Peugeot 205 Automatic 1.6L XU51C: the soldiering shitbox (part 1)

Introduction

One weekend night, I was night cruising with a friend, as I often do, and we got talking about cars, and they told me about those limited edition cars french car makers Renault and Citröen made.
Long story short, in the early 80's both brands wanted to demonstrate what their engineers were capable of, and what the future of automotive design was going to be like, according to them.
It was stuff that was too expensive, too unproven, too different from what the average customer expected from a car to make it standard in any model. So off into a limited edition both cars were made into. Renault put their tech in the existing Renault 11, and Citroën put theirs in the Citröen BX.
The automakers didn't expect to sell a ton of them, but rather, they wanted to make a PR show. They were working on the car of the future, to make them up to the task of being shining cars for the shining future ahead.

Digital display, notably for the speed and rpm, on board computer, able to calculate and display fuel usage, remaining distance until refueling, and remaining time to cover a set distance based on the car's speed, among other things. Renault went a step ahead and would play (could be turned off if you wished to) audio voice warning and reminders. So the car, upon start-up, might just say "the oil pressure is low" on top of displaying the low pressure light. Remote locking, a system that would detect if your headlights were burnt out, and to top it off, a high quality autoradio, with dolby noise reduction, type 1, 2 and 4 cassette compatibility, and an equaliser. In a car !
It might sound unimpressive today, and to be fair, it wasn't even that impressive in the late 80's, altough plenty of car models and trim levels didn't have some of those features in the 90's. But we're talking about cars that started production in 1983 and 1985, (with 4500 and 3000 sales respectively, for those of you who are curious) for example, the first car to ever have a digital display for speed was Cadillac Seville in 1978, which isn't that much earlier than our little french cars.
At the time, it was genuinely new tech for many people. Something they'd never seen before, and that was reasonably affordable. The price for a Citröen BX digit being €28,700.00 in 2022's money.

When my friend was done telling me about those cars, it got me really excited to know they were a thing ! And of course, the thought of looking to buy one crossed my mind. But i quickly shot that idea down. It would be too expensive, as it's collectible, too rare to find, and the electronics on those things have often met their fate, some 40 years later.
"Did Peugeot never make such a car of their own ?" i asked my friend. For context, in France, there are 3 big car manufacturers, that most people drive (or that was about until 10 years ago, when you started seeing more and more foreign cars on the road). They are Renault, Peugeot and Citröen. To be fair, Peugeot had bought Citröen in 1976, so the point could be made that Peugeot's management didn't have an incentive to make a separate model for Peugeot as they alreade made one for the brand they had just bought.
But the point could also be be made that Peugeot had always went out of it's way to keep the design and innovations of both brands separate, and gave each of them their own identity. So why didn't they do it ? Will we never see Peugeot's take on the car of the future.. ?

Then it came to me. I like cars, right ? and i like engineering stuff too. I mean, i'm working as an embedded systems code monkey at some industrial company. My friends also have hobbies such as cars (starting to see a pattern ?), 3D modeling, sewing, diy stuff and more.
What if i made my own 80's Peugeot electronic "concept car" ? After all, i'd be getting an old car, i'd get to work and wrench on it, both things i wanted to do, and i could mod it to my liking, something else that sounds like fun.
You could scream and yell and hate me, saying that i'm just about to become a ricer, who's going to make some shitty shitbox with a fuckhuge spoiler and stanced wheels. But it's not what i intend to do, i hope it's not what i'll end up doing anyways !

Rather, i like to see it more as an engineering challenge, the act of mixing new and old tech, but only in a way that would be plausible with the tech of the time, I want to make it so perfect that it looks like it came out of the factory this way. Then, the idea didn't leave my mind. First, nothing much happened. I'm the kind of guy with big words and even bigger ideas, but none of the action to back it all up. Still, I bookmarked some research tags on local secondhand websites and moved on with my life.
I was intentionally looking for a car in somewhat poor condition, as i would have felt guilty tearing and cutting into the engine bay and dashboard of a beautiful, minty collectible car to have my fun with it. If i was gonna "rice" out a car, i wanted it to be at least a car that was bound for the junkyard, so that i would at least feel like i saved it from being turned into a cube. Ignore that next argument, but the beat up cars also happened to be wayyyy cheaper, hehe.

