Peugeot 404 Coupé restoration in British Columbia, Canada

[miketippett]

The engine is totally apart now, as noted. The cam has bad wear so I am trying to source a new one from Le Club 404's stock. The new head and piston/sleeve kit are in the two cardboard boxes.


Today, after cleaning off the engine block and moving it to where you see it above, I made 10 spacers for the carpet snaps. These space the carpet appropriately for the thickness of the undelay, so they're not puckered.


Original Peugeot clips used for the visible ones. The rest are virtually the same.

[miketippett]

The underlay for the rear transmission tunnel was installed along with the carpet, the rear floor carpets.... and then the passenger seat.


My wife Sandy tried out the seat for height and comfort.

[miketippett]

Drilled 3 holes in the panels to mount the new carpet in the front driver's side.  The fourth hole was already there above the accelerator pedal.  



Also mounted the new speedometer cable and the accelerator cable.  The driver's seat was a bit of a bear to install because the captive bolts in the bodyshell were not long enough to penetrate the new (thicker) seat runners and so I had to knock it out and put a bolt and (blind) nut inside one.  



The interior is now done apart from the transmission tunnel, which is still naked because I have to install the C3 gearbox and its Nardi floor shifter before final trimming. That'll be a while then.

[miketippett]

Mounted the glovebox on Saturday. It is a drawer under the dashboard under the Pininfarina badge. I have the Italian F.I.S.T. key for its lock!



Sunday I cleaned and sorted all my nuts and bolts into the proper sizes.

[miketippett]

Saturday I'm going to rebuild the AEG/KF fuel lift pump with a kit supplied by my buddy Peter van Deukeren from the Netherlands.

The tiny bearings:


The shaft seal:


The kit:


My two AEG PLF 5 pumps:



And today, because I couldn't find the original clips for the dash pad, I made these out of 1mm thick spare rocker panel/sill material. They now have to be covered with a thin layer of black vinyl. They join the top of the soft dashboard pad with the soft A-pillar trims. Each one has been shaped by hand to fit each side very well.

[miketippett]

Dashboard clips covered with vinyl.



Passenger side:


Driver's side.


It was a pretty decent effort, I am pleased with the result.

[miketippett]

Dismantling of the AEG/KF fuel lift pump.

A little bit of electrical tape over the motor's drive pinion facilitated the armature's extraction from the pump body without in any way damaging the original grease seal, which is still supple. So I will leave it in place and use the same technique to re-insert the pinion through this seal.


The freed armature.


Making up some different sized slotted washers in the garage made short work of extracting the tiny drive pinion and nearly as tiny bearings.


Armature mounted on a drill in a vise so I could polish the commutator/slip ring with fine emery cloth.


Comparison between the armature of my car (4598609) on the right and that of a scrapped Canadian Cabriolet (6800519) on the left. 4598609 has done 83,000 miles. I bought the entire drivetrain from 6800519 in 1982, and at least the electric motor seems to show the traces of more like 200.000 miles...

[miketippett]

Today I pressed the new bearings onto the motor shaft with a vise and then the pinion gear after it was inserted into and through the grease seal in the underside of the motor mounting plate. Checked the length of the original brushes: 6 mm and 9 mm....too short, so I looked in my spare parts stock and found two new or nearly new ones, both 12 mm long. Then the motor was tested and it was SO smooth!



Next task: the hydraulic part of the pump, which sits below the electrical part.

[miketippett]

Today I reassembled the hydraulic part of the AEG/KF PLF5A fuel lift pump.

Bad surprise: despite the excellent condition of the electrical part of the original pump that equipped my car, the same could not be said of the hydraulic part. The idler pinion inside the pump chamber was seized to its shaft! The last time I ran the engine was about 2005 so the seizure occurred after that....I presume after I disassembled the car in 2016. Also, the lower plate that covers the pump chamber has a regulation valve that is supposed to be removed and checked during a rebuild like this and it too was seized! Anyway, all was not lost...

...because I have a spare lift pump from a car I used to own in 1981-1985 and its hydraulic portion was perfect. All it needed was a thorough cleaning.


Cleaning nearly done and the last bits about to go back together....


And it's together. I did another dry run test with it all assembled and it sounded good. I should try a pump test, I suppose, though I have no reason to think it won't pump.

[miketippett]

Last weekend I repainted the rearview mirror body and reassembled and mounted it.  Harry was giving me a hard time over not yet having done that!  Quite rightly!





Second time doing the driver's door panel.  The window winder was not happy staying in place and that was down to the padding under the vinyl being too thick next to the embellisher.  I also had to remount the lower part of the vinyl in order to slightly recontour the lower edge to better fit. And finally, the screws under the armrest were mounted.



I got new lifters and timing chain tensioner from Alveas in France, and two sets of NGK BP7ES from Rock Auto.

[miketippett]

Seat belts mounted


High temperature paint on the brake shoes - rear linings need to be changed


Whipped the brush holder out of the the SEV-Motorola alternator - dirty inside


Brush holder before cleaning


clean slip rings


Remounting. (the bolts holding the brush holder in are 1/8 inch, which is neither nor 5.5 mm. American parts!