SWMBO is relieved. The bank is probably not so.. but it wasn't that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
The 205 is a truly loved little car by some. The GTI enthusiast especially so. But, they want to make it better. They Turbo it, they uprate the suspension and brakes. And there I got an in to cheap parts.
There's a lovely place not 8 miles from my home.
They were perfectly happy to sell me a couple of calipers and a master cylinder for £40.
Disks came in at £25 for the pair at a local independent.
I had to source my own replacement pipes and flexi pipes and they came from a place I was told about by a friend at work.. German Swedish and French parts...
Then I hit an unexpected snag. The steel 155 wide wheels snagged on the big calipers. By a tiny amount, but enough to stop the front going round.
An attempt at spacers proved stupid and was abandoned.
A call went to 205parts and it was found that.. yes.. the folk who fit bigger brakes fit bigger and nicer wheels so they had a whole lot of alloy wheels designed to fit on the same hub and accommodate a bigger caliper. Not only that, but the GTI guys had put in a slightly different steering array so they could fit wider wheels and I could manage to get a set of matched alloys with lots of rubber on them. On the front of the car, I put a pair of 165s with a couple of nice Michelins that may have been slightly scrubbed. That came in at £10 per wheel. The spare was thrown in since it is 2mm from needing replacing. If I'd forked out the extra £10, I'd have a spare with an alloy of a different design but just scrubbed.
I was getting close-ish to the wear point on the two back tyres and would have been putting something nicer on them anyway before the next service point that I set at about the end of March. I'm now a year away from thinking about tyres.
With wider and lighter wheels on, the car drives differently, it also stops a lot faster. It has been a *difficult* week, but I'm nursing the little Pug on to being a classic.
Warwick