come as a kit or did you build that from scratch?

[Eeyore]

My god this is epic. Can you do a guide and share the code and parts needed for the trip computer. I thought of doing this at uni when i was doing an embedded systems module but never got round to it. Great to see you have done it. Im sure people would like to see a guide on how to connect the stalk directly to their head unit too. Great work!

Does the HDD require power? or does it run straight on the radio USB?

[bashbarnard]

Im really loving this as well. Not the gti6 engine as much but the electrical side of things. My god. HERO!

[ronj]

Thanks guys, really appreciate my work getting some credit .

@Niall: mechanically the seats are a direct fit. But I still have to move up the motors on the bottom since driver side is fouling the crossmember a bit. Which makes front to rear adjustment a bitch. The screen in the dials I built from scratch.

@Eeyore: I can do a guide about the trip computer, the code can be found on my GitHub account teensy-dash. Also I can translate the guide I did for the stalk from the Dutch forum. The HDD is powered from the radio USB directly it can provide 1 amp of juice.

@bashbarnard: diesels are way to expensive in the Netherlands for the miles I drive. So to have some go I thought the GTi6 engine would be a good alternative.


Maybe a bit more info about the dash.

Of course it is centered around the 1.8" display in the 306 dash. That display is driven by a Teensy 3.1 microcontroller, an ARM based beast with lot's of IO and memory. It couples directly to the RPM and wheel speed signals in the dash. So for RPM/Speed/Shift-light/Gear/Trip computer no external mods to the car, besides the dash, are necessary. For fuel it taps into an injector ground. The rear parking sensors I reverse engineered the protocol and also requires two wires running to the Teensy.

Plans for the future are:

- Oil temp/Oil pressure
- Tire pressure and temperature support
- High/low alarms

Here is a picture of the parts used (most of it at least). And adding it in the dash.














Some YouTube vids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCdsyODlac4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_CTIFB6VvA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6kN2D5Val8

[Eeyore]

oh man that is so cool.

[Mattcheese31]

This is a great looking project with some real trick bits in it, loving it all, seats look sweet too

[RetroPug]

Really interesting project. Will be looking at this closely.

[Jiffy]

I love the seats!!! Excellent work. I'll keep an eye on this.

[ben10241]

Looks like it's going to be an interesting build. I have to say that display you made is wonderful, I really miss the trip computer in mine.

[ronj]

If anyone wants to build their own, the schematics at the GitHub page are a bit out of date. There is no clear description on the signal conditioning of RPM and wheel speed. I'll try my best to update that part soon. I am always available for questions and guidance, also very open to feature requests.

In the meantime I am busy with the headlights. I want to retrofit xenon projectors. While having the headlight open I noticed that my NeoPixel ring fitted perfectly behind the indicator lens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsj-lm2noh0

Also de-rusted and painted the original air-box.

[Eddleston]

Crackin work so far!

[Matt]

This is looking to be an incredable project! I love the computer! And those seats look dead comfy. The attention to detail is insane, even that airbox looks good!

[dr_jekyll]

Usually dis-like the gti-6 estate projects but im feeling converted by this! Bloody awesome build [THUMBS UP SIGN]

[ronj]

Made some progress again.

Got the subframe on. Installed new driveshafts and seals.



Completely new exhaust front to rear.





Reverse lock-out cable installed for the 6-speed.



Too bad my knob is broken , so I need a new one.




We're getting there. Next saturday going to rob some missing parts of a to be wrecked GTi. So not much progress up 'till then.

[Toms306]

Project threads generally bore me lol, but this is awesome! Dare I ask how much it's cost so far? Would've cost a fair bit over here so just wondering how it compares.

[Piggy]

Brill work!

[Josh_Quant]

The headlights and dash are awesome mate

[ronj]

I think total cost is going to be between 6000 and 8000 euro when done. But then I could reset the mileage to 0 because almost everything is new of refurbed. That includes everything including engine, rear-axle, trip-computer... etc. Everything you see here basically.

This was made possible by the generous buy-off for my lease-car of my new employee . Otherwise I would have thought twice of doing this.

[Toms306]

I see, not cheap then, but as you say will be basically a new car time you're done!

[ronj]

Yeah indeed, not cheap but worth it I hope . My 205 is a bigger money burner.

[highwayman306]

Im in love , very awesome build ronj i wanna see more

p.s nice pyjamas

[td_dan]

205 pics

[ronj]

Haha thanks guys! Will do some more pyjama shoots for you lol .

The 205 project can be found here. Multi-year project no end in sight yet: http://forum.205gtidrivers.com/index.php...pic=159853. Sub 800 kg above 300 hp is the end-goal.

[highwayman306]

Lol more stripes and fur please ha-ha

Il have a read of ur 205 project later, tapacrap does my head in, sounds interesting though being light and powerful

[cully]

nice use of the Teensy

would be interested in a guide and code for the gear indicator and shift light?
the guide would have to be a fairly comprehensive as i dont do code but can solder well

[Chr1sch]

Wow this is some very skilled and impressive work!

[ronj]

Let me think a bit about how I want to approach getting people to build their own teensy-dash kits. I'll get back to you on that Cully. By the way your electronic projects are a great inspiration to me!

While waiting for some parts to arrive had to pick up the boring job of refurbing the brakes. Especially getting them to look half-decent was a job that required some elbow grease. Next time I'll send them off to get blasted.







Slider pins were still in good nick so will reuse them, rubber seal kit is on its way.