Panther black Puma from Prague

[yippeekiay]

Shame you scratched the steering column shroud - YES...I spotted it!!!!

Otherwise nice job

 

[MerthO]

Damn it, I hoped this would go unnoticed! I unfortunately lost concentration with a file in hand. Luckily it is not so visible, if you don’t look closely. But I have some more work to do!

Shame you scratched the steering column shroud - YES...I spotted it!!!!

Otherwise nice job

 

[MerthO]

Haven’t done much on the Puma lately, but I had the spare wheel tray media blasted and then had it sprayed with black zinc phosphate coating. So now there is no more rusty metal lurking from under the rear bumper!







I have also washed the underbody and wheel wells of the car and treated all the spots, where surface rust started to show, with a wire brush and rust-killer and then sprayed them and other exposed bits of the underbody with underbody wax. I unfortunately forgot to take any photos, so you will have to believe my words, that the car is still luckily pretty rust free. I did this just as a precaution and preparation for the upcoming winter.
EDIT: I found two photos I took of the car on the lift after I washed the underbody and the left front wheel well

 

[Dolomite16v]

Did the same job on my Puma recently, well worth doing

 

[MerthO]

Not much going on with the Puma lately. I have been busy with school and work and I had to do some work on my girlfriend's Skoda Fabia. Also the weather is starting to be a little bit cold to work on the car outside. So at least I took my gear stick and handbrake lever covers to be reupholstered since I have found some tears on them. I am extremely pleased with the result! The guy at the local upholstery shop had a look at the interior to get the right color of the material to match the dashboard. I guess this was one of the last jobs I have done on the car this year, if something urgent doesn't come up (hope not!). Only thing left is switching to winter tires.




Please don't mind the dirty carpets!

 

[yippeekiay]

Nice job

 

[MerthO]

Haven´t given any updates on my Puma for a long time. Since I bought a second car as my daily (2004 Opel Vectra C GTS), I had the Puma decomissioned (I don't know ho to call it in English - I submitted the license plates to the local vehicle register office and then did not have to pay the insurance for the car) and stored her away in the beginning of December. I have put her back on license plates this monday and gave her a quick wash and used her for the whole week. I noticed some minor hiccups, but the car was running perfectly fine...until today.



Today, I took the car for a short trip and it was running perfectly fine. But then I was parking the car at my girlfriend's when I suddenly started smelling petrol. I thought it was just some odor picked up by the aircon....it wasnt, the Puma had pissed herself.
It seems like a line had ruptured, when I started backing up into the parking spot.



View attachment IMG_3639.MOV

I suspect it is a return line, since it is leaking only when the engine is running, it doesn't leak when the key is turned on and the fuel pump is priming, when I shut the car off, it stops.
Unfortunately the leak was too severe and I didn't want to risk it driving home (about 40km). Luckily a friend with a trailer lives nearby and he was so kind to come pick me up immediately.



This was the first time in the five years of Puma ownership, that the Puma left me stranded (I do not count the one time I crashed her in France ). When we got the car home I looked under it and found the potential culprit of the problem....perished lines. This is how the line from the pump to the fuel filter looks like:


I had changed all the lines at the fuel tank about 3 years ago and this is how perished they are now. They are either ****** quality or maybe they are not meant for petrol at all, even though the autoparts store advertised them as petrol lines. And to think that I still hadn't run the car on the E10 petrol that is mandatory here in the Czech Republic since the beginning of the year (i still have E5 with additives in the tank from when I put the car away for winter), I think that would accelerate the process even more. One or the other, I have a fuel lines replacement on my hands. Since I do not daily the Puma anymore I will also refurbish the thank, while I am at it. There is already some surface rust lurking on the welds, so I will strip all of the rust and paint and repaint it. I will also replace the fuel pump, since there is still probably the original one.
At least the car keeps me entertained.

 

[John Woodward]

Poor quality parts, especially fuel hose can cause problems, even using E5 petrol.

 

[red]

Hope you get it back up and running soon!

Here in the UK we don't hand the registration plates in as such, we have something called statutory off road notification "SORN" which is where you don't have to pay the annual vehicle tax because you've declared that the car will not be used.

 

[MerthO]

Poor quality parts, especially fuel hose can cause problems, even using E5 petrol.

I have learnt this the hard way. Colleague of mine has recommended braided fuel lines from Gates, they should be a good quality but still for reasonable price, so I will give them a go.

 

[John Woodward]

I have learnt this the hard way. Colleague of mine has recommended braided fuel lines from Gates, they should be a good quality but still for reasonable price, so I will give them a go.

