Knock Knock, who's there ...

Ian H

Ian H

Member
Messages
167
So the 3200 has been 'furloughed' for a while in topical parlance as other toys took priority.
So time for a thorough overhaul as she is approaching 50k miles.
Plugging in the old windows 7 laptop gave me a bunch of diagnostic errors most of which cleared after a reset apart from a front bank Knock sensor error. Many thanks for the excellent guide on how to get to these hidden beauties - took me a little longer than the suggested 4 hours after having to drill out 2 of the seized hex bolts! I was expecting a water leak under the plenum to have caused the problem but found a mouse nest and a few chewed wires! Having checked the old maintenance records from previous owners this is the 2nd mouse nest under the plenum! Will of course swap out the starter motor while replacing the knock sensors - found the alternate Valeo replacement unit for £130 on buycarparts.com. In 2 minds whether to replace the 4 short manifold hoses with Roose ones which I have had for a while. The current hoses all look pretty good and are well sealed.
Couple of other jobs I would really welcome some input on :
  • There is a layer of plastic peeling off the lens of the headlights. Can this be fixed with polishing or is a more significant fix required?
  • The rear wings are showing bubbling corrosion at the front lower edge of the rear wheel arch and on the drivers side where it joins the plastic bumper panle by the battery. Does anyone have experience fixing this (cut out and reweld or bodge with filler) or should I leave it to a body shop? Can anyone recommend a good / reasonably priced body shop in South East?
  • The wheels are ok but could do with rubbing down the mild corrosion and re painting. Same question - can anyone recommend wheel renovation service in South East?
Many thanks as always for the words of wisdom
 
Gecara8183

Gecara8183

Junior Member
Messages
74
Southeast is a big area. I used this chap for headlights 50 quid.grant 07598790907 Maidstone area. Great job. McNealy Brown in Sittingbourne can powder coat a wheel for 40 quid. Hope this helps

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
 
allandwf

allandwf

Member
Messages
10,995
I had my rear arches and door bottoms done by a body shop. We agreed to rub them down and treat them , and repaint. I was informed that this would need done again every few years unless they were cut out and replaced with new metal. I could live with that, a bit like getting stone chips repaired every few years.
 
mikem

mikem

Junior Member
Messages
240
Ian H said:
So the 3200 has been 'furloughed' for a while in topical parlance as other toys took priority.
So time for a thorough overhaul as she is approaching 50k miles.
Plugging in the old windows 7 laptop gave me a bunch of diagnostic errors most of which cleared after a reset apart from a front bank Knock sensor error. Many thanks for the excellent guide on how to get to these hidden beauties - took me a little longer than the suggested 4 hours after having to drill out 2 of the seized hex bolts! I was expecting a water leak under the plenum to have caused the problem but found a mouse nest and a few chewed wires! Having checked the old maintenance records from previous owners this is the 2nd mouse nest under the plenum! Will of course swap out the starter motor while replacing the knock sensors - found the alternate Valeo replacement unit for £130 on buycarparts.com. In 2 minds whether to replace the 4 short manifold hoses with Roose ones which I have had for a while. The current hoses all look pretty good and are well sealed.
Couple of other jobs I would really welcome some input on :
  • There is a layer of plastic peeling off the lens of the headlights. Can this be fixed with polishing or is a more significant fix required?
  • The rear wings are showing bubbling corrosion at the front lower edge of the rear wheel arch and on the drivers side where it joins the plastic bumper panle by the battery. Does anyone have experience fixing this (cut out and reweld or bodge with filler) or should I leave it to a body shop? Can anyone recommend a good / reasonably priced body shop in South East?
  • The wheels are ok but could do with rubbing down the mild corrosion and re painting. Same question - can anyone recommend wheel renovation service in South East?
Many thanks as always for the words of wisdom
Click to expand...
As already mentioned it depends how far you are willing to travel.
I can highly recommend Kent Auto Panels (KAP) in Folkestone for wheel refurbishment. There are a lot of places in my area advertising wheel refurbishment but it turns out they all send them to KAP and charge you extra for the privilage. I had all four wheels on my 4200 refurbished which are split rims. Even though they had to spend extra time seperating the rims, skimming and repainting, they still only charged me the advertised price for 18" wheels.
 
lifes2short

lifes2short

Member
Messages
5,838
Ian H said:
The rear wings are showing bubbling corrosion at the front lower edge of the rear wheel arch and on the drivers side where it joins the plastic bumper panle by the battery. Does anyone have experience fixing this (cut out and reweld or bodge with filler) or should I leave it to a body shop? Can anyone recommend a good / reasonably priced body shop in South East?
Click to expand...

if it's just bubbling up and not too bad then just make sure whoever is going to repair it actually treats the steel with a proper rust neutraliser and then prepped and sprayed correctly, the reason a lot of rust returns and bubbles up under paintwork again is because they (whoever is doing it) don't give a t0ss if the rust returns after a couple of years as long as it looks great when collecting, having used it i can thoroughly recommend POR15 METAL PREP

https://www.frost.co.uk/por15-prep-...2_1601801897_4b140b28ea4bce08f49d869fff766211

2 mice chewing on a film roll, one of them says "i think the book was better"
 
safrane

safrane

Member
Messages
16,892
rust is like cancer... if you don't get it all out is comes back...you have to sacrifice some good metal to make it last longer than a year or so.
 
lifes2short

lifes2short

Member
Messages
5,838
safrane said:
rust is like cancer... if you don't get it all out is comes back...you have to sacrifice some good metal to make it last longer than a year or so.
Click to expand...

quite agree if its perforated/holed and/or steel gone really thin then new steel needs to be let in, however, if it's caught early enough and treated correctly it will not return. i've been using POR15 metal prep for many years and never had any rust return on any areas that didn't require cutting out, it does exactly what it says and shouldn't be confused with all the other sh1te out there
 
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