Peugeot 205 Automatic 1.6L XU51C: Convalescence (part 2)

Introduction

There we are, now. I got the car home, settled down, had time to think, and now it's time to fix that thing. Give it new paint, make it shiny and run like a dream, right ?

Let's recap what's wrong with the car that i noticed so far:
        -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

I'm in high spirits, and i'll get that thing working quick and good. I've got some tools, determination and (some) knowledge thanks to my wrencher friend. But, as it turns out, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse decided to come down from the sky, to curse me, and the car.

The Horseman of safety systems

When we got the car, one of the first big things wrong with it that we noticed was the tires. They had visible cracks on them, were awfully dry, and looking at the manufacture date finished telling us those things were shot. The front tires were manufactured in april 2010, and the rear ones in october of 2001. Driving around with 21 year old tires is suicide, so we had to fix those asap.

As we got the car back from the tire shop, they warned us that on the front driver side wheel, one of the four lug bolt was missing.
We were all very surprised that something that obvious could have flew by past us. But, thinking about it, the car had ugly poverty caps when we bought it. And although we quickly took them off the car, we probably never gave a close look at the wheels after that, and on the day of the purchase the hubcaps hid the missing lug nut.

There's some stuff I was looking forward to fixing when it came to the car. Painting the car, or fixing the carburetor sounds like a lot of fun for me ! And, well, extracting a broken lug bolt sounds just about like the least interesting thing one could do. Still, it had to be done so i bought appropriate drill bits and a set of extractors (more or less a inverse thread bolt) to try and get the bolt out. Four hours later, at night, under the rain, sitting in the mud, with worn drill bits, broken extractors, i found myself with a mangled up lug bolt that didn't move an inch.
While the wheel was off of the car, I thought i'd look at the brake pads, and holy crap were they worn out, take a look for yourself:

Let's pretend we didn't see that, because i just can't seem to get this stupid bolt out, and i'll change the pads when i'll give the braking system a full check.
Now, it's time for the battery and the lights. The lights work mostly fine already, with the exception of the high beams and the rear fog light. The rear fog light isn't very important, and i can afford to fix it later. However, the high beams are more useful and i diagnosed the problem as coming from the left stalk control, and replacing it fixed the issue.
Now, the battery definitely needed changing, because after I removed it from the car, my friend opened it up to find that half of it's contents had leaked out before we bought the car, explaining why it wouldn't hold a charge well. On top of that, it wasn't secured into the engine bay, and would shift around as we drove. We fixed that easily by putting in place a battery clamp that was missing.

The Horseman of drivetrains

The car is not safe, we've determined that. But does it at least run and drive ? Well, not even quite. There's some issues, but, apart from one, most of them are minor ! And when the car doesn't act up, it drives great! ...Unless...
Now, onto the broken stuff. We knew since day one that the carburetor was set up wrong, but it ran okay, just had a bit of trouble starting sometimes. However, on the day of the purchase, to stop the engine from stalling, we set up the idle RPM to be high, perhaps, or rather definitely too high. The idle speed was definitely at least over 2000 rpm, and while nothing happened at first, something would eventually happen, that would push me to start adjusting the carburetor better.

The ride home was mostly uneventful, surprisingly, the car ran fine and nothing too important happened. Disaster happened about a month after i had got the car, as i finally got around to work on it. Drove it to the tire place, and, as i left back home, shifted innocently from P to D.
I think you can see where this is going. The closest thing i could compare it to is the sound that the landing gear of an airliner makes when it's lowering. A slight metal clunk, and then, some sort of indescribable suction noise... Aaannnd the gearbox failed to shift. Trying to shift again worked fine, and i got home.

That's when my days started to devolve into a panic filled, anxiety inducing thinking about the transmission. I don't know a lot about automatic gearboxes, but i know enough to worry a lot when it fails to shift, even occasionally.
One of the things i had noticed was that the stick shift was acting funny, where the gear locks either didn't work or were in weird places where they shouldn't be, so time to take out the screwdriver.

