Watch me make a stupid mistake - Peugeot 504 Break L

[MorrisItalSLX]

6 minutes ago, jim89 said:

Any unexplained 'warming sensations' in the vicinity of it?

It certainly puts out quite the loud humming noise when it fires up.

[meowmeow]

5 hours ago, MorrisItalSLX said:

 

haha how did I not see the "Alacard" name before, that's very good

[meowmeow]

more sparkly action

thought i'd get the welding in the passenger footwell over and done with first so that i could focus on the boot floor

  

yes i know i painted over the plastic bungs - if i can be bothered i'll go back and clean that off...

 

First step while the car was still up on axle stands, undo the bolts for the luggage tie-down straps  and the carriage bolts that go through to the subframe

not very easy to get to

This was the only way i could stop them from spinning - lucky there were a few suitably-placed rust holes

Weirdly someone has welded the heads of the carriage bolts to the boot floor - probably got sick of them spinning whilst trying to tighten the nuts up

 

Then i made a cool tent:

Separated the side panel from the main boot floor - hopefully can reuse this

Removed the bumper and stupidly managed to snap one of the studs

will need to repair the weatherstripping lip as well.

Looks like the bumper's been replaced before given the sticker on it?

 

Next drilled out the bracket - there's another bit of floor that screws into this and bridges the gap between the rear seat and the floor

 

Now remember, only hand tools - no press brake, no brain, and with impeccable timing the bottle jack for the hydraulic press shat itself and leaked all over the place

So how am i going to make the new boot floor panel?

looks like this:

I'll admit this wasn't the best way to do it, but it's all i could think of so...

Measured the raised bits and ordered 1.5mm walled box section (40x20mm).

Sliced in half

Then spent ages bending a 45 degree angle into both sides with an adjustable spanner

Repeat that a few times and you've got this:

Template the flat bits of the floor:

Cut to shape, and braced with spare box section to minimise warping, welded the raised part in from the bottom:

Then flip over and grind the top side flat. Any imperfections will get a skim of filler later

Repeat this silliness many many times....

1.

2.

3.

4.

Taken me 2 years but finally getting some nicer looking welds...

i'm sure the neighbours will appreciate not needing so much grinding to flatten them down

 

Ok, then to line up in position and tack together:

 

And finally welded together, just need to tidy up the top-side and will get to trimming it down to size and cutting out the old floor section

Not perfect but it'll be under a carpet anyway so only i will know (and everyone who looks at these photos i suppose)

 

The boot floor is the last bit of welding that's needed, but bloody hell it's gonna take ages. Doesn't look like this is getting finished by April, but i think I'll explode if i have to move the deadline again

 

[jonathan_dyane]

Mind you are the most patient man I have ever encountered

[meowmeow]

1 hour ago, jonathan_dyane said:

Mind you are the most patient man I have ever encountered

trust me it's starting to wear thin !

[stuboy]

bloody great work

[Surface Rust]

Inspirational improvisation there!

[comfortablynumb]

Necessity is the mother of invention!

Brilliant work , you're actually helping me make a start on my own projects.

Thanks very much 🙏 

[meowmeow]

right then, continuing on...

we've got our repair panel, now time to pop it in

cut the panel to size and marked the corresponding cut line on the original floor:

slicey time - little bit nerve-wracking but didn't cut through anything i wasn't supposed to so all good

Conveniently easy access to the top of the subframe so gave it a bit of hammerite, and weld-through primer on the bits I'll be spot welding the new panel to:

Test fitting the panel...

then welded in place

 

On to the next patch

Cutting this out gave useful access to drill out the snapped bumper stud and weld a new carriage bolt in

(bet you thought I just wasn't going to fix this, and to be honest so did I...)

 

Reattached the return for the bridging floor piece that goes behind the rear seat

and cleaned up the bolts that go through to the subrame as they're a bit weird and I couldn't find anything similar to replace them with

  

 

Also washed the tie-down straps - whole tub of that vanish stuff did a reasonable job (there were a lot of rust stains), though will have to paint the buckles as not really worth sending them off to get plated like original.

   

 

Poked another hole, as is customary:

So another patch panel needed

 

To make the bigger panel first had to make a 'mould':

Tek screw the steel down so it doesn't change shape too much

and whack with a hammer for some time till we had this:

Not perfect but it'll do...

 

Welded the two patches in place:

Finally rebuilt the rusted boot lip and we've got this:

 

Shit picture but painted the underside of the boot floor:

Then filler and primer:

 

Also finally managed to get some matt black paint, so sprayed the aforementioned bridging floor piece:

  

 

Paint!

And removed the tent

Can see from the relflections I didn't bother to fill some of the 'wobbles' in the surface of the panel, but none of this is going to be seen anyway because......

