ethanfitz
New member
I have been lurking on here for well over a year now posting my problems here and there... so I thought it was about time I started one of these. Here it goes:
My first car ever (despite being 23 at the time) the brilliant 1.4 Puma. I looked for ages and ages, once I saw the puma I couldn't get it out of my mind, after driving one I was hooked!!! I went for a 1.4 purely because of the price of my insurance...
This is how she started out:
what a beauty :grin:
I had no problems for ages... then disaster pot holes dented 1 of my wheels and I had to pump up my tyre every 2 days!!! So I got a spare off e-bay... a few weeks later another 2 started leaking air due to dents (one of them being the ebay replacement) instead of risking it again I decided to replace them all with new ones.... That's when I joined Project Puma and got waaaaaay to many ideas....
I settled on these that I got for a great price:
After that (also moving to Suffolk in the process), I went a bit mad... mainly thanks to this site :thumbs:
A stripe followed (not to everyone's tastes but I loved it)...
And little side logos...
Door kick plate trims...
Mmmm shiny ....
I also put in a full leather trim new osram night breaker headlight bulbs (soooooo much better than the Phillips that were in there), new side light bulbs, fixed the glove box and the parcel shelf, upgraded the speakers/head-unit and added mud flaps.
But I wanted more... looking through peoples projects gave me too many ideas... however I only had a 1.4 so I waited...
The day of my insurance renewal quote .... YES !!! Sooooo much cheaper.... so I started a looking for a 1.7 I could put my stamp on....
I ended up taking home this... (you may know it)
OHHH yes....
1.7 plus:
Coilovers
FRP rear axle (so no ugly drums + widened track)
Fantastic colour
4-2-1 manifold
And a host of other bits..
All well and good, or so I thought...
That picture was taken outside Halfords while I was locked out of the car after driving it home !!!
What a great start!!!!
Turned out the connections in the key remote had broken and the door locks were pretty jammed... after getting her broken into and driving her home I managed to eventually get the passenger door lock working (lots of lubrication and wiggling later that is). After sorting out the key issue I thought I would tackle raising the suspension as the previous owner had it slammed down which was ruining the ride for me.
This was the view in my local parking area when I finally got her home:
Beautiful :lol: the middle one turned out to be my next door neighbors and I still owned the black one ;p
Firstly I removed the FRP front seats (as I preferred my leather ones) and the other (very VERY badly put in) interior. Botch job is an understatement, I know it used to be stripped for a track car but he put an interior in for resale, it was god awful.... a trip to the local scrappy where I took home every interior clip, some boot carpet, some fuses and a few other botched together bits I had to replace.... It's a good thing I was enjoying myself....
I ended up putting the original interior back in the black car and my leather one migrated to the new green car, along with the kick plates, puma mats, mud guards, osram bulbs (replacing the rubbish HID kit), basically everything I done to the 1.4 found it's way into the 1.7 (except the white wheels).
Once I got the interior to how I wanted it (I can't list the amount of botch jobs I found along the way) I went to tackle the suspension.... Oh dear....
The previous owner had stripped all the grub screws in the ap coilovers.... Brilliant!!! After multiple attempts to drill, torx, and lubricate out the little buggers I took it to a local garage, thankfully the only one near that would touch coilovers turned out to be fantastic!
I ended up having to buy new locking rings and the garage chopped off the old ones and I got it raised up.... ohhhhhh.... sooooo much better. All this ended up costing me a third of the price of buying new coilovers... thankfully the sale of the FRP front seats covered that...
I also cleaned up all the windows and lights, stripping the tinted effect the previous owner had painted on. Which in my opinion was nothing more than dangerous blocking vision and lights!
Next I set about changing that UGLY green splatter the previous owner had on some of the interior parts... So I went wild......
And sprayed it Ford Electric Orange:
The keen eyed may also notice the green and orange detail I added to the gear knob... I also added a hit of orange to the outside. Not to everyone's tastes but I love it. (I moved house again during all this).
Next I upgraded the speakers, bigger orange EDGE component ones to go with my interior, (you can see them through the grills at the right angles), they are brilliant.
After a good winter clean here is how she looks now:
The next things on my list include 16" wheels (that I have acquired) for the 300mm brake upgrade that I want and to sort the damn ABS out... I will post more on that soon...