The gear locks weren't aligned with the gear emplacements, and that was a big source of the wonkiness, adjusting it made it better, but stuff's still wonky. Could something on the transmission side be off too ?

That bushing is fucked up, and it seemed like i wouldn't be able to remove it to replace it, thing's stuck in good. Gladfully, though, a day after i happened to come across a random rubber ring that happened to be the exact right dimensions outside on the ground. I wasn't even looking for something like that, just stumbled upon it. Put it in the bushing, and it fit right in, making the play a lot smaller.

Would that be enough ? Not quite. The next weekend, we drove the car around, and... The airliner zipped by again. But, by now i was starting to see a pattern, the gearbox would only fail when the engine was warm. But what about the engine being warm could cause it to have the transmission fail ?
But then it came to me ! As both the carburetor and the starter are adjusted wrong, the idle rpm of the engine while cold is a lot lower than when warm, so, could an idle rpm that's too high be the source of the car failing to shift ? Well, i had to try anyways, the car was stuck, at least an hour away from home, in the middle of the night.
Popped the hood, grabbed the idle screw, and unscrewed it wayyy down, to get the rpm down to something reasonable.. And it worked ! the car shifted right as i put it in D !! The car hasn't failed to shift since then,
except for The accident that i'll mention later on in this article.

Yes, that transmission issue did scare me so much, that i bought a whole spare gearbox, just in case.
Now, onto the issue of the car not starting properly when it doesn't feel like it...

What you see before your eyes is the choke of the Peugeot 205 Automatic. The choke controls the choke valve that helps the engine start when cold. When the engine's cold, you want the valve to be almost closed, to make the fuel air mixture richer. But as the engine gets hot, you want it to open, in order to let the engine suck in all the air it needs.
They had decided to make it automatic in that car, which is cool, but the thing can become unadjusted with time, and i thought that might have been the source of my issue. As I accessed it, someone clearly had gotten to it before. I could tell, because the choke mechanism cover that was supposed to be there according to a manual was missing, but especially because the previous owned had drenched the thing in so much grease, that the entire mechanism didn't move anymore.
The choke valve was half open, half closed, which would make the engine run poorly both cold and hot. I cleaned away some of the excess grease and adjusted the entire system so it would work as expected. Problem solved, right ?

Next time i started the car to go somewhere (if i'm gonna check whether's my repair successfull or not, might aswell drive it for something useful, right ?), the thing fired right up, great! On the road i go ! ...That is.. until.. a couple minutes after i left, the car progressively gets weaker and weaker, until the engine just dies, in the middle of the street. I try to start it again ! Cars are driving left and right, and getting impatient behind me.
I put on the warning lights, and try to start again. I'm starting to panic now. Fuck, the car isn't starting. I try to start it again, but this time i press the gas pedal slightly as i try to press it. It starts, but as soon as i let go of the pedal, it stalls again. Now, i'm fully panicking, what do i do ???
I start the car again, and decide that i'll get in gear while throttling slightly and drive out of town and then check what's wrong. Bad idea. Remember what i said about the gearbox ?
I shift the stick into D. Worst sound yet, Sounds like a blank going off, and then the dreaded suction noise. The car doesn't move at all, and not only did i cringe hard, now i'm panicking even worse. Understand why i bought a spare gearbox now ? Anyways, i somehow manage to get the car moving after trying to shift again and i drag it into the nearest safe-ish spot i can find, pop the trunk open, and take off the air filter on top of the carb. I was scared I had adjusted the automatic choke wrong.
Well, the issue wasn't that i adjusted the choke wrong, rather, it was more that i adjusted it right and got it working, the engine was hot, and the choke fully open, as it should be. Thinking about it now, i suspect that the fuel mixture on that car is set to be very very lean, too lean to run. And therefore, it actually needed the starter to be on at all times in order not to stall. I grabbed my screwdriver, and adjusted the choke wrong again, in order for it to be closed even when the engine's hot. The car started right up, and i got home.

I'm starting to see a pattern of the previous owner fucking up everything he touched in that car.
Also, while we're speaking about the drivetrain, when i gave the engine an oil change, there was a bit of coolant fluid in the oil.
Sure is gonna be fun replacing the head gasket (not).

