"El Puma"

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JAC

New member
Joined
Oct 22, 2015
Messages
222
Some of you may have read my "newbie" post, well today I picked up my new (to me) car.

Although I had driven a few Puma's over the years, they were never much more than a test drive, but today I got to do a 200km drive home, mostly motorway, but also some nice secondary road bends that I "visited" on the way.

I must say, this car is great!

My intention was to do my normal routine, drive it for a few months before deciding on what (if anything) needs changing/upgrading.

Unfortunately, the 2 hour drive home was enough to decide that suspension and brakes need upgrading, hence the reaon for me starting a "project" thread.

The suspension I feel is just old, it has done 120.000km and never been changed, but seeing that I need to change it, I will probably upgrade at the same time.

The brakes on the other hand... are scary! When braking with any kind of force, the car feels as though the ABS is kicking in (which I doubt, as it should have been nowhere near the point of engaging) and sometimes I was not convinced that it was going to stop. I will take a look this weekend to see if the pads are worn or crystalized (is that the correct term in English?), but I think an upgrade will be in order.

This is nowhere near the fastest or most powerful car I have owned/driven, but it sticks to the road like glue, even with the suspension that is not 100%. Driving it over 3500rpm is a lot of fun and I was very suprised that I didn't find the "limit" of the car (I usually find a small cars limits pretty quickly ;) ), it certainly kept a smile on my face.

The thing that suprised me the most about the car is how new it feels. As I said in my "newbie" post, it has had one owner since new, who is in his seventies, so I doubt it has ever been pushed. It looks like he cleaned it at least every week, without using any products, so the interior is spotless. Everything is original (except for changes due to maintenance), the spare wheel has never been lowered, the ashtray seems to have never been opened (it still smells of new plastic after 17 years!?!?!), and the back seats have probably never been sat in. He gave me a full service history, all done at the Ford dealers, with invoices etc.

The owner spent 30 minutes explaining every detail of the car, and how it works, which would usually bore me, but you could tell he was really proud of his car, in fact, at one point I thought he was going to shed a tear or two.

Anyways, enough rambling (sorry, I am just happy I guess)! Unfortunately it was dark when I got home, so I will have to take some pics over the weekend, but here are two from the listing.

pumasales2_zpshe5mlmis.jpg


pumasales1_zpsb8difksd.jpg
 
Step 1...

Well, I thought that the first step would be the brakes and cambelt (along with an oil change etc.), but "El Puma" had other ideas, and decided to make things a little more difficult :p

As we went to open the bonnet to check a few things before buying the parts, pulled the lever and... nothing!

The cable hasn't snapped, it just seems to have disconnected itself at the bonnet end, so I can't just pull on the cable.

We tried all kinds of ways of getting our hands in there to reach the latch, but to no avail. We tried removing the screws from the small grill with the logo, but of course, that would be too easy if it just came out.

Unfortunately, we hadn't planned on doing any actual work on the car, so we only had basic tools with us, which weren't enough to remove the front bumper, so after an hour or so we gave up and decided to try again this evening with a few more tools.

Oh, and of course, the screws we removed from the grill refused to go back, so I have a rattling grill now also :roll:

So, STEP 1 = FAIL! (for now)

Here are a couple of pics trying to see how long our arms are :-D

IMG_20151103_182454regwht_zpsysiwe5tk.jpg


IMG_20151103_182446_zpsfzqthmrf.jpg
 
This happened to me when my battery went so flat i couldn't even open the car to pull the bonnet lever. Luckily i have removed the grill already so i managed to push the catch with a long screwdriver, but even that was a fiddly job, so with the grill in it'll be an absolute nightmare.
 
Step 1 (continued)...

So, armed with more tools, we attacked the Puma again this evening.

After a lot of patience, followed by a lot of swearing, followed by more patience and even more swearing, we managed to get the front end off the car. The drivers side (on the left here ;) ) was actually not that bad, it still involved a lot of patiences, but once we removed the wheel arch cover, the bolt behind it (which is strategically place to not allow a socket in, and to only allow a spanner to turn 1.2mm at a time!), two more bolts and the main bolt inside the hole (which if you drop the bolt you will never see it again), the left was free.

The other side however, was a completely different story. One of the bolts is located behind the air-con and took us literally 30 minutes to get out (and another 30 to get back in!).

Anyways, here it is with the front end removed:

IMG_20151104_194234_zps8wnskval.jpg


IMG_20151104_194243_zpsg5iafkmr.jpg


Next was the small grill that holds the logo. Even with the front end off, this was not as easy as one would hope. However, with some slight bending of the bonnet, we got it off:

IMG_20151104_194354_zpskqelngub.jpg


IMG_20151104_194635_zps7v3lzhek.jpg


With the grill off, giving us that extra 2cm of space ;) we removed the bonnet lock from the chassis:

IMG_20151104_194959_zps9gue7gzi.jpg


We could now, finally, open the bonnet. Here is the lock still hanging:

IMG_20151104_195011_zpscrlq3sok.jpg


So, after removing the lock from the bonnet (if anyone does this, be very careful with the spring as it is very strong and will hurt if it catches any soft parts), and mounted it back on to the chassis.

With the lock mounted, we now saw the problem that caused the failure:

IMG_20151104_195638_zpsvairg9up.jpg


As you can see, the cable is much longer than it needs to be, and there is nothing to stop it coming out of the top of the channel it sits in. It seems that hitting a bump or something had caused it to jump out of it postion, so no matter how the cable was pulled, it would never have opened.

