Jii's Puma

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JiiHu

Member
Joined
Oct 15, 2013
Messages
134
Location
Finland
I've been reading everyone elses storys about their Puma's and I thought that I'd show you my Puma :)

I bought my Puma about 4 and half months ago and it was driven 190 000 km (about 118 000 miles). It is 1998 model with 1.7 engine. Car was in quite good condition, eventhough it is driven quite much. Cambelt was changed about 20k km (~13k miles) ago when I got the car. I have now driven about 6k km with it. Also rust on the rear arches had been taken care of nicely. I haven't done much to to the car but this is mostly because I'm still student (with student budget).

I have mostly focused on audio and upgraded speakers etc. I would like to lower the car some day, but I doubt that it would happen anywhere in the near future.

Things done before me:

  • - Muffler changed
    - Clear side repeaters

Things I have done:

  • - Changed original CD-player to Alpine CDE-173BT
    - Alpine subwoofer + amplifier
    - Installed Rainbow SL-C 6.2 speakers in front
    - JBL 2x60 watts amplifier for Rainbow speakers
    - Dampened doors and boot hatch with STP Silver damping material
    - Led lights to license plate
    - Led light to cabin
    - Tinted rear windows with 20% film
    - Polished lights and whole car

Couple of the first pics I took from Puma. Notice the muffler, which gives slightly better sound than stock one, especially on high rpm. Front bumper, which usually is black on all Pumas, is painted silver by previous owner. I think it looks quite good when it isn't black.

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CD-player changed to Alpine CDE-173BT. It has bluetooth handsfree and audio streaming. Player adapter frame is black because Ford parts dealer said that "this is the only color we have it", so I took it. I should have painted it silver, but it didn't come to my mind then and now I'm too lazy to paint it.

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Rainbow SL-C 6.2 speakers fitted and they sound superb. I had to cut the metal with tin snips so the 6.5" speakers would fit there. I screwed tweeters right to the sail panels. Speakers were 6.5" because I took them from my old car.

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Subwoofer in trunk. Rear deck tray was kinda broken when I got the car so I took it off. Of course I could fix it but I had some problems with the boot solenoid so I'm not putting the tray back, so that I'm able to open the trunk from inside if solenoid gets stuck again.

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Led lights to license plate and cabin. Leds are super bright compared to the old bulbs.

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Polished headlights. They should be polished even more, but I will do that later.
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Whole car polished.

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Random pic.
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Heater Control Valve broke and I was 300 kilometres away from home. Luckily we found a way to fix it by bypassing the HCV with pipe connector.

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I changed pollen filter ages ago. Air filter and spark plugs were changed just recently. Pollen filter and air filter were quite bad. Spark plugs weren't so bad, but I changed them anyway since I already had bought them :D

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I have considered painting summer rims black. What would you think?
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So that is my Puma, hope you liked :D

There is some service to be done and also winter tires will be changed within a week. Biggest problem now is that Puma wont rev over 5k rpm. This is apparently caused by faulty camshaft position sensor ( http://reallymeansounds.com/forum/threads/ford-puma-1-7-not-revving-over-5000.125414/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ). Does anyone have any idea that what could also cause this?

Also heater control panel doesn't work. It gives the HVC 12 volts all the time, whether it is on hot or cold. It should give 12 volts on cold and 0 volts on hot setting. I cleared this problem by disconnecting the HCV cable and now it gives hot all the time :grin:
 
Hi and welcome! :thumbs:

What a lovely shiny puma - excellent work!
 
So I started to change winter tires the day before yesterday. I had bought new Nokia Hakkapeliitta 8 which were changed to stock Puma rims which had old summer tires. I had chosen size 185/65 tires because summer tires were that size and that size is also the cheapest one. When I fitted first tire, one problem came up. Tire is so big that it is too close to the mud flap. On summer it might not be a problem, but there is a lot of snow and ice in winter which might cause some problems. So I had to take tires back to the seller and they changed 185/60 tires to rims. I had to "downgrade" tires to Nokia Hakkapeliitta 7 so that I wouldn't have to pay anything extra for the tires. I changed tires yesterday and these new tires fit much better than the bigger ones. It started to snow almost immadetialy after I changed the tires so timing was perfect. Of course all the snow melted right away when it touched ground, but it still was snow! Heres a comparison image of tires:

9KjCnUI.jpg
 
I read fault codes of my Puma and found out code P0171 - System Too Lean (Bank 1). This inspired me to finally clean MAF and it was worth cleaning. Car revs now normally and is insanely fast compared to the old situation, where it wouldn't rev over 5krpm. If only I had knew this 6000 km ago... But better late than never!
 
