Ownership Verified: My 1990 Peugeot 205 XS

Every XS photo I've seen has them, and the airdam has the sockets anyway. The other option are the socket grilles the Rallye used, but that's a bit dumb.

I called the earlier owner of the car, and she said the car has been used by her sister after it was bought by her grandmother in 1998. The circle is now complete, and I believe the belt has been done somewhere before 2009 when her sister got the car under her name. I don't know if it has done 80k in that time, but four years is a plenty good time to swap a belt by now. Either I wiggle it until the school opens its auto shop again, or attempt it under guidance myself; the thing needs a new camcover gasket and could use new valve stem seals at the same time as well. All of these are seemingly easy to do, there's plenty of room and it appears very simple. I've just never done anything like it, so it's a good learning experience.
 
do eet.. little french cars are best way to start learning.
 
Try and refresh the bumpers, the black bits. Maybe just heat them with a heat gun, I've heard that makes them black again. :)
 
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Here is the eBay engine bay. Needs all kinds of cleaning and the camcover gasket appears to seep a bit, but that's expected.

Spent the evening cleaning the engine bay and polishing the paintwork. The engine bay now:

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I could eat off it now. Especially the inside of the hood is now free of cack. The car had no problems starting after being jetwashed.

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The paintwork was a bit matte. Well, that's an understatement, as there wasn't really any shine on it at all.

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It's a bit better now.

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The paint has a couple of problems, mainly the small but large-scale cracking on the middle of the hood. I don't know how soon that will develop into a problem, but there it is.

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I could buff most of this scrape out, but need to attack it again.

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And yes, we have a bit of rust on the inside of the driver's door. I could also use some not-broken door pockets.

Otherwise, the car cleaned up a lot. I didn't have time to do the unpainted bumper bits or the interior, so those are on the list tomorrow.
 
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You know, you can't polish a turd, but you can jetwash the shit out of it. :p
 

Hoovered the interior and treated the plastics. I also sprayed down the interior again with Sonax's odour killer product, but will probably need to set off the same kind of ozone A/C cleaner grenade I used in the Sapporo earlier, so the cleaning agent really gets into the fabrics.

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Here, you can see the Philips radio. Also a note to the previous owner, that cubby locker is not an ashtray.

Otherwise:

 
Just as a reminder that the car is French, there's an issue about everything illuminated flickering. Headlights, gauge illumination, buttons, you name it. Bad country earth, alternator packing in, what?
 
I used to have one JUST LIKE THIS :)

I miss it so much...

I love it when you flatten the accelerator and the second choke opens, the engine sucks hard and goes BBBBBBBBBBB (you really have to drive one to know what I mean :) )

Happy memories.

I had mine tuned at LAD motorsports in the UK, fast road cam and polished and ported cylinder head,
lowered suspension (Put back to standard after 6 months, waste of money),
sporty exhaust (Changed back to standard after only 1 week, too loud, even bigger waste of money)
Got up to 105HP (same as the original 205GTi, but with much shorter gearing) on shell optimax 98, it would hardly run on supermarket 95.

In the end I sold it to my mum when I left to live in Spain, she loved it (all except the lack of power steering) a big step up from a 45hp VW polo.

She traded it in for a C1 and it's disappeared from the DVLA database (though the dealer told me he sold it on) so it's probably been scrapped :-(

Very under-rated and fun car, well done, a good purchase, hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed mine.
 
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I used to have one JUST LIKE THIS :)

I miss it so much...

I love it when you flatten the accelerator and the second choke opens, the engine sucks hard and goes BBBBBBBBBBB (you really have to drive one to know what I mean :) )

Happy memories.

I definitely do, it goes BWAAAARRRR when it starts to pull, and it's something to be cherished. The muffler is a no-name replacement, which probably contributes to the sound qualities.
 
I had a Peugeot with weird electrical problems, turned out the starter motor was on its way out... Sadly I only found out it was the starter motor after it stopped working completely.
 
Just as a reminder that the car is French, there's an issue about everything illuminated flickering. Headlights, gauge illumination, buttons, you name it. Bad country earth, alternator packing in, what?
It always is a bad ground with old cars.
 
How would I go about fixing it, since it's related to lighting?
 

The third brake light, aftermarket as they come on these, had come off the rear window and dangled by its wire in the trunk, leaving only the glue residue to speak of its former presence. I let it out of its misery and threw it in the bin, and cleaned the glue off with a heat gun and some wiping action. Amazingly, all the rear window heating leads work except the two bottom ones that curve down to heat the rear wiper. But I don't even care for that.

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The battery's ground lead kinda looked it was in a grimy situation. Need to give some attention to it, in case that would stop the illumination pulsation.
 
but but but... frozen wipers are useless! :eek: oh well, i don't even have a rear wiper... or a proper rear window... so you'll still be fine :p
 
TBH I'd happily yank the rear wiper anyway, if I wanted to go to the trouble.
 
The car can fit an impressive amount of stuff inside it, and transport four people in relative comfort at highway speeds. Very satisfying.

Of course, there is a faint-to-noticable (fair to middlin'?) whine from the gearbox, which I'll try to rectify with an oil change next week. I don't think the gearbox has received fresh oils in a while, and unless it goes all Stilo on me I'll assume it's all the saved money that's making the noise. Gearbox works well otherwise.

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Maybe this'll help!

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A shot from the open road, on the way to a folk music festival. Note odo reading and bent Jaeger needles
 
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