That sounds good, there is so much rubbish out there, even some branded items are poor.
I was told my someone that a friend ordered a 100 wheel bearings from somewhere in China and they asked what name they'd like on, SKF, Timken etc. could have been used, so just counterfeit part's.

 

[MerthO]

Hope you get it back up and running soon!

Here in the UK we don't hand the registration plates in as such, we have something called statutory off road notification "SORN" which is where you don't have to pay the annual vehicle tax because you've declared that the car will not be used.

Yeah, I believe that the local governing bodies do not have much trust in people not to run the cars even without the vehicle insurance (we do not have to pay vehicle tax as private entities, only businesses have this obligation - for now!), so we have to hand in the license plates with part of the registration documents (so nobody sells the car while it is in "deposit"). If you keep the car in deposit longterm, you have to renew it after some time, otherwise the vehicle register office will scrap the plates with the documentation and then the car cannot be registered ever again (only if it is +30 years old, then it can be re-registered as a classic car) and is only good for scrap. Yeah...our rules for vehicle registration rules are quite complicated.

 

[MerthO]

There haven't been an update on the Puma for quite some time, so here is what has been going on lately.

I have fixed the fuel leak that left me stranded a few posts above. First I had to drainthe tank, because it was almost full when the leak happened.


Then the culprit of it all was fully visible - a pierced feed line.



So when the tank was out of the car anyway I changed the fuel pump for a new Bosch unit. And I have also took care of the fuel tank itself a little bit.



And here it is ready to go back in the car.

When the tank was back in the car, it started right up and has been running well. It just cranks a little little longer to start, when the car is cold and the outside temperature is above approx. 10°C, but that is something it has been doing for longer, I just didn't get to fixing it yet.
When I fixed the fuel leak, the car passed it's emission and technical inspection with flying colors and no recorded failure, so it is good to go for another two years.
Other than that I haven't done much to the Puma this year yet. I have been busy attending to my other car (fixing rusty exhaust, rebuilding high pressure fuel pump, PCV valve and so on..) or I have been helping my friends fix their car. So I hope I will get more time for the Puma in the summer, when my exam period ends.

 

[MerthO]

When I was preparing the car for the technical inspection, I noticed that the boot around the shifting rod (I dunno what else to call it) is a bit oily.

I suppse that there is a shaft seal in the gearbox case that is not sealing anymore? I haven't looked much into it yet. I am planning on dropping the gearbox from the car to change the clutch, which is already quite a bit worn and I can hear the bearing whine when in the biting point (at least I hope it is the clutch bearing, not in the gearbox). So when the gearbox is out, I might just change all the seals.

 

[Jiří Trnka]

Ahoj! Jsem necelý měsíc vlastníkem Pumy a jsem okouzlený. Jelikož jsem skoro o 30let starší již jsem jezdil různými auty, ale Puma mne opravdu okouzlila. Opravdu se zájmem jsem přečetl tvůj příběh s Pumou. Jelikož jsi první čech na kterého jsem narazil tak ti píšu. Další důvod je, že nemusím používat překladač. Pěkný den. S Pumou obzvlášť.

 

[MerthO]

Ahoj! Jsem necelý měsíc vlastníkem Pumy a jsem okouzlený. Jelikož jsem skoro o 30let starší již jsem jezdil různými auty, ale Puma mne opravdu okouzlila. Opravdu se zájmem jsem přečetl tvůj příběh s Pumou. Jelikož jsi první čech na kterého jsem narazil tak ti píšu. Další důvod je, že nemusím používat překladač. Pěkný den. S Pumou obzvlášť.

Ahoj, jsem rád, že jsem tu narazil na krajana! Přeji mnoho šťastných km s Pumou, i po více než 5ti letech mě nepřestává bavit. Navíc komunita kolem těchto aut, jak v Čechách, tak i zde na zahraničních fórech je opravdu skvělá.

P.S.: leží mi doma křídlo na Pumu s brzdovým světlem, neměl bys zájem? Již jsem ho párkrát nabízel v české FB skupině, ale nikdy nebyl zájem. A nechávat ho posílat někomu odsud do zahraničí by bylo celkem drahé.

 

[MerthO]

Haven't done an update on my Puma in quite some while.

I have done only little jobs on the car since the fuel line disaster and most of them were repairs, (funnily enough most of them were around the fuel system again ).
I noticed that the Puma had developed a starting problem. When the car was shut off for a while it was cranking for absurdly long (around 2 seconds) before it fired up and then the exhaust was smelling of petrol and running very rich before the lambda sensor kicked in. So I suspected that the car was overfueling during the start up phase. After doing some diagnostics I have tracked the problem down to the second cylinder injector leaking. Whitin a minute a drop of fuel developed on the tip of the injector when closed.





