For Sale!

The time has come for the Coupe and I to part company.  More than six years and nearly 150,000 miles - I've spent months of my life in this car.

The aim of this post is to record a few of the good points about this car, and to be honest about the 'issues' that it has.

On the plus side, this has been, and still is, a great car.  It's reliable, cheap to run and beautiful to look at.  It's been very well looked after by Graham and the guys at Motor Vehicle Services sine I bought it in 2007.  It runs well (see below!), and all the major systems work well.  The air-con is better than that in my wife's Vauxhall, which has been re-gassed three times.  The 2012 MOT was passed first time, and 2013's required the replacement of a corroded brake pipe.  Not exactly major stuff.

To be fair to potential buyers, I should point out the faults on the car.  I don't think the mileage is one of them; I'm replacing this with a company car, and if I wasn't then I'd expect it to go on for a long way yet, but I know it will be an issue for many buyers.  What I would say is this - with LPG at 65.9p this week, and diesel at 135.9p, you're saving 10 pence for every mile you drive.  At the asking price of £800, that's only 8,000 miles before the car is free.

So - bodywork:  There is a rust spot on the bonnet, a little rusting and bubbled paint around the LPG port, an impact (bicycle!) mark on the left flank and a number of small stone-chips down to the primer across the bonnet.  Photos of these are below.

Rust on bonnet - does not penetrate

Rust stain around LPG port - some paint bubbling.

Edit: 27th June: Following an SMS conversation with a potential buyer, I should make it clear that these rust spots do not penetrate the panels.  They require treatment with sandpaper and primer rather than filler. 

Crease behind LH front wheel.  No rust 2 years after occurring

Scrape to LH rear wing

Crease in front of LH rear wheel.

The interior is in pretty good condition.  We rarely use this car as a family, so the passenger and (surprisingly roomy - I'm 6'4") rear seats are in excellent condition.  The leather steering wheel is a little worn, the driver's floor mat is wrecked and there's a little wear to the piping on the driver's seat - see picture.  The electric windows and mirrors work, as does the central locking, but the alarm tends to go off if it's set.  I have both keys, but the rubber button on one has perished.

From a cold start, there's a plasticy rattle for a minute or so that sounds like perhaps the battery cover is loose from where we jump-started my wife's car last month, but I've never investigated it properly as it goes away before I get to the end of the road.

The main issue that buyers need to be aware of is reported as a fault with (IIRC) the throttle body stepper motor.  This means that if you accelerate hard in too low a gear (engine below around 2500rpm), the engine stops.  It's slightly un-nerving, but can be avoided by driving sedately or by remembering to drop down a gear before overtaking.  It's been happening for a few months now, but hasn't bothered me enough to have it fixed, or even to get an estimate..  I've driven 300 miles in the last two days without it happening at all, but YMMV.  If the engine does cut out, I simply drop the clutch and re-engage to self-bump-start. 

Other points - although the rear tyres (Continentals, of some sort) are in reasonable condition, the fronts are in definite need of replacement.  I've been checking them regularly since this was flagged as an advisory on the MOT in April, and they're still legal.  Front brake pads were also flagged as an advisory, and should probably be changed soon.

I've had the Pug serviced at 10,000 mile intervals for the last 150,000 miles, although the book calls for a 20,000 mile service interval with an oil top-up every 10,000.  I clocked up 220,000 miles yesterday, but this service has not been carried out.

The Peugeot 406 Coupe is regularly voted as one of the best looking cars ever made, and certainly one of the very best to sell at a sensible price.  It was reputedly designed for Ferrari, who then declined to build it.  For £800, with an LPG conversion, I think it's a bargain.  But I would say that, wouldn't I.

The Coupe is available via the Comments filed below, and is on Autotrader until July 9th, 2013.  After that, you may have missed your chance.

*sniff*

A Year on

Inspired by the first, and so far only, comment on this blog, I've compiled a bit of an update on how things have been going with the Coupé over the year or so since I last posted.

Since my last post in June 2007 I have travelled 25027 miles on 3559 litres of LPG, an average of 32 mpg. Fuel costs (excluding petrol, of which more anon) have averaged at 7.3 pence per mile. At an average of say £1.05 per litre for petrol and £1.15 for diesel, that's equivalent to over 65 mpg (71 mpg for diesel).

