Matts green machine

[mattsrallye]

Hi all

Been knocking around this site for a while now so thought it was about time I started a thread about my own car. It's not really a project as such as I have no particular plans for it (apart from a V6 somewhere down the line...) but more a log for myself, and if anyone finds it interesting then great!

Oh and I'm definitely not photographer, so I apologise in advance for the quality of pictures!

But first a bit of history, my first car was a 1.1L 106 back in 2006 and was, to my mind, the best thing ever! Being the first of my group of friends to get a license, it was frequently loaded up with way too much camping gear and mountain bikes and headed in the direction of Wales or Scotland. After a few years I wanted something a bit more exciting so sold the car to a friend and bought a 106 rallye. Said friend promptly wrapped my old car around a tree. I haven't forgiven him!

So the rallye, I bought this in 2008 and still have it today.

I love this car! It was my daily driver for about 4 years off and on, but I've been all over in it. It's done it's fair share of biking roadtrips around the UK, as well as down to Le Mans in 2011. Currently it's been retired to second car status so that I can do some light restoration and it only really comes out for a good thrashing every week or so. Most recently I've taken it to the black mountains in Wales and had an amazing time; I got up early so I was just hitting the A4069 at 6am and managed to do a good 100 mile loop without seeing another person plenty of suicidal sheep tho!

In 2012 I bought what I had convinced myself was a 'sensible daily driver'.

For those who don't know, it's a Mitsubishi Galant VR-4. It's got the Evo VI-IV 4wd system and a 2.5L twin turbo V6 producing about 280bhp, so certainly surprises people! It was great fun to drive, particularly amusing in the snow, holding 4 wheel drifts endlessly unfortunately it just wasn't very reliable and I ended up spending all the money (and much more!) that I had planned to use to start restoring the rallye just keeping it going. The final straw was when the head gasket went, pressurising the coolant and bursting a hose on the outskirts of Luton the night before my second trip to Le Mans, so I ended up selling to someone at work who had a new engine fitted, fixed a few other issues and has now had a reliable car for a couple of years!! Oh well, if he ever sells I'd love to have it back.

For about 6 months I just had the rallye, but then I started having urges for 6 cylinders and RWD so started looking at 3 series, eventually buying a pre-facelift 330Ci.

I had high hopes about this car. I'd read loads of threads about other peoples experiences saying how good they were, it had 230bhp, was RWD and had a straight six so should have been exactly what I wanted - however- it never quite lived up to the hype for me. It was an auto which was probably the biggest mistake, but it always just felt heavy which blunted the performance and made it just feel a bit cumbersome on fun roads. It lasted a few months before being sold, which brings me to the reason for this post...

A 306!

In 2013 I finally gave in to common sense and bought a car which was actually cheap to run. Not just 'cheaper than you might think', but actually dirt cheap! And I have to say, I love it. It had just 29,000 miles when I bought it and one previous owner so it's in really very good condition. I gave it a good service when I got it and then drove it all the way down to Morzine in the alps for a biking holiday and it didn't put a foot wrong. Even the A/C works!

The intention was it would be just a car, an appliance if you like, so that I could lavish some money on the rallye and bring it back to it's former glory. However I couldn't resist the odd tweak so it's had black masks fitted, 205 speedlines painted as per the 309 Goodwoods (always loved them), and recently I have been attempting to lower it a touch. The front was fine, I managed to fit a set of Eibach springs without any great difficulty - aside from a spring compressor trying to kill me - but today I completely failed to lower the rear beam - observe the magnificence of my 306 hotrod!

I'm planning to have another attempt soon but before I do I need to source a pair of the studs things that screw into the end of the torsion bars and set the clearance for the trailing arms as one of the sort of accidentally got mashed with a hammer in a moment of desperation...

So I think that brings us up to date, sorry about the essay, hopefully some people have stuck it out! Any comments welcome, good or bad. And if anyone has a pair of the torsion bar stud things they want to stick in the post asap I'd gladly take them!

[Piggy]

Love the rallye and VR4...I do love how sleeper they are!
ARPs and MLS gaskets and they are capable of silly power!

[Orta]

That Rallye is epic mate. Love indigo blue 106s

[mattsrallye]

Love the rallye and VR4...I do love how sleeper they are!
ARPs and MLS gaskets and they are capable of silly power!

Thanks, yer the VR4 was a lot of fun, plenty quick enough as it was so must be a riot with more power!

That Rallye is epic mate. Love indigo blue 106s

Thank you, it's definitely a keeper

[mattsrallye]

A bit of progress from the last week and a bit...

Managed to get the rear beam lowered, ended up having to knock the trailing arm and torsion bar out of the beam each side, and then then knock the bar out of that. Bit of a faff but at least it's done now, and it was rebuilt with 20mm bars so it more closely matched to the eibachs at the front.

The rear is a bit lower than I would like, I think its gone down about 35mm, so at some stage I'll raise it up a bit. Still I'm fairly happy with how it's turned out.

I also fitted some OEM tweeters in the wing mirror covers. I didn't have any spare connectors to fit them so the wire is soldered directly to the tweeter and the speaker, and they're just wired in parallel to the woofers as I've read that this is how Peugeot did it from the factory where fitted. In any case, it's made a decent improvement to the clarity of music so I'm pleased.

And fitted


If anyone is interested:
Tweeters - 6562 C7 - £7.78 each
Covers - 9015 P4 (RH), 9015 P5 (LH) - £1.91 each

And finally a picture from the weekend that I quite like, and shows the rack is not for scene points!

[Mattcheese31]

Car looks nice mate, I did same with the tweeters too, adds a good bit of clarity

[7057sam]

Looks ace use my focus for my bikes

Mate's always laugh because the bike it wor th more than the car :lol

[mattsrallye]

Looks ace use my focus for my bikes

Mate's always laugh because the bike it wor th more than the car :lol

Thanks, and yer you know when you're a biker when your bike is worth more than the car! I think my record is something like £5k worth of bikes on £500 worth of 106