So I bit the bullet and bought a full set of second hand injectors (for a very good price) and after putting them on the test bench all of them turned out OK. So i just put new O-rings on them, cleaned the ports in the head and put them in the car. And the problem was gone!




My other problem with the fuel system was luckily just a tiny one. One day I left track of fuel drips behind me. I tracked it down to one of the fuel line clamps on the filter being crumpled and it just stopped sealing.




Other than that the Puma has been splendid over the summer and I have only done some regular maintenance.

Now to some tinkering. I have become quite annoyed by having a phone mount on the dash (which also destroyed one of my air vents) and having to use a FM transmitter when I wanted to listen to Spotify (which I do a lot) I have swapped my old Pioneer radio for a second hand 1 DIN touch screen with Apple Carplay and it is working brilliantly. Only thing that bothers me is that it has no physical knob for volume control. So for that I have bought a steering column controller from a Mk1 Focus and plan to implement it to the system as I have seen other guys do on this forum. I have also bought the whole silver surrnound and swapped out the broken air vent.





I have also aquired a set of new headlight rubbers from Emma, so I am planning on restoring my other set of headlight lenses since they are in a better shape from the inside and the current ones are starting to be a little faded.



Because I will be selling my other car, I will have to prepare the Puma for the winter again. But since the winters in the last couple of years are quite weak, it should be no problem. I will just have to keep an eye out for the road salt and wash the underside of the car regularly.

 

[jmw238]

Haven't done an update on my Puma in quite some while.

I have done only little jobs on the car since the fuel line disaster and most of them were repairs, (funnily enough most of them were around the fuel system again ).
I noticed that the Puma had developed a starting problem. When the car was shut off for a while it was cranking for absurdly long (around 2 seconds) before it fired up and then the exhaust was smelling of petrol and running very rich before the lambda sensor kicked in. So I suspected that the car was overfueling during the start up phase. After doing some diagnostics I have tracked the problem down to the second cylinder injector leaking. Whitin a minute a drop of fuel developed on the tip of the injector when closed.

View attachment 13059

View attachment 13061

So I bit the bullet and bought a full set of second hand injectors (for a very good price) and after putting them on the test bench all of them turned out OK. So i just put new O-rings on them, cleaned the ports in the head and put them in the car. And the problem was gone!

View attachment 13062
View attachment 13063

My other problem with the fuel system was luckily just a tiny one. One day I left track of fuel drips behind me. I tracked it down to one of the fuel line clamps on the filter being crumpled and it just stopped sealing.

View attachment 13064
View attachment 13065

Other than that the Puma has been splendid over the summer and I have only done some regular maintenance.

Now to some tinkering. I have become quite annoyed by having a phone mount on the dash (which also destroyed one of my air vents) and having to use a FM transmitter when I wanted to listen to Spotify (which I do a lot) I have swapped my old Pioneer radio for a second hand 1 DIN touch screen with Apple Carplay and it is working brilliantly. Only thing that bothers me is that it has no physical knob for volume control. So for that I have bought a steering column controller from a Mk1 Focus and plan to implement it to the system as I have seen other guys do on this forum. I have also bought the whole silver surrnound and swapped out the broken air vent.

View attachment 13068
View attachment 13067
View attachment 13069

I have also aquired a set of new headlight rubbers from Emma, so I am planning on restoring my other set of headlight lenses since they are in a better shape from the inside and the current ones are starting to be a little faded.

View attachment 13070

Because I will be selling my other car, I will have to prepare the Puma for the winter again. But since the winters in the last couple of years are quite weak, it should be no problem. I will just have to keep an eye out for the road salt and wash the underside of the car regularly.

 

[jmw238]

Your posts are great - full of interest with crystal clear photos.

I'm very fortunate because my own Puma Thunder is in great condition, stays garaged between journeys and I use a different car during the winter months. The result is that it hasn't had any problems that I have had to discuss or seek help with on here .... so far!

 

[Jiří Trnka]

Ahoj, jsem rád, že jsem tu narazil na krajana! Přeji mnoho šťastných km s Pumou, i po více než 5ti letech mě nepřestává bavit. Navíc komunita kolem těchto aut, jak v Čechách, tak i zde na zahraničních fórech je opravdu skvělá.

PS: leží mi doma křídlo na Pumu s brzdovým světlem, neměl bych zájem? Již jsem ho párkrát nabízel v české FB skupině, ale nikdy nebyl zájem. A nechávat ho posílat někomu odsud do zahraničí by bylo celkem drahé.

Děkuji za pozdrav a odpověď. Ano fórum se mi moc líbí a čtu jej postupně skoro celé. Křídlo nejspíš myslíš přesně to co mám na autě i já. Děkuji za nabídku. Ahoj