The Coupé has behaved itself pretty well over the last year. I've had (Sfx: touches wood) no mechanical failures and in May it passed its MOT with nothing other than a note that one of the front tyres was beginning to wear. They weren't new when I bought the car so I can't complain at that.

There have been one or two hiccoughs along the way, not least when a nice lady (not!) reversed into me whilst I was stationary at a petrol station in December. From this I've learned that Direct Line insurance are no more than average, Gladwins (their repair agent in this part of the world) are a complete bunch of rude and useless no-hopers (since confirmed by a colleague who seems to damage his car more often than I service mine...) and that the lady in question is a bitch. Perhaps riled by my declining to take her up on the offer of having her husband repair the damage to the Coupé [new front bumper required. no other damage], she did not respond to any communication from her insurers, meaning that they have only just agreed to settle the case and I've not yet had my £150 excess back. Oh, and if you ask a petrol station to keep CCTV footage for you, ask several times in very simple language. Then check that they've read your letter and not just recorded over the tapes anyway. It's a good job we didn't have to go to court.

I've washed and cleaned the Coupé more than I have my previous cars, even though I now have to do the Astra as well to keep the wife happy. It repays my loving attention by sulking if I throw water over it to rinse it off. This manifests itself as a reported 'Antipollutant Fault' when I next drive it, accompanied by a loud beep every three seconds. This happened three times before I learned to rinse the front of the car with a sponge. One one occasion the fault cleared itself after 2 minutes, on another the beeping stopped after two hours of driving (two trips. 2400 **** beeps!) but on the first time I took it to my local garage for investigation. They reset the fault and it didn't come back.

The other item of interest has been the previously reported shenannigans with the petrol gauge. Following my previous post, the gauge has stubbornly refused to return to a correct reading except when more petrol is added. No number of variations of things that previously seemed to have been factors had any effect, and I soon gave up expecting anything to happen. Until the 24th of June, two days before the comment that triggered this post. For no apparent reason, the guage rose from empty to a true reading of approx 1/4 of a tank... I've added no more petrol since then, and 500 miles later it is still glued to the empty mark.

Having embarrassingly run out of petrol about 200 yards from work back in October, only four weeks after I ran out at my in-laws, I started to add around 10 litres of unleaded every fourth tank of gas, or around 1600 miles. I decided that if this gave a 'range remaining' reading on the fuel computer of less than 100 miles, I would add more fuel at the next fill. I reset the fuel computer each time I add petrol so I know how far I've driven since I last topped up, and this has worked well so far. As the weather has warmed up over the last few weeks, the Coupé has been switching to gas more quickly and I've been using correspondingly less petrol. My last splash of petrol (9 litres at an eye-watering £1.19 each) took the range remaining up to 180 miles, as high as it's ever been whilst I've been keeping records. This larger than average load is my only clue as to why the gauge may have returned to a true reading. I think that all the previous occurrences appeared shortly after I had put £25-worth of fuel in over just 300 miles, not understanding what the gauge was telling me. We shall see...

I'm going to try and post a little more frequently than of late, although hopefully the motoring will continue to be relatively uneventful.

Fuel Update

I mentioned here that the petrol gauge drops as I drive along burning gas. After I topped up the tank last week to nearly half-full, it slowly dropped back down again. Four times in the last three weeks, for no apparent reason, it rose back up to show the correct level.

I checked to see if opening either the filler cap or the covering door was enough to trigger a correction, but it seems not, leaving me none the wiser.

Last week I needed to check the mileage for a journey I’d just finished. I’d just switched off the engine, so I replaced the key in the ignition and turned it to the ‘run’ position for several seconds, but without actually starting up. Very shortly into my next journey, the gauge was reading the correct level, making me wonder if messing with the key had been significant. More investigation is required…

[Update: It seems the fuel computer must be set to show 'range remaining'. Investigations continue]

Strange Goings-on in the Fuel Tank

When I got the Coupé back from Essex LPG, there was very little petrol left in the tank. It uses petrol to start the engine and pressurise the LPG fuel lines, so I put £10-worth in.

I noticed on Wednesday that the fuel gauge was gradually drifting downwards, and by the time I got back from Norfolk it was firmly below the red line. The fuel computer’s estimate of remaining range was also dropping, but only by about a quarter of the actual distance I was covering.