It's been a while since my last post here. After my last post my Puma passed MOT without any notifications, I installed white led lights to drivers and passengers footwells, including backseats, and also changed stock light bulbs to HIDs, which are awesome; finally I can see where I am going. Footwell led-lights will only turn on when the ceiling light turns on, since I don't want that they are always on. Some people have some green/red/blue/rgb leds in footwells but I think white is always more stylish.

I had to change the license number of my Puma since some dick stole license plate from the front, so police had to issue an APB on the old license number so that if someone for example steals gas with the stolen plate on his car, I wouldn't be blamed for it. If I would have kept the old license number I would get pulled over because driving with plates which are marked as stolen. This wouldn't be problem otherwise, but the old license number was carved on all windows. Now there is different license number on windows and on plates :(

There is also a little problem: speedometer seems to waggle sometimes a little. This has happened randomly few times but it especially happens when I drive for a while at 80-100kmh (50-60mph) and then slow down to 50kmh (30mph). Does anyone have any idea why this happens? It is not much of a problem but if it is easy to fix, why not to do it.

Puma without front plate.
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Temporary installation. Duct tape was key to the success :D
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Leds in all footwells. Yellow/greenish light comes from a street light.
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New park bulbs. Color difference is quite big.
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HIDs installed. I didn't remember to take a comparison pic with regular bulb on other :(
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Oncoming traffic shouldn't get blinded because of these.
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Inspired by Wild E. Coyote's Ice install thread, I put some STP damping material to the roof. Now the roof wont rattle with the bass. I can recommend this to anyone with sub in their car :D

You can hear the difference in this video I shot:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA25Py8KAg8[/youtube]

Before damping.
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After damping (only one layer of STP).
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I also got a change to install handsfree's microphone properly so that the cable is hidden.
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I have installed damping material also on the boot hatch plastics so that they wouldn't rattle.
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New ceiling light LED to replace the old one. Old one was about 4000k color temperature and the new one is 6000k :) LED looks very big, but it really doesn't give as much as light as you might think. Basic Ebay scam, selling stuff as better as it really is.
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Power to the footwell LEDs come from the ceiling light so that they will be on when the ceiling light is.
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It sure makes a big difference, especially when you have subwoofer. Now the roof wont rattle with the bass and the bass sounds much better and much more precise than before. I didn't have any soft mat to put there so this didn't make much difference to driving noise. I'll need to wait for a next rain to know how it affected to that :D
Now I'll just need to put more STP to doors and boot some day.
 
I gave my Puma a quick wash after winter. She was washed last time at September so this was just quick wash to get the most dirt off. I will polish and shine her some day in the following weeks. Left side rear light has collected big amount of sand inside because it is broken and it needs to be fixed :(
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I also changed fuel filter because the old one was old. I don't know how old it was but it doesn't hurt to change it.
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I also finally got my summer wheels painted. There was nothing else wrong with the old paint than the color :D They will be changed next week. Some (bad) pics of the process below.

Before painting.
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Most of the paint taken away, waiting for painting.
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Finished and drying.
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I finally got summer wheels changed.
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I washed winter wheels with pressure washer and noticed that you shouldn't was the center caps from very close. 16-year-old paint doesn't like it :oops:
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We have a few Fords in our family so I snapped a photo of them.
Sierra - 2.0 DOHC, for ice track
Mondeo mk3 - 2.0 TDCI, my dad's
Puma - 1.7, mine
Cougar - 2.5 V6, my dad's old, nowadays my mom drives it
AfqkKAj.jpg


I also noticed that the heater control panel isn't broken as I thought in my first post:
Also heater control panel doesn't work. It gives the HVC 12 volts all the time, whether it is on hot or cold. It should give 12 volts on cold and 0 volts on hot setting. I cleared this problem by disconnecting the HCV cable and now it gives hot all the time :grin:
I just plugged the cable back to my Ebay HCV and it works like a dream, eventhough it didn't work at autumn. But I think I should replace the HCV with proper one so it won't cause any problems in the future.
 
I washed, polished and waxed my Puma. She is super shiny now. It doesn't look so good on pictures because I only had my phone with me but I think you can get the idea. Headlights are now much brighter than before. They are almost like new ones.

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Next on to-do list:
- Paint radio fascia silver
- Install boot open button
- Install STP mat on rear cards and behind them
- Fix gear linkage under the car since the gearstick is tizzing a bit
- Tint rear window again because old tinting wasn't done so properly as it could have been
 
The other rear light had gathered some dust inside of it. I looked closely and glue was worn off from the bottom. So I just drained some water in and out couple of times, let it dry, glued it together and it was good as new. Apart from the hole which previous owner made to get the moisture out of there (can be seen on last image). And the cracks which caused the moisture. :roll:

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Thanks!
evilrob said:
I really love this shot:
To be honest, that was the least planned shot. And I didn't notice until at home how nicely horizon reflects from the light. Next time I should take DSLR with me to get proper photos.
 

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