 

I nicked the old carpet from where I used to work

probably risking doxxing myself uploading this picture since I don't know of anywhere else with a carpet like this in the waiting area... 

either way it's a really good Axminster and I'll be making floor mats and a boot mat for the Peugeot out of it.

Seeing as the place is finally getting renovated would be a shame to chuck it out.

 

Also took that chair and my old desk, which just about fit in the Golf:

Now i can pretend to be a 1970s company executive

 

Back to work, removed all the red oxide primer from the plastic bungs, and fitted a new tailgate latch and seal

Then cleaned up the bumper and refitted.

Unfortunately the aluminium trim pieces have clearly seen better days - tapped most of the dents out but may have to try and find some nicer ones at some point

 

Had a lot of difficulty trying to find replacement grommets for the trim clips - for some French reason they are 10mm holes, when almost everything I could find online was 9mm or smaller. In the end I ordered some random ones off eBay that had no dimensions specified at all, but somehow were actually 10mm.

Problem is the centre hole was too small, so had to gently drill them all out to 8mm to accept the clip.

Started putting the driver's side trim back. Again it's a bit fucked, but I'm hesitant to try plastic spray paint given the boot is like a greenhouse and not sure whether prolonged sunlight will cause the paint to flake off, so left as is for now

Small repair required:

 

In unrelated news, despite all attempts the stereo I bought is fucked. Works but the cassette mech spins way too fast. Re-capped the board, replaced the speed control IC but for some reason still running too fast. Ruled out the pinch roller/capstan as a problem - it's definitely electrical but I am too stupid to diagnose. 

Given that it also doesn't have FM radio which makes the working part of it a bit useless around here, I opted instead to spend silly money on something I really shouldn't have:

Deck and radio will go side-by-side under the dash,  and the amp squirrelled away somewhere.

Irritatingly the seller of the amp and tape deck didn't mention that someone had 'helpfully' changed the connectors, so nothing fits together now:

Everything passes through the radio, which has the correct connectors. Problem is they're a silly proprietry Pioneer connector you can't buy anywhere. Thought they were GX20s from CB radio, but nope, slightly bigger. 

So will be chopping off and replacing everything with 8 pin GX20 connectors at some point....

First of all need a new soldering iron as the ancient one i picked up from a charity shop has finally died.

Exhibit A, snapped grub screw so I can't replace the tip, which is utterly shagged and won't melt solder anymore:

Exhibit B, very helpfully the plug opens like this whenever you try and pull it out of the socket:

 

[junkyarddog]

Truly heroic stuff!👍

[Bmwdumptruck]

Brilliant progress. Can’t remember, are we up n running or is that still to happen? 

[Matty]

Mint this. Absolutely mint 👍

[meowmeow]

22 minutes ago, Bmwdumptruck said:

Brilliant progress. Can’t remember, are we up n running or is that still to happen? 

engine runs, though haven't put coolant in it yet so fingers crossed the liner seals I fitted actually work....

gearbox is unknown as i haven't filled hydraulics yet so no clutch - box fluid i drained looked fine and it feels ok but we'll see what happens

[stuboy]

doing great work

[Brigsy]

Great job on the boot repairs. Looks like its coming together nicely

[High Jetter]

Loving this. They were such strong, versatile vehicles. 

[Datsuncog]

One of my favourite build threads, this. Top work! 

[vulgalour]

On 28/02/2026 at 17:13, meowmeow said:

Started putting the driver's side trim back. Again it's a bit fucked, but I'm hesitant to try plastic spray paint given the boot is like a greenhouse and not sure whether prolonged sunlight will cause the paint to flake off, so left as is for now

 

Instead of plastic spray paint, you want a vinyl dye like vinylkote (other brands are available).  Some vinyl dye suppliers can do custom mixes so you can get a closer match to what you want.  Unlike paint, it soaks into/bonds with the plastic itself so it doesn't scratch off or fade and you can seal it with clear UV coats in the relevant amount of sheen to match the rest of the interior.

[meowmeow]

19 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Instead of plastic spray paint, you want a vinyl dye like vinylkote (other brands are available).  Some vinyl dye suppliers can do custom mixes so you can get a closer match to what you want.  Unlike paint, it soaks into/bonds with the plastic itself so it doesn't scratch off or fade and you can seal it with clear UV coats in the relevant amount of sheen to match the rest of the interior.

Thanks that's very helpful, didn't actually think of vinyl dye - can easily get the colour from the back side of the panels so that's good

Problem i have is that some of the surface of the trim pieces has gone a little crumbly in one or two spots, so i imagine would have to find a way of stabilising that first

[vulgalour]

A thin resin would probably work and should take the vinyl dye too, or you could add a bit of pigment to dye the resin.  If it's done that French car thing of turning into plastic flour on the surface it's pretty hard to do anything with at all unfortunately.  You'll find a way regardless, your superpower seems to be finding solutions to problems nobody else would bother thinking of fixing, and I salute you for it.  Little bit jelly of the Axminster score too, that's going to look top notch when you install it.