This morning the fuel computer insisted that there was zero range remaining, and the petrol gauge remained firmly stuck to the bottom of the red line, so I added £15-worth. I was surprised to see this moved the needle to the half-tank level...

Talking to Alan this morning, it seems that both the gauge and the computer update themselves by monitoring how much fuel is supplied to the engine, and only reset when more fuel is added to the tank. Unaware that what is being supplied is Autogas rather than unleaded, they then show inaccurate figures.

I’m sure that there is more to this than I’m aware of at the moment, but for now it seems the only way to find out how much petrol I’ve got is to add some more…

Cooking on Gas

Having got the car back on Thursday 3rd, I then left for a fortnight’s holiday with the family in Scotland. The Coupé won’t carry either the child seat or the roofbox, so I had to leave it at home while we took the Astra on the long trek up North.

I’m back to work this week, so off on my new commute in the Coupé. I’ve had it for nearly a month and a half and only driven it a couple of times, so it was good to get behind the wheel.

I’m no Jeremy Clarkson, so I won’t attempt to go too deeply into the handling characteristics, besides which the A14 (straight dual carriageway, lots of speed cameras) isn’t the best place to test the performance envelope. There are two things I missed from the Astra, though:

The first, strangely, is the rear wash-wipe. With condensation in the mornings and dusty rain in the afternoons, rear visibility is not great. The Coupé is eight inches wider and eighteen longer than the Astra, so I’m still getting used to getting in and out of parking spaces. With five cars in the space previously occupied by four outside the house (not all mine, I hasten to add!), I need all the rear visibility I can get.

The second point is the sound system. The factory-fit Peugeot radio is okay, although the reception on FM isn’t great, but I do miss my DAB and MP3 player.

Converted...

I’d booked the Coupé in with Essex LPG for conversion on April 23rd. Alan was slightly cheaper than the Greenfuel quote I’d had, at £1650, but it was going to be a four-hour journey to drive the car down to him and then get a train back home. When I mentioned this to him he immediately offered to collect it from me and take it back to Essex on a trailer. Everyone’s a winner.

He’d estimated that the conversion would take about a week, but due to a problem getting a part from a supplier in Wales, I didn’t get the car back until the following Thursday. He did deliver it to me, saving me another four hour journey, which was good.

The conversion looks like a neat job; an 80 litre (nominal) tank fits nicely under the parcel shelf, but still gives me good access to the spare wheel. The filler valve has been neatly fitted onto the rear wing, close to the petrol cap, and the switch is tucked away under the radio.

Got it!

Well, yesterday was the big day. The trip from home to Southampton was an eventful four -and-a-half hours, via London in the rush hour, the less said about which the better.

As I mentioned, I had settled on the 2001 2.0 'S', which was for sale with Nicholas Johnston Cars. I had a bit of trouble last week because Nick was keen to get his hands on some money, and was being pressured by another buyer who wanted to turn up with cash the next day.

The Coupé was ready and waiting when I eventually got to Southampton, so after stopping for a coffee and to sign some paperwork, I was off. Nick Johnston was a nice guy, with half a dozen or so cars he was selling from home. He's serviced and MoT'd the car, including replacing the timing belt, and it's been thoroughly cleaned both inside and out.

The bodywork is in fantastic condition for a six year old car. There's a tiny fine scratch on the driver's door, and a very small ding to the nearside rear wing, but it's small enough that you can only see it if you look carefully along the wing - from head on you'd never spot it. Inside is clean and tidy, the upholstery is in great condition and all the switches and buttons work. The passenger door trim is a bit loose and the trim on the inside of the driver's door mirror has been removed and inexpertly put back, but otherwise it's immaculate.

The 130 mile drive back from Southampton was effortless, taking only just over two hours - a pleasant change from the train down. It was long enough to find a comfy driving position and to get used to the controls and the pedals, but it was motorways and dual-carriageways almost all the way so I can't really comment on the handling. I'm sure I'll find an hour or so in the next few days to check out some of the quieter country roads around home.

So, after fur months of waiting and over two of blogging, I've finally got a 406 Coupé. And here it is.

Apologies to Nick Johnston for pinching the picture off his website, but since the car is sold I don't suppose he needs it any more...