What do you think? Writing this has knackered me out so that's it for now... More updates coming soon
Happy New Year everyone.
My first car ever (despite being 23 at the time) the brilliant 1.4 Puma. I looked for ages and ages, once I saw the puma I couldn't get it out of my mind, after driving one I was hooked!!! I went for a 1.4 purely because of the price of my insurance...
This is how she started out:
what a beauty :grin:
I had no problems for ages... then disaster pot holes dented 1 of my wheels and I had to pump up my tyre every 2 days!!! So I got a spare off e-bay... a few weeks later another 2 started leaking air due to dents (one of them being the ebay replacement) instead of risking it again I decided to replace them all with new ones.... That's when I joined Project Puma and got waaaaaay to many ideas....
I settled on these that I got for a great price:
After that (also moving to Suffolk in the process), I went a bit mad... mainly thanks to this site :thumbs:
A stripe followed (not to everyone's tastes but I loved it)...
And little side logos...
Door kick plate trims...
Mmmm shiny ....
I also put in a full leather trim new osram night breaker headlight bulbs (soooooo much better than the Phillips that were in there), new side light bulbs, fixed the glove box and the parcel shelf, upgraded the speakers/head-unit and added mud flaps.
But I wanted more... looking through peoples projects gave me too many ideas... however I only had a 1.4 so I waited...
The day of my insurance renewal quote .... YES !!! Sooooo much cheaper.... so I started a looking for a 1.7 I could put my stamp on....
I ended up taking home this... (you may know it)
OHHH yes....
1.7 plus:
Coilovers
FRP rear axle (so no ugly drums + widened track)
Fantastic colour
4-2-1 manifold
And a host of other bits..
All well and good, or so I thought...
That picture was taken outside Halfords while I was locked out of the car after driving it home !!!
What a great start!!!!
Turned out the connections in the key remote had broken and the door locks were pretty jammed... after getting her broken into and driving her home I managed to eventually get the passenger door lock working (lots of lubrication and wiggling later that is). After sorting out the key issue I thought I would tackle raising the suspension as the previous owner had it slammed down which was ruining the ride for me.
This was the view in my local parking area when I finally got her home:
Beautiful :lol: the middle one turned out to be my next door neighbors and I still owned the black one ;p
Firstly I removed the FRP front seats (as I preferred my leather ones) and the other (very VERY badly put in) interior. Botch job is an understatement, I know it used to be stripped for a track car but he put an interior in for resale, it was god awful.... a trip to the local scrappy where I took home every interior clip, some boot carpet, some fuses and a few other botched together bits I had to replace.... It's a good thing I was enjoying myself....
I ended up putting the original interior back in the black car and my leather one migrated to the new green car, along with the kick plates, puma mats, mud guards, osram bulbs (replacing the rubbish HID kit), basically everything I done to the 1.4 found it's way into the 1.7 (except the white wheels).
Once I got the interior to how I wanted it (I can't list the amount of botch jobs I found along the way) I went to tackle the suspension.... Oh dear....
The previous owner had stripped all the grub screws in the ap coilovers.... Brilliant!!! After multiple attempts to drill, torx, and lubricate out the little buggers I took it to a local garage, thankfully the only one near that would touch coilovers turned out to be fantastic!
I ended up having to buy new locking rings and the garage chopped off the old ones and I got it raised up.... ohhhhhh.... sooooo much better. All this ended up costing me a third of the price of buying new coilovers... thankfully the sale of the FRP front seats covered that...
I also cleaned up all the windows and lights, stripping the tinted effect the previous owner had painted on. Which in my opinion was nothing more than dangerous blocking vision and lights!
Next I set about changing that UGLY green splatter the previous owner had on some of the interior parts... So I went wild......
And sprayed it Ford Electric Orange:
The keen eyed may also notice the green and orange detail I added to the gear knob... I also added a hit of orange to the outside. Not to everyone's tastes but I love it. (I moved house again during all this).
Next I upgraded the speakers, bigger orange EDGE component ones to go with my interior, (you can see them through the grills at the right angles), they are brilliant.
After a good winter clean here is how she looks now:
The next things on my list include 16" wheels (that I have acquired) for the 300mm brake upgrade that I want and to sort the damn ABS out... I will post more on that soon...
What do you think? Writing this has knackered me out so that's it for now... More updates coming soon
Happy New Year everyone.