Little Silver 205SI

S

Selekta

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Thought i'd throw this up here, as it's good to have input from people who actually know what they're doing.

Story is: My Oma bought this car brand new in 1992. She drove it for 15 or 16 years, before she upgraded (To a GTi :approve:) and handed this SI down to my sister, who drove it for the next few years. It was then stored for a few and used by a friend of my sisters, but ultimately it was left under a pine tree at a share house.

I have an E21 BMW that i've been slowly returning to factory spec, and at the moment it's off having some mechanical work done to it - so I've been going a bit stir crazy not having something to tinker with, then I remembered the 205...

Sister had left to Melbourne, forgot all about the car. After some probing and chatting to my Dad, a friend of hers dropped it off one night. It still runs and drives, but it's in a fairly dire state.

My Oma looked after it really well, it used to be pretty much perfect, unfortunately a decade of neglect has really taken its toll - But hey, it's still a perfectly rust free shell that needs some love.

After a few test drives, the bad:

Rear brakes are metal on metal, RHF seems seized on one side
Smoke, hesitation, seems to be down on compression too
Interior is OK, broken instrument cluster surround, dash plastics
Seats faded but not ripped
RHF Indicator lens missing
Aerial broken
Theft attempt at some point

The good:
Nice new tyres
No rust
Not crashed
Complete + original

As delivered:

GfDYpB0.jpg


After first quick wash to get 5 years worth of crap off it:

hRGrPuq.jpg

jMpuVBv.jpg

sPGW3TU.jpg


Plan is backwards - I'm going to start by painting it.

The mechanical stuff is fairly easy, but i've never painted a car before (I've done lots of little things like rocker covers etc, but never a car) so i'm looking to delve into this rabbit hole.

I'm going to need to get all of the advice I can get, hence this thread...

Cheers
 
I don't know if this is destined to be a GTi rep or not? The motor is going to have to come out at some point, the suspension and brakes need to be refreshed either way.... Doesn't matter at this point, it's going to be months before such a decision needs to be made.

I'm just going to do this step by step, little bits at a time. No plans to have the entire car in pieces.

First step is to get it clean. Really clean.

W4edCr0.jpg


Pine trees...

ZzpLRPd.jpg

UaN0MUz.jpg


And into its new home for the next... few months. Years?

NmMc5ZS.jpg
 
Nice.

Did Sis not have the insulation blanket on the inside of the bonnet or did yours lose it?

What do you mean when you say "new tyres"? Because if the car has been sitting on those tyres for five years, they're not new anymore. Most likely they're flat spotted and even if not, the compound is aged and pretty much dead by now.

I would suggest you try painting something simple and easy like the bonnet first to see what happens (and make your mistakes and hopefully learn) rather than pulling apart the whole car to find you don't have the right conditions, etc.
 
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Yep, that's the plan. Prep a little bit, see how it goes.

New tyres as in new tyres - As in I only just bought them. :) No point trying to push the car backwards and forwards on rotten tyres, even if it does mean I end up sourcing some pepperpots and having to buy another set but in 14".

It should have an insulation blanket. Another thing on the list...
 
Why do you think compress is down? Before pulling the engine apart, replace all the vacuum hoses and air intake hoses. Even if it's not split, the age of the pipes will most likely leak air.
 
Selekta said:
Yep, that's the plan. Prep a little bit, see how it goes.

New tyres as in new tyres - As in I only just bought them. :) No point trying to push the car backwards and forwards on rotten tyres, even if it does mean I end up sourcing some pepperpots and having to buy another set but in 14".

[...]
Click to expand...

Well done.

I have a full set (five) pepperpots I don't need. Not the best in the world, but not the worst either.

I also have a whole bunch of Si stuff (I bought a wreck for parts for my GTI) including hoses you can have for free, I'll never use them. No interior bits, though.
 
The engine needs to come apart anyway, the valve stem seals are leaking. All future work though.

Debating whether to ditch the single point and fit a GTI Bosch injection system.
 
The single point system works really well when set up and simple to keep serviced. A lot of work to change. I had an si (manual) and I loved it. I'd live another one as well as my gti. .... You will hear that alot.
 
Selekta said:
The engine needs to come apart anyway, the valve stem seals are leaking. All future work though.

Debating whether to ditch the single point and fit a GTI Bosch injection system.
Click to expand...

One of the advantages of the Si system is that it has integrated fuel and ignition in the ECU, which the multipoint doesn't (still relies on dizzy for ignition/advance). That means you would reintroduce the vagaries of mechanical and electromechanical stuff and give up a computerised system which I think is very good. I think this is a major shortcoming of the GTI system and I think you would lose more than gain with a multipoint injection system if you're going to a GTI jetronic/motronic. Just think of all the play in the dizzy coupling, the advance mechanism, the dizzy cap and so on. It almost throws away all the benefits of fuel injection. If you go to something smarter, maybe it's worth it, but otherwise I don't think so. Aftermarket electronic ignition also needs tuning and that can be an expensive exercise.
 
schlitzaugen said:
One of the advantages of the Si system is that it has integrated fuel and ignition in the ECU, which the multipoint doesn't (still relies on dizzy for ignition/advance). That means you would reintroduce the vagaries of mechanical and electromechanical stuff and give up a computerised system which I think is very good. I think this is a major shortcoming of the GTI system and I think you would lose more than gain with a multipoint injection system if you're going to a GTI jetronic/motronic. Just think of all the play in the dizzy coupling, the advance mechanism, the dizzy cap and so on. It almost throws away all the benefits of fuel injection. If you go to something smarter, maybe it's worth it, but otherwise I don't think so. Aftermarket electronic ignition also needs tuning and that can be an expensive exercise.
Click to expand...

