Bentleigh East's most practical 307 wagon

A really interesting read. Agreed very nice work with great attention to detail. Would you consider working on a 3008?
 
A really interesting read. Agreed very nice work with great attention to detail. Would you consider working on a 3008?
I would love to but I honestly have no time. With work, band, study and fiddling with this car, I have no spare time.

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And then while doing this I fitted out a camp trailer for my mate. Remote opening electric split fold lid, interior illumination, exterior camp lights, solar charger inputs, vehicle mains inputs, WATER PROOF, battery monitor, 12V power sockets, all running off a massive 120ah deep cycle battery. I learnt a lot making this trailer and a lot of what i learnt went into this 307 Build. for example, everything has been built in sections. There are multiple connections throughout the car so if something happens to the pug, i can pull everything out in about 60-80mins.


No I won't build another one from scratch haha.
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Lift kit for the 307

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Zactly what I said - that's 2 votes for a lift.

I'm actually thinking of starting a movement - I'm calling it Longtravel - an antithesis to the lowered car. Raise your car, lift the performance, enjoy.
 
For the last 10'000km I have been sitting lopsided in the driver's seat as the RH side base bolster had collapsed resulting in me coming rest on the seat frame. Not particularly comfortable. I had a spare hour up my sleeve on Saturday so pulled the driver's seat out and stripped down the base to "Have a go" at fixing it up. I had an old seat base foam pad from a 508 repair we did a few years ago (was using it as a knee pad until recently) that had a small amount of resemblance to the 307 seat base. Small as in it was a base and had sides..... I hacked off the RH side bolster and eyeballed to the rough shape of the 307 base. Ahhh close enough for a free part.... I then cut out the collapsed and torn original side bolster from the 307 pad, leaving the firm not-fragmented RH front section (carries over to the LH side bolster) in one piece and shaved various sections off the donor bolster till it was close-ish. I found the 508 donor to be much narrower so cut another chunk off the base (rear section) and rounded the edges until it flowed with the contours that i was after. Thia ragtag "assembly" was then squashed into the seat base trim, removed several times and carried out a few more shaves of original base and donor bits before applying some spray glue and reassembling the seat. For a first attempt at repairing the foam it's turned out all right. 300km over the last 2 days and it's settling in quite nicely.

Also worth noting that it definitely came out of a smokers car has the Gnav now has a faint 2nd hand smoke smell after being left in the sun all day...
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It's LOW407 all over again (yes that car still exsists)

I love black interiors. The headlining in the 307 was starting to sag so it was time to bite the bullet and redo the interior. Basically all trims from the top of the door cards were removed. B pillar trims were disassembled completely (a lesson learned from LOW407) to allow proper adhesion of paint. All the interior lights were disassembled and painted in a black chrome effect paint. Multiple layers were required for a uniform coating without runs. It took 5 coats to achieve a basic layer to build up on. Allowing 1 hour between coats gives an idea of how long it takes to do it properly. All the white trims and handles and covers and switch buttons were cleaned extensively with watered down alloy wheel cleaner then prepsol and finally and alcohol based cleaner. Some of these trims were DIRTY.... Interior visors also removed and disassembled and masked off. A pillar trims are coated in fabric but as these aren't touched often they where painted in black interior dye (gives a rough texture to touch). It took 1 entire can to do both trims to the level that i wanted (they sit in direct sunlight).

The roof lining was removed and cleaned back to the moulding by a dude who does headlining on the side. Originally It was going to be done in black but it was unattainable at the time so we went for a dark grey. Now that it is installed I'm really happy with the colour. Sets off the black of everything else rather nicely. There will be photos in the next post.

With the interior lights being very bright LEDs and the housings in black chrome, I found the original clear covers to be too "white". These have been coated in 6 coats of plastidip "smoke" effect on the inside of the lens. Then the outer surface was polished with a super fine polish to give a nice clear shine....and remove 455'000kms of crud....
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The first picture shows the difference the smoke lens on top and the standard lens on the bottom. Quite a difference. Pictures don't do the headlining justice. It's stunning. Oh and it now has a 2008 manual gear knob on a shortened lever. Apart from adding a shelf and an inverter to the rear I'm pretty much done with the interior now.

Yeah, who am I kidding....I'll find something else to change!!!
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"No more interior modifications"

So I was looking at a C5 I had with loverly electric leather front seats......

I reckon I can make that work....
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What did you do to get your interior lights working properly once you had changed them to LEDs?


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What did you do to get your interior lights working properly once you had changed them to LEDs?