The Horseman of cooling

After getting home from that cursed, carb stalling, gearbox smashing trip, i was glad i was home, but it looked like the car couldn't take it, and i came back to it having leaked a significant part of it's cooling fluid on the ground. But before i mention that, let's talk about the heap of other issues regarding cooling.

The seller had said to us, that when stationary, the car overheats. And we figured out why very quick, the radiators fan just never ran, even when the engine was hot. They must be seized up, we said. That would be the most likely explanation, or maybe that they're burnt out. But out of curiosity, we plugged each of the 2 fans directly to another car battery to test them, and each of them worked perfectly. If the battery and the fans are fine, what's the deal then ?

I took a look at the electric system that controlled the fans, or rather, it's remains. Like the other things, someone had went through it, and tried to repair it themselves before. The other stuff was fixed badly, or the guy did ghetto rigs on repairs, but nothing could prepare me for how gobsmackingly bad this "fix" had been done.
Seriously, i'm shocked the guy didn't short out wires and lit the car on fire with that job. There were multiple radiator heat sensors, each of different models, not wired correctly, and with only one of them actually plugged into the radiator. The other ones were just free floating in the engine bay. Only the positive pole of one of the two fan was plugged in to the sensors, which isn't even a correct wiring, as relays need to be involved for safe operation.....
and ............
This thing was done so, so bad that there was no possibility it could have ever worked !!!!! hell, one of the 2 fans wasn't even plugged in at all !!! this is horrible, who wired this together ? i really don't get it...

Anyhow... I spent an entire morning rebuilding an electrical system from scratch, with relays and everything, in hopes to make it work. I ran the car, and the fans didn't fire. Did i do my circuitry wrong ? i put a multimeter up to the now hot heat sensor, and it wasn't behaving as it was supposed to. So i guess it's dead. I still want to see if my system was correct though.

Well, it works ! and while i wait for the new heat sensor to be delivered, i have an idea of what i can do to prevent the car from overheating..

Now, back to the coolant fluid leak. From looking closely at the engine bay, i think i can confidently say that it is the water pump that is leaking. Water pump that is bolted onto the engine, and powered with the timing belt. Not that terrible of a news, as i was planning replace the timing belt already, might aswell replace the water pump as well.
There was also a missing air hose in the engine bay, meaning that the engine sucked in the hot air from under the trunk, which made things worse temperature wise. But, a quick trip to the junkyard got us the actual hose we needed to make it breath air from outside.

The Horseman of interiors

For being such a beat up car, the interiors actually does look fine, but actually sitting in the car makes you feel that stuff's wrong, the entire dashboard feels wobbly and it's kind of falling off the supports. Not to mention the heat controls that are falling off, and even worse, the fan speed dial doesn't work properly.

Long story short, i took the dashboard apart to fix the fan speed dial, i realised that all of the screws that hold the dashboard in place were just straight up not there, which would explain why there's a bunch of mysterious screws in the glove box... The guy had took apart the dashboard and put it back together not screwing anything in.. So after i fixed the fan speed control, i put those screws to good use, and now the dashboard is all solid!!

Then, i did the usual, you know, the spray-everything-that-doesnt-move-or-creaks-with-wd40, and now everything's perfect ! The vents, the lamp, the door hinges, the front seat latches.. It's all free moving and without making squeaky noises!

Anyhow, I'm still a long way to go interior wise, i mean, look at that stick shift. but it's getting better.

Not done yet

Well, the car's still pretty far from being fully restored yet. I didn't even get to touch the paint yet, and there's still a bunch of issues that i didn't even get to address yet. Like the suspiciously oil leak looking stains on the oil pan on the picture above. There's just so much stuff to do, but it's fun ! Not much to say apart from that, i'll be back with more news of the car soon. And this time, i'll try to take more pictures of the process !

I want to make a special mention about whoever touched that car before me, who was most probably not the guy i bought it from. You screwed up so much stuff in that car ! Everything you tried to fix you made it worse, what were you thinking ?? now I have to pick up all the pieces..