[meowmeow]

alright here's where i prove my point that it looks like nothing's happened for 2 years, then suddenly....

 

let's start with that stereo. Replacement connectors arrived so got to work switching everything over. 

The Pioneer J1 connectors are proprietary, but luckily pin-out is depicted in the service manual:

Sorted the amp and tape deck pretty easy, remembering of course that the diagram is flipped from what you're actually doing on the back side of the connector...

6 wires, with 2 redundant pins

  

Then got to the tuner

1 2 3 4 5 6... 7 wires? what's the yellow one??

Turns out something to do with muting - when you connect it all up the tape deck gets daisy-chained through the tuner, so i imagine prevents both from being on at the same time? 

Luckily just goes to ground anyway so connected to pin 5 as it's bridges with 1 and 8 to ground. 

All connected together and working well (yes the power supply is off in this pic as I forgot to take a photo in the middle of working - will just have to believe me !)

Really don't fancy contorting myself under the dash whilst the car is in the garage so will install this once it's on the road. 

 

Ok back to useful work

Glued the headliner back in place so it wasn't flapping around anymore

Installed the spare tyre carriage, and release strap:

  

 

Next to put the new tailgate on. As i am very lazy and i learnt the hard way that whatever car this and the front door came from seemed to have been coated in the thickest filler-primer i have ever seen, I opted not to bother painting it. Colour is similar enough as it is and as mentioned previously the paint on the rest of the car is utter shit and i kind of like it that way. Adds to the charm eh? 

Problem is that after almost 50 years, any second hand parts are gonna be full of bodges. The worst of which here being the hinges:

A nail holding the hinge together, and some slightly too long (and bent) bolts welded crudely on - lovely!

Hinges on the original tailgate are much better, so no problem will just knock the pins out and switch them over. Easy, right?

Cue more Frenchness. Who designed these fuckers so that the recess is ever so slightly too small to allow the pin to be knocked out straight??

And good luck getting an appropriately sized punch in there without it getting jammed...

After much swearing I managed to complete this job, gave the top of the tailgate a quick blow over with some paint and brought across the top seal from the old one:

 

Tailgate installed, got the lights connected up:

Will tackle the bottom edge at some point, luckily not rotten so will just need sanding and treating 

Popped the rest of the trimmings back on, removed the wiper motor and shoved a bung in the hole.

I'm leaving the numberplate like that - the overspray from whoever tried to paint the car before is so hilariously bad that I can't bring myself to clean it up

It was VERY difficult to close the tailgate, given the seal is new. Had to have someone lean on the outside, while I sat inside the boot pulling the tailgate down with my feet pressed against the backs of the tail light housings. 

It's alright now, just needed a week of being closed...

 

Next, filler and primer on the rear of the car:

Then i got distracted and painted some mudflaps i had lying around with white rubber paint:

How many more tacky bits should i attach to this thing?

 

Did some painting:

and sanded then polished the paint a little bit (sanding was to remove the stupid brush-painted layer which was beginning to flake off in places), which much to my surprise went from a 2 to a solid 4.5:

 

Front door in paint:

And with all the bits and bobs reinstated:

Door switch for the dome light had seen better days, so built one good one out of two bad ones:

  

Still hasn't fixed the issue with none of these switches having any effect on whether the light is on or off, but at least i can rule this one out as being a problem...

 

Fuel tank next, and here i receive my punishment for buying one for £30. Not that i had a choice, as it's the only one i could find. 

You can buy saloon fuel tanks easy (albeit imported from Argentina), but nobody seems to make new estate ones anymore

Started removing the paint from the outside

and joy of joys it's a little porous...

No chance of finding a new tank I'd better try and fix this one. 

Resin/fibreglass patch with many prayers to stop it leaking:

Then a very thick coat of tank guard to reinforce aforementioned prayers

In a similar fashion, here's my *excellent fix to stop the sender float falling off:

 

Installed the tank with a significant amount of swearing. Eventually figured out that you're supposed to install the tank before the spare tyre carriage....

Will paint the bottom now it's installed - can see where the jack scratched the paint a bit so would've been pointless to coat it beforehand.

Or at least that's what I'm telling myself

Also plumbed in with fuel line but there's no way you're getting photos of that as I don't have 3 hands and I'm not a contortionist. 

 

Even the cover for the sender unit was rotten, so will have to find another one of these somewhere...

 

Ok, last panels to go on now - let's give it a face for the first time in 40 years. Been looking forward to this for ages

Lower valance required a bit of welding (so i lied when i said that was finished...), and a fair few dents knocking out:

  

As it's from a pickup it's missing the holes for the front jacking points, so  I added those

 

All the front panels are welded together, which is quite annoying to do, but i managed given space constraints...