We searched around to see if the Puma had some kind of system to tense the cable, but it seems there isn't a tensioner. As both ends are moulded onto the cable, there is also no way of adding anything to the cable, unless maybe you could find some kind of screw on holder.

As we didn't have anything that would work, we decided to fix it "Old School" Style... with a hammer :-D :

IMG_20151104_200151_zpspsutoyh1.jpg



So... Step 1 = COMPLETED! :p
 
While uploading photos, can anyone tell me what is the purpose of this black box that hangs under the bonnet?

IMG_20151104_205801_zpsm4lqlbvp.jpg


IMG_20151104_205808_zpszdvmnucb.jpg
 
As Barry said: a Helmholz resonator that is supposed to brake the standing wave that would otherwise form in front of the bulkhead and make the engine nicer to hear when driving your car. That is the theory. Guys who removed it swear there is no difference. Having said that, I still have mine :|
 
That damn bonnet issue happend to mine. Now I can see the mechanic earned those 30€. He used a zip-tie to prevent it from happening again. What a silly design by Ford.

I have kept the resonator, I think I noticed a difference when tried the car without it.

If you keep taking pictures when you do serious work on it, changing brakes and other parts, it will be great.
 
Step 2...

Just a very simple step 2, change of oil filter, fuel filter and air filter, along with some nice Castrol 5W30.

I won't bother with photos, well, maybe just one for proof:

IMG_20151106_164722_zpszxfxl0va.jpg


I forgot to buy the polen filter, and when we checked it, lets say that it is currently matte black. I guess I should get around to that later.

We also looked at the cambelt, just to see if we could see any signs of it being changed, as the previous owner said he didn't know (and it's not in the history). The belt doesn't look like it is about to disintegrate (famous last words) but I have no idea if it has been changed or not as the owner only ever went to the official Ford, so the belt would be Ford anyway, my guess is that it hasn't.

One thing we did notice is that the belt is to the far left of the pulleys, completely flush with the outer left hand side. Is this normal?

Heres a pic:
IMG_20151106_172343_zpsrkmebuow.jpg
 
JAC said:
One thing we did notice is that the belt is to the far left of the pulleys, completely flush with the outer left hand side. Is this normal?
In a word; no.

You can actually see a line on the pulleys where the belt has been sat, and it's clearly walked forward a bit, which is never a good sign, as it'll start to rub on the cover and then go bye-bye. Some investigation needs doing, as it may be a broken tensioner or something.
 
Thanks TGPlayer1, I plan on having the belt changed next week so hopefully it won't go "bye-bye" until then.
 
Well, "El Puma" is still at the doctors, the part has still not arrived. I am missing the car big time, plus it's bloody cold on a motorbike at the moment!

I just hope the part fixes it when it finally arrives!
 
Hello Jac.
I found a cambelt much like that on a puma.
After a bit of investigation I found the tensioner wheel was a little wobbly, meaning it was trying to throw the belt off. Only the cover keeps it on.
If it were left. The tensioner would fail. spectacularly..
 
UPDATE:

The part finally arrived today and was fitted, unfortuntely it only seems to have "moved" the issue, and not fixed it.

For those of you that didn't see my "HELP ME" thread (http://www.projectpuma.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=28914" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) this is what has happened...

The issue was that when the cambelt was removed, as you can see above, the belt was totally flush with the outside of the pulleys, in fact, it was actually overhanging by a couple of mm on the inlet pulley.

After installing the cambelt kit, the belt immediately walked to the same position that it was with the old belt and tensioner, overhanging by a few mm on the back pulley. Even if the belt was installed on the inside of the pulleys, after 2 turns it would be back to the same position again. This overhang was enough for the belt to rub on the inside of the cover.

The exact positioning of the belt was overhanging by 2mm at the back of the inlet pulley, overhanging by about 1mm at the front of the inlet pulley, overhanging by 0.5mm at the back of the exhaust pulley and flush with the edge at the front of the exhaust pulley. This lead the mechanic to belive that the issue was with the crank shaft pulley, as the top two pulleys were trying to put the belt back in its place, but as soon as it went down through the crank pulley and back up, it was out by 2mm again.

When we tried to order the crank shaft pulley, it turns out that there was a modification by ford at somepoint, and to cut a long story short, more things needed changing, which added another 250€ on to the bill.

So, after biting the bullet and ordering the new parts, they finally arrived today. After changing the crankshaft pulley, the problem is a lot less pronounced, and in a different place?!?!

Now, the belt enters the back of the inlet pulley flush with the outside of the pulley, leaves the front of the inlet pulley overhanging by about 0.5mm, enters the back of the exhaust pulley flush, and is about 0.5mm inside the exhaust pulley when it leaves it at the front.

As before, no matter how many turns of the engine (we tried about 300 turns by hand), this is where is stays!

The current position of the belt means it no longer rubs on the cover, but it is still not perfect. We discarded an issue with the tensioner, as both the old tensioner and new tensioner leave the belt in exactly the same place (and there is no "wobbling"), so the only other options would be the inlet and exhaust pulleys.

As the current position shouldn't cause issues to the belt, we came to the conclusion that I will drive the car as it is, and open the top of the cambelt cover weekly to see if there is any change or visible rubbing/damage, then in about a month, we will remove the cover again and check the condition to see what has happened. If there is any change, then the inlet pulley will be next on the list :(
 

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