Enter: the ghetto ride

Here I was, chilling at a friend's house, playing worms 3D on a PS2 connected to a CRT TV, having fun and everything at around 4pm, when the seller of a listing i had bookmarked messaged me.
"Still available", he said. I had gotten messages from other sellers for other cars like that in the previous weeks, but i looked at the listing to get a reminder of the listing, and i noticed that the guy was only an hour away from me.
"Haha, wouldn't it be funny if we went there ?", i joked to my friends. We kept joking about it and i sent, out of curiosity, a message to the seller, asking if he was available today, at 5pm.
I think that by now, you can see it coming, the guy answered that yes, he was available right now. We stared at each other for a bit, shrugged our shoulders, and went on our way to the guy.

When we finally arrived, is where the ghetto rig started.
The guy comes and tells us the car is nice and cool, but something hints at us that it might not be that cool. In the pictures, some things were obvious already, so no surprises there. We knew the paint was scrubbed off in a lot of places, that the car was full of dings, and that it was in pretty mediocre condition overall. The 4, big ricer speakers that were cut into the trunk cover, yet not wired to anything, the heater control panel that stays in your hand as you try to adjust it, and more importantly, the car failing to start showed us what we were in for.

Getting home

Now, we're here, in the middle of the Paris suburbs, and if i want to buy that car, i'll have to get it started first.
First, one of my friends that is more knowledgeable than me tries to start with different methods. Pumping the carburetor, checking out stuff in the engine bay, but the battery is very tired, and the car won't come to life.
I bring my Citröen around, and we wire together the 2 batteries, that might kick it off. Better, the starter's now turning with force, and the engine sputters a bit, but it's not enough. My friend then adjusts the idle screw on the carburetor to make it higher, and magic! the car finally starts !!
The guy had warned us though, the car overheats when stationary, so we hurried to check if the headlights, blinkers and all that work, and finally give it a test drive. Rather shockingly, the car drives great, very nervous, and the automatic transmission impresses us by how responsive it is.

Because the car at least "runs", we lowball the seller with an offer for 470€ instead of the 700€ he asked for, and he accepts. Well, you only live once, right ?
Time to go home.

The ride home was mostly uneventful, surprisingly, the car ran fine and nothing too important happened.

Now, what to do with this car before it falls apart further ?

Going forward

Both the Citröen BX and the Renault 11 were compact family cars, and it would have made sense for my project to pick also a compact family car from Peugeot. For it to be period correct, that would have been the Peugeot 309. Instead, i got a hatchback. Weird, right ? I could have gotten a Peugeot 309, but as i wanted to get an automatic car (the car of the future has to be comfortable, eh ??), i couldn't be as picky as i might have wanted to. Listings for automatic Peugeot 205's or 309's are both few and far inbetween, and i really was gonna get the first good deal i'd come across regardless of the model.
On top of that, i have a friend that is knowledgeable about Peugeot 205's specifically, so i knew that by getting one, i would be able to get his help. So yeah, 205 it is.

Now, i have to decide what to do with the car. I thought i'd get to work designing right away, but now that the thing is actually in front of me, i think i'd rather get it fixed and in a clean, restored condition before i actually start to mess around with it.

Better to have a solid fundation on which to build on, right ? And, as it turns out, there's quite some stuff i'll have to work on :
        -Fix the overheating issue
        -Cobble together the falling apart interior
        -Repaint the scraped off paint
        -Check over the engine and it's surrounding components
        -Replace the tires
        -Replace the weak battery

And probably much more to be honest. Looking forward to it!

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