Hi, I'm new on here. I'm from Malta and I bought my '97 Puma 1.7 Lux as a UK import 2 and a half years ago.
It looked fairly good with some bubbling on the rear arches but I knew that was a common problem on pumas. So after a few months driving her daily as she was, I decided to tackle the problem. Sadly, under that minor bubbling, there was tons of fiberglass and filler which when removed turned into this:
Driver's arch was not too bad and only needed some new metal at both ends. However, the passenger arch disappeared completely. Repair sections were not available. Incidentally, the body shop had a damaged pug 206 driver's wing lying around. He placed it near the puma's other arch and discovered they were almost identical. In addition it was galvanized. Some work was also carried out on the doors' bottom edges and sills. I also replaced the weather strips.
After all the work was carried out:
Mechanically, it proved to be very reliable. Lately however, the car starting to lose power and refused to go beyond the 5000 rpm no matter what. I removed the cat since I was still going for a cat back exhaust but little changed. Then I decided it to have it checked on a computer. This gave two faults: system too lean and faulty vct solenoid valve. I started from the former by cleaning the MAF. Surprisingly, it improved a lot revving all the way up and feeling more powerful. However, it's still not 100% and especially until it warms up it's quite hesitant. So if I find a decently priced second hand vct solenoid, it will go in when the cambelt is changed. I don't whether I should try something else however since the computer gave only those 2 faults.
Future plans are to fit lowering springs, stainless steel exhaust, k&n panel filter and give tons of waxoyl from inside and underneath although in Malta it won't rust again as in the UK.
It looked fairly good with some bubbling on the rear arches but I knew that was a common problem on pumas. So after a few months driving her daily as she was, I decided to tackle the problem. Sadly, under that minor bubbling, there was tons of fiberglass and filler which when removed turned into this:
Driver's arch was not too bad and only needed some new metal at both ends. However, the passenger arch disappeared completely. Repair sections were not available. Incidentally, the body shop had a damaged pug 206 driver's wing lying around. He placed it near the puma's other arch and discovered they were almost identical. In addition it was galvanized. Some work was also carried out on the doors' bottom edges and sills. I also replaced the weather strips.
After all the work was carried out:
Mechanically, it proved to be very reliable. Lately however, the car starting to lose power and refused to go beyond the 5000 rpm no matter what. I removed the cat since I was still going for a cat back exhaust but little changed. Then I decided it to have it checked on a computer. This gave two faults: system too lean and faulty vct solenoid valve. I started from the former by cleaning the MAF. Surprisingly, it improved a lot revving all the way up and feeling more powerful. However, it's still not 100% and especially until it warms up it's quite hesitant. So if I find a decently priced second hand vct solenoid, it will go in when the cambelt is changed. I don't whether I should try something else however since the computer gave only those 2 faults.
Future plans are to fit lowering springs, stainless steel exhaust, k&n panel filter and give tons of waxoyl from inside and underneath although in Malta it won't rust again as in the UK.
