Making Weight

The first of Project TenSix’s build ethos trifecta is weight (or lack of), especially at this stage of build, it doesn’t cost anything to remove it… Seatbelt mounts, seat mounts, spare wheel hangers and interior panels are all items that are not required in a stage rally car. A spot weld removal drill bit made light work of removing these brackets. A slightly more major operation was removing the front inner seat mounts that form an outer skin of the tunnel. To allow the seats to be mounted as low as possible because our novice driver’s proportions resemble a chimpanzee (belly and all). The driver’s seat has to be as low and as far back as the poor wee TenSix will allow. The aforementioned factory seat mounting took up valuable real estate where FIA seat rails needed to be so that the chimpanzee didn’t hit his head on the roof!     

Those who have ever had the pleasure to travel in a Peugeot 106 may not believe that there was sound insulation for us to remove from Project TenSix… Hot or Cold are the choices of poison here. There is a very neat method of removing sound insulation matting using dry ice (liquid nitrogen for you scientists) to freeze the matting off. The insulation becomes so brittle you can just break it off the shell with little effort, taking the adhesive with it. As swish as this is, our TenSix only had a small amount of insulation on the floor, meaning the trusty heat gun and scraper were used along with ‘Tar & Glue Remover’ to dissolve residue. Can you believe we removed 2.5kg of this stuff!?    

Astute readers may have noticed we glossed very swiftly over removing the factory under seal in part 1. This is an essential part of any serious competition car build, removing unnecessary weight from the car and critically cleaning up the metal on the underside ready for welding. Trust us welding anything, or near anything that isn’t metal doesn’t go well and your lungs won’t thank you! On older cars like Project TenSix the rubbery under seal also tends to form a sealed corrosion cell, uncovering these can be like smashing piñatas, bringing (not necessarily good) surprises. The surprises often tend to be presented in a well-aged, vintage and mature brown crisp that has secretly formed over years of trapped moisture behind the under seal. Removing the under seal was actually quite some task, taking a team of 4 angle grinder armed gentlemen a weekend of attacking the underside with twisted wire brushes.

Before we put the angle grinders down, there aren’t any prizes for guessing that the paint pen on the inside of the door wasn’t a pretty picture… The doors, bonnet and boot lid are rife with unnecessary metal (Peugeot obviously didn’t think so). Ambitiously we cut quite some amount out of these panels, it is difficult to tell the total weight removed, but best estimates are in at more than none. Further weight reduction for Project TenSix’s panels is penciled in for a future project, however we are not at liberty to say how as yet…