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Use high quality LEDs. Not the cheap crap ones. Use high quality ones and you won't have an issue. The only time I have had to wire in resistors was for the front indicator (and soon the rears) globes to stop double flash...

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Use high quality LEDs. Not the cheap crap ones. Use high quality ones and you won't have an issue.
Apparently, price doesn’t always equal quality. I don’t think that I bought the cheap stuff, but apparently it wasn’t good enough quality.

Maybe I’ll try again, with a different supply line.

Thanks for the reply.
 
Has it done 455k - or was that the clusters "adding" together when they were swapped over?
 
Where did the low beam lights come from, this vendor or another?

Now looking for a 406HDi wrecking to do the intercooler on mine as well, always wanted to do this.

Excellent work.

Matt

At some stage I upgraded the low beams to LED units along with every T10 globe in the car. Even The indicator globes were upgraded. Again, Ali express. Now like I said there is a lot of crap on there but the products from the store CN360 are top notch. Min 1 year warranty on all of their stuff. Been using them for over 18months and never had a failure. Then I found audi style side indicators (where the light chases??) So i bought them. +2 street cred points. There are in a clear lense however I have done a few cosmetic upgrades over the last 3 weeks so I have a black set on order. The LED low beam globes are fantastic. Great visibility especially when wet. Mine are 6000k, anything higher I've found to be great to look at but useless as a form of lighting up the road in front of you (I do a lot of driving at night....) I have not upgraded the high beams yet as the light bar kinda surpasses it. However with 3 return trips to Brisbane scheduled over the next 13 months they will be changed out along with a pair of HID pencil beam spotties chucked on the roof rack. Maybe.
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Would the intercooler from a 307 HDi T6 be suitable?
 
Oh yeah, the two front poverty pack seats were removed, thrown in the bin and replaced with a pair of T6 XSE buckets. MUCH more comfortable. They are the ones with the pattern that looks a bit like chef pants
I remember now. This is another thing that I was going to comment on.

If these seats are much more comfortable, then I cannot imagine what the others were like. I find them so hard and uncomfortable, I long to get back into my 406! I have seen a couple of 307s with leather seats but I've never had the opportunity to sit in one. I would like to know if they're as comfortable as the leather seats in the 406.

If they are, then I'll be on the lookout for a wreck with the leather seats.
 
I remember now. This is another thing that I was going to comment on.

If these seats are much more comfortable, then I cannot imagine what the others were like. I find them so hard and uncomfortable, I long to get back into my 406! I have seen a couple of 307s with leather seats but I've never had the opportunity to sit in one. I would like to know if they're as comfortable as the leather seats in the 406.

If they are, then I'll be on the lookout for a wreck with the leather seats.
Tough call. 406 leather seats are divine. It was never planned to put C5 seats in it. It was purely a mad idea after work after I bought a C5 for its auto box. It had seat mounted arm rests on my previous 2 sets which has always been a must-have, hence why the glorious C4 super bucket seats never made it into the car. Plus they are Citroen seats (in my view Citroen make astonishingly comfortable seats). Pulled my LHF T6 seat out and flipped it upside down, pulled the LHF C5 seat out and flipped it upside down, eyeballed the mounts and wiring harness and worked out "yeah I reckon I can make this work"....

Plus they are multi position electric. It is so dahm comfy now. Finish slogging out a 10 hour day in the workshop and jump in this, it's loverly to drive home in. I'm doing 2 return trips to SE Qld in november/December which will be a good test.

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Would the intercooler from a 307 HDi T6 be suitable?
I don't think so (RHR) as the radiator support assembly is different. Obviously the 9HZ is no good as it's completely different. To do it "properly" you would use the radiator support panel and intercooler from a late T5 with the RHR (if you can find one. Incidentally my sister had one - finding parts for it was at times a nightmare, as the parts as per service box never actually matched what was on the car. I had to replace the a/c compressor at one stage. 3 attempts through dealer all wrong even after removing the filter from SB, ended up going via part number on compressor, tecdoc for supercessions and then matched it from a manufacturer in Sweden of all places. Compressor output for pipes different due to it being shoehorned into a T5). But that's all you can use. The turbo is different between the 307 and 406, plus the turbo output is on a different angle. Can't use RHR pipes as they are completely different to RHY/RHZ as turbo is completely different. Even the pipework of a euro spec 307 RHZ is different - again due to the different turbo and boost output angle. I'm actually surprised that my assortment of modified 406 under engine pipes and home made brackets are still intact and haven't brokem off yet....need to get off me backside and have some proper pipes fabricated.

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