This week we had a Peugeot RCZ in with a terrible rattle coming from the timing chain area, after some diagnosis we confirmed it was the timing chain that was at fault (common problem).
The RCZ was a 2010 model with a good service history so the customer decided to get a second opinion from the local Peugeot Dealer as they thought a five year old car that had been looked after shouldn’t have this kind of problem!
The Peugeot Dealer carried out a diagnostic on the car and confirmed it was indeed the timing chain that was at fault and proceeded to give our customer a quote for the work to be carried out.
When they returned to the garage with the Dealers quote we put our own quote together and it was considerably cheaper than the Peugeot Dealers price. The RCZ was left with us to carry out the repair.
After stripping all the covers off of the engine to be able to see the timing chain and fit the timing chain locking tools, to our surprise the chain must have stretched quite significantly as the camshaft locking tool wouldn’t fit correctly until we slackened the pulley bolts!
Once the new timing chain kit was fitted and the engine was rebuilt it was time for a quick oil and filter change.
Now it was time to start the engine and see what difference the replacement parts had made, The engine sounded a lot quieter and seemed to run very smooth indeed.
Clio 172 Turbo! thats not something you see every day, this one came in to us for an MOT, Track tyres and rectify a fault with the rear brakes to get it ready for a trackday at Bedford.
This customer wanted us to supply and fit one of our Pure Motorsport Gear Selector kits to his Clio 182.
These kits are a lovely mod for your trackday / race car, they give you a crisp definite gear change and because the actual gear stick is higher and slightly set back it has that race car feel about it.
Aarons Autos are a supplier of Pure Motorsport Products so check out our Pure Motorsport page for our products and prices.
A beautiful classic, the Sierra RS Cosworth, this one had the 24v conversion which has become a common mod for the old Ford.
It came to us with a severe oil leak from the rocker cover gaskets (common problem) the customer had supplied us with some upgraded gaskets to fit.
To get to the rocker cover gaskets on the Cosworth 24v engine you first have to remove the inlet manifold and a few ancillaries, once they are removed its just a matter of removing the rocker covers and old gaskets.
We cleaned the rocker covers and fitted the new gaskets following the specific instructions supplied with the upgraded gaskets, we had to slightly modify the old bolts and sleeves to help compress the new gaskets.
Refit the inlet manifold and ancillaries clean off all the excess oil that had been leaking previously then run the engine up and get the oil up to temperature and check for leaks.
This little Yaris came into Aarons Autos with a nasty rattle coming from the engine and the customerwas almost ready to scrap the car after some of the quotes she had received to replace the stretched timing chain!
We gave the lady a quote she was happy with and placed the car on the ramp ready for strip down, once the timing chain cover was removed it was clear that the problem was indeed a stretched timing chain causing the rattle.
We checked the Vanos unit (Valve Timing Pulley) which was fine. Next we fitted the new timing chain kit, rebuilt the engine using all new gaskets and replaced the oil and filter, it was now time to start the engine and see how quiet it was in comparison to when it came in!
It purred like a kitten, and to say the customer was happy is an under statement.
This lovely Insignia VXR came into us with its owner complaining of a slightly slippy clutch, so after a simple road test to confirm the problem and a fair quote given to the customer we set about replacing the worn clutch.
The clutch replacement on this particular model of Insignia is not a straight forward job! first of all you need to remove the whole exhaust system,
and then the main sub frame before you can even even access the gearbox.
Not a problem at Aarons Autos though as our fully skilled technicians are trained to handle even the trickiest, time consuming and challenging jobs.
After removing the gearbox and clutch we checked the Dual Mass Flywheel for excessive play, but it was well within tolerance so we set about fitting the new clutch kit and hydraulic slave cylinder then rebuilding the car.
Once the car was finished and road tested it was time to hand it back to a very happy customer.
The week commencing our first race of the season at Donington Park I was getting myself and the car ready for its first outing since the winter rebuild when Dave decided to drop a bombshell on me “Im going to race”! for those of you that don’t know he has been in agony with his back for the last few months and had said he probably wouldn’t race this season.
This was great news even if I was a little concerned about his decision but it meant we would be racing as a team which is always more fun and more of a buzz.
This year we are racing with 750 Motor Club in there Roadsports series.
Race day comes and we arrive at Donington around 7.00am and manage to share a garage with Steve Hewson (Trackday Instructor) who was racing his mighty supercharged 106, we got ourselves setup and headed for signing on.
Qualifying soon came around and by this time the heavens had opened and it was wet, very wet! this was good for us because we had noticed from walking around the paddock that most of the cars we were racing against were a lot faster than our humble little Clio and they were mainly rear wheel drive.
Dave went out first and set a reasonable time (limited on laps as its only a 20 min qualifying and you have to do a minimum of three laps each) then i went out and was on average five seconds a lap slower but then i got a clear lap and beat Dave’s time which put us at P5 on the grid.
So Race time, Dave starts and gets a great start and grabs 4th place by the second corner but further back in the field there was a serious incident which collected several cars and meant ‘Safety Car’ after a couple of laps giving the marshals time to clear the wreckage the safety car headed in and we were racing again only to have the ‘Safety Car’ pulled out again after one lap!
The incident from the first lap had caused oil and coolent to be spilt all over Red Gate corner causing cars to spin and slide, after several laps the safety car came in and it was time to get racing again we had dropped back several places due to cars overtaking under yellow flags and not being seen by marshals but Dave was hot on there heels and trying to grab places back.
Pit stop time which in one hand was a complete mess up but in the other it was brilliant! as Dave was passing the pit wall i put my thumb up to tell him he was doing well but he took that as ‘its time to pit’ so on the next lap when I had the pit board out ready to show him he pulled into the pits! I was not ready for him so I leapt from the pit wall pulling my gloves on whilst running to the car and we managed to do a reasonable pit stop time of 1.24 and then it was my turn.
I had no idea what position we were in the race as we usually use radios to pass information from the pit to the driver (not allowed at Dono due to the airport) and we are a bit rusty with the old pit board, I decided that the only thing to do was drive fast and pass everything i could see, this worked well until the next ‘Safety Car’ which meant i was stuck behind a BMW Compact Cup Car that decided he didn’t want to catch up with the rest of the pack and just drive around at 30mph!!! FRUSTRATING, once the green flags were shown i had to wait till we got to the start finish line before i was allowed to overtake him. I managed to get past couple of other cars before the chequered flag but was past by two class A cars a BMW M3 and a very fast MR2 which i later found out were racing for first place.
As i came into the pits i still had no idea where we had finished so drove round the back of the paddock where Dave told me we had finished 12th overall and 7th in class! I felt gutted, but anyone who knows Dave knows he is a terrible liar, he finally told me we were 1st in class and 4th overall (3rd overall after the M3 got disqualified for overtaking under yellows) I started punching the steering wheel with joy, it was a far better result than we had expected but as we always say ‘Go for the win’
We would like to say a massive thank you to all our sponsors Sign Design Derby, M J Boyce Ltd, Wilkinson Coachbuilders, HB Group, Fast Away Services and Aarons Autos.