I thought that Motronic (ie, phase 2 / s3 GTIs) controls ignition as well as fuel, whereas Jetronic is as Schlutz describes it. However, either way, I agree that it would be a big job to change ECU and injection systems. My limited understanding is that this would be unlikely to worth all the trouble unless you were doing other mechanical modifications at the same time.

My 2c would be to work out if you can fix the paint to a standard you are going to be happy with before you sink money that you might not be able to recover into any other part of the car. A vinyl wrap would definitely be worth considering as an option that would be cheaper, much easier and can look very good (at least for a few years....)

If you can get that sorted satisfactorily then maybe cam, manifolds and injection from a UK 1.6GTI, plus increase the compression slightly while you have the head off and then either the appropriate factory ECU or an aftermarket ECU might make for a very cool and sweet little car without vast expenditure.
 
My thoughts exactly - Hence paintwork coming up first.

Not really keen on a vinyl wrap, a decent one costs what a decent closed-door respray costs anyway, and as you said, it's only for a few years.
 
Selekta said:
Yep, that's the plan. Prep a little bit, see how it goes.

New tyres as in new tyres - As in I only just bought them. :) No point trying to push the car backwards and forwards on rotten tyres, even if it does mean I end up sourcing some pepperpots and having to buy another set but in 14".

It should have an insulation blanket. Another thing on the list...
Click to expand...

All the si cars I've seen don't have the insulation.
 
schlitzaugen said:
"Aftermarket ECU" and "without vast expenditure" is a contradiction in terms.
Click to expand...

Nope, speeduino is less than $250, but you have to be skilled enough to use it, same can be said for haltech, megasquirt etc.
 
You can buy second hand ECUs. I think I sold my Haltech Sprint 500 for about $450 and that would be more than good enough for a Si. $1000 should be more than enough to get it tuned. Assume you buy a couple of sensors or even a new wiring loom and a minimum budget (assuming you don't build your own but can do the wiring yourself) will be somewhere in the order of $1500 to $2000. Whether that is "vast expenditure" will depend on your priorities. Certainly it would be more than you'd get back when you sold the car, but these projects aren't always very rational.

It would no doubt be less expensive if you could essentially build yourself a 1.6GTI motor and use a second hand factory 1.6GTI ECU, but you would also need the GTI wiring looms and you probably won't get your money back on that either.
 
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Richard said everything i did not, being skilled in wiring etc brings a certain level of assumption. Having said that this is a constant in most solutions so is a fixed cost, if you do it all the better.otherwise you need to pay someone to do it.
 
So you estimate 1000$ plus about 1000 for tuning. Which proved to be either troublesome or very expensive for most people here (save for a few who do this for a job, and even then it isn't a walk in the park).

Matthew, therein lies the problem. I would say you need to be skilled to "use" (read tune) any of those, and you would have to have either a dyno or a track available to you at your convenience.

Just remember all those cars sold as "projects" (i.e. pulled apart and never again put back together), some more than once.

A lot cheaper to just get a megajolt or similar and just map that to the original ignition curve and be done with it and drive the damn thing.
 
Hey nice project! Good on you for saving this little silver 205si. Lots of passionate advice on the ecu topic, I like your plan, if it was me I’d fix the paint, get it driving and sort through all the mechanical issues. From there decide what to do, who knows you may even enjoy it as a well sorted si, some say they are excellent.
Have fun, that’s what it’s all about in the end [emoji4]
 
Hi Selekta looks like a good car and should clean up nice. Be careful what paint you use when you go to paint it especially if your trying to blend small areas and not do a entire panel. Auto paint stores all have different opinions and favorite products and some will sell you what they prefer to use rather than what may suit you. Everyone in the indusrty says 2pac is the go anything else wont last if it sees the elements. Im lead to believe it originally would of been COB (Clearcoat over basecoat). Recently i did a rear hatch on a car and used a so called 2pac in rattle cans, one for the color and one for the clear, apart from a bit of dust it came up great not sure how long it will last though.

Either by a spraygun or a can dont get to heavy with it keep the coats light. preparation is everything when your pulling the trigger all you want to be thinking about is the area your painting not where the overspray might go, crap falling in it from the roof or how the airhose is tangled. putting the base coat on is the easy part its the clear that gets tricky.

im currently in the process of accumulating the parts required to convert a monopoint si car to motronic 1.3 management the hardest part so far is finding all the right motronic bits. i already had a few s3 parts from previous wrecks but needed a afm and dizzy which i must have gave away or threw away by accident. got a dizzy off ebay from Lithuania and a afm locally from a alfa.

i might be missing something but it looks pretty straight forward so far, just match the two brown multiplugs up with the s3 loom and its plug and play from there? si already has the cas and toothed flywheel looks like you just need to change the temp sensor for the ecu and the rest is all there. all the motronic stuff has probley cost me less than $500. you probley need to make it a 1.9 motor if you do this though as the 1.6 wont run well with 1.9 mangement.

if my current plan fails i can always fit a aftermarket system but at the moment im just enjoying the challenge.
 
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