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The saga of the GTi6 continues:
After receiving the red-light camera fine my mate confronted the mechanic who didn’t deny he was driving but refused to pay the fine.
This wasn’t so good but what happened next was worse.
While cruising down the highway my mate started to hear a bottom-end knock which got worse as he drove. Being close to the mechanics workshop he dropped it off and asked the mechanic, who still owed him money from the fine, to have a look at it.
The mechanic went to work and later called back to say that a crankshaft shell bearing had caught on the crankshaft and spun, but said he would repair it. As it turns out the mechanics idea of ‘repairing it’ was to sand the crankshaft and shell bearing smooth and put it all back together. Needless to say that we all thought that was dodgy.
This fix didn’t hold and 2 days later the poor Pug suffer major engine failure. My mate then trailered the car over to a trusted family friend who has been a mechanic for 30 plus years and has hotted-up everything from GTHO Falcons to VW Kombis. His diagnosis was ‘FDMS’, or to the lay person, ‘Fucking Dodgy Mechanic Syndrome’.
The Pug engine is a solid piece of engineering but if you are going to put big cams in and try and get speed out of a 10 year-old, 120,000km engine with an unknown history you want someone who will take the time to do it properly.
The mechanic as it turns out was more than just a bit dodgy as the family mechanic found bits and pieces that were missing from the Pug and a second trip back to the mechanic to tell him of the blown-up engine revealed the missing parts in his workshop which the mechanic said would stay there until he 'finished' the car as they were still waiting on some front shocks.
Needless to say my mate told the mechanic in no uncertain terms that the Pug would not ever be put into his untrustworthy hands, even for an oil change, and he had better hand over the pilfered parts promptly.
The Pug is now up on blocks awaiting a full engine rebuild and my mate is pursuing legal action against the dodgy mechanic.
My Dad always says to me, “Do it once, do it right”. He’s right y'know.
I have a mate. Yes, really, and he bought himself a Peugeot 306 GTi6 recently.
It was a nice Pug, only 120k on the clock and the body in very good condition, at the price it was a bit of a bargain and the rarity (only around 50 sold in Australia) made it much more desirable.
Now, for those of you not in the know, the GTi6 is, or was the epitome of the 'hot hatch' genre depending on how you rate the Renault Clio Sport.
So my mate bought it and enjoyed a few months of motoring but eventually found the 'hot hatch' wasn't really all that hot. So he had the inspired idea to hot the Pug up and make it a truly worthy contender to the ‘hot hatch’ throne.
After much searching for a reputable Peugeot technician, the Peugeot forums in Australia led my mate to an enthusiast who liked to fiddle with Frenchies in his spare time.
Now the Frenchie fiddler was supposedly a day-time mechanic for the local Peugeot dealer and did hot Pugs on the weekends. Contact was made and visits were paid to the mechanic’s shop.
The mechanic looked over my mate’s car and said that for $5000 he would make it faster and handle better. My mate said ‘alright’ and they did the deal.
My mate felt confident that the Peugeot mehanic could wiggle his magic wand and transform his luke-warm Pug into a fire-breather.
Things to be done were:
• grind the cams
• port and polish the head
• ecu remap
• new pod air-filter
• all bushes front and rear to be replaced with Nolathane
• new Bilstein struts and lowered springs
• performance clutch and lightened flywheel.
• free dyno time to tune it.
Most of the work was done quite quickly and my mate had his new car on the road and after a few weeks of sensitive driving, started to have some fun.
Not long after receiving his car back, my mate received a nice letter from the Police asking him why he felt it necessary to run a red light, and ordering him to pay $220 for the privilage. My mate checked the date and time and found it was his mechanic friend peddling through the red.
This was, as it turns out, nothing compared to what happened next.
My mate Dave always used to say "In this world there are only two kinds of people. Us, and dickheads, so don't be a dickhead". I was never really sure what Dave meant exactly. Even though we were both maggoted, I never forgot what he said, more importantly I never forget the context of that conversation. We were talking about another mate who was a serial 'gunna'.
His name was Sean. Sean had an XD pano that he was 'gunna' do up. It was 'gunna' have a 460 big block in it. It was 'gunna' be green. It was 'gunna' have all the rust cut out by old matey down the road who was 'gunna' do all the work for a carton of beer. Unfortunately all of these grand plans never saw the light of day. Sean went as far as buying a slightly rustier panel van as a 'donor car' and then nothing more was heard of the project. When I asked Sean how the project was going, the response was always "Yeh, you know. But I'm gunna open a surf school with my uncle and..."
Now dreams are wonderful things to persue and nobody should ever stop trying no matter what. That is the 'gunna' lesson, you have to follow through.
I have been criticised many times for being over-ambitious, but no matter how hard the challenge was I have always pulled it off. I have been guilty of sprouting gunnaisms, but my concept to manifestation ratio is right up there with the best.
You see we are all gunnas to a certian extent, but the difference is what happens when the bullshit stops and the work has to start. The gunnas with balls follow through, no matter how hard it is. No matter how small an idea is, its just not going to work if you don't put time into it. Dave knew that, but Sean could never see the benefits.
Experimentation is great. I would have never gotten this far and had as much fun as I've had if I hadn't experemented. Let's see. There was the chilli infused beer that I brewed, not too bad actually. The 'flying to a foreign country with no job, nowhere to stay, and only $90' experiment was an interesting one, worked out quite well actually. The tomato sauce on ice-cream experiment didn't go down too well though. Nor did 'Operation Bushpig', which I can't tell you about iIt was a classified mission).
You often have to experiment to achieve anything in this life, outcomes could be positive or shithouse, that's the chance you take, but we learn fom these things. Anywaythis guy has that spirit of experimentation. Check it out.
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I have read Jack Brabham's autobiography many times over and every time I open the book I'm always facinated by how a young man growing up in the suburbs of Sydney could become one of the greatest racing drivers of all time.
It is truly an amazing, inspiring story, and a must read for anyone who believes, or wants to believe in the power that we each have inside ourselves.
Brabham won the F1 world title 3 times in 1959, 1960 and 1966. He is Australia's greatest racing driver ever in my book. Forget about the likes of Brock, Johnson or Lowdnes, Jack Brabham is the man
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I've never been especially concerned about fashion and styles in cars, music or anything. I'm the typical "I dunno art, but I know what I like"¯ kind of guy. When I said I liked Dire Straits in year 4, the class as one made an "ewwww" noise and scrunched their faces as if they'd just licked a lemon arsehole. When I said I liked KISS, they all laughed, even my teacher. But I didn't care, I knew that I was right and they were missing out.
Anyway fast forward a few years to a small farm shed on the outskirts of the country town I grew up in. I was standing looking at this incredibly small purple Honda. I knew I had seen them before (a guy in high school had one) but I had never realised how cool they were. Now, here's where you say "ewww", ready? I was totally in awe of the pretty little Honda Z360 Hardtop.
These were the predecessor to the first series Civic which came in 1974-5
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Mr. Choi's question threw me. Would I like to drive the TVR Tuscan around for the day? Me. Drive the Tuscan? The blue Tuscan? The $120,000 Tuscan? The 0-100km in 4.5 seconds Tuscan that would spit an inexperienced driver into the scenery given the chance?
Any comparative, no matter how witty, would have been adequate to convey how much I wanted to. I nodded, afraid my voice would betray my nervousness. I took the keys and walked, with great trepidation, toward the beautiful TVR.
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8 Posts dating from March 2008
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