First fit of the front end:

 

But wait! Nobody will remember but way back at the beginning when this thing arrived I found a wing-mount aerial shoved down the side of the inner wing:

I said i was going to reuse it, and i'd like to think i'm a man of my word, so....

Problem is it's missing the fixing bits. Apparently Halfords had something similar that I could canibalise, so popped over to find that the website lied to me and nothing of the sort was in stock.

Luckily my local motor factors is a time machine, and for an entire seven of my great british pounds i was provided with this:

Which provided these:

And allowed us to get to this:

 

Now that's working, set about cleaning up the surfaces ready for panel bond

Squigy stuff applied and front end installed:

Primed

And painted...

  

 

and some more fussy bits:

Checked the lights are still working...

 

The indicator housings are really good at snapping the mounting bolt surround (again a pretty questionable design imo)

Both of them exploded on the junk housings that were attached to the lower valance. 

Managed to extract the old bolt from the replacement one as it was quite bent, and replace gently with a better one:

And installed on the car:

Still need a N/S one

(also i did go back and wipe that terrible overspray off the very expensive sticker with some acetone)

 

Finally, and most importantly, carpet installation.

 

List is pretty small now (!)

- Reinstall the heater matrix, and fill with coolant to see if the liner seals are doing their jobs correctly

- N/S rear axle seal needs doing

- Fill brake system with fluid and bleed etc...

- Pop the bonnet on

- Tyres

And a few other fussy bits and reattaching trim

 

Will it see the road this Summer??? Bloody well hope so as I'm getting a bit sick of this!

 

[jim89]

So how did you get the boot/hatch hinge pins out? 

[meowmeow]

24 minutes ago, jim89 said:

So how did you get the boot/hatch hinge pins out? 

For the replacement tailgate I managed to tap the hinge pin (singular, as the other was a nail...) about 2/3rds of the way out using increasingly thinner punches due to the stupid angle, then covered it in penetrant, grabbed it with pliers and wiggled at an angle for ages till it eventually came out. This scratched the paint a bit hence why i had to respray that part of the tailgate.

For the old tailgate which was very much going in the bin, i got impatient and used the punch to notch the panel and give the hinge pins somewhere to go to when i was knocking them out.

Weirdly getting the hinge pins back into the holes wasn't nearly as annoying...

[Brigsy]

Great progress. Looks like its coming together well

[junkyarddog]

Fabulous work!

Will you reinstate a rear wiper?

 

[meowmeow]

10 hours ago, junkyarddog said:

Fabulous work!

Will you reinstate a rear wiper?

 

this has been an internal debate of mine for some time...

The Break L didn't have a rear wiper from the factory - in fact the original tailgate didn't even have a hole for one.

On the one hand having a rear wiper would be quite nice (the day i finally fixed the wiring for the one on the Golf was glorious)

On the other hand, good luck finding a 504 estate wiper arm (thought i could use a 405 one but they bend the other way), and even if I did I don't have any of the wiring/switchgear so would have to work all that out.

 

Plan is to try and survive without, and if it gets too annoying i'll look into it

[Missy Charm]

All that work and it still looks exactly the same 😉!  You could, at least, have hammered the Peugeot into the shape of a Hindustan Ambassador or something...

Congratulations, however.  The rest of us have been looking on in awe -- what has been achieved with little more than determination, skill and a wheelie bin far exceeds what many have attempted with greater resources behind them.  It's something of an inspiration for those of us who dream of, one day, turning half an axle and a bent coathanger back into a showroom-condition Capri...  

[artdjones]

Apart from anything else, another example of what was a really excellent car back in the day has been resurrected.

Peugeot were the French Mercedes.

[meowmeow]

4 hours ago, Missy Charm said:

All that work and it still looks exactly the same 😉!  You could, at least, have hammered the Peugeot into the shape of a Hindustan Ambassador or something...

Congratulations, however.  The rest of us have been looking on in awe -- what has been achieved with little more than determination, skill and a wheelie bin far exceeds what many have attempted with greater resources behind them.  It's something of an inspiration for those of us who dream of, one day, turning half an axle and a bent coathanger back into a showroom-condition Capri...  

hmm I wonder what a 5 metre long Ambassador would look like?

glad someone remembers the wheelie bin, though granted at the beginning my general lack of 'stuff' at least meant it was much easier to move around in the garage - as you look back through the photos you can see it getting more and more of a tip haha

[meowmeow]

not the best of updates as 

1. my computer with all the pics on it finally died after 12 years

2. my old phone i was using to take photos ran out of storage

3. i am getting impatient and want this thing on the road

 

First, reassemble the heater matrix and reinstall in the car.

You don't get many photos of this as it's a proper ballache to shove up under the dash, but i did make a point of photographing these utterly stupid bolts that are just too close to the inlet so that you can't get a socket on them, or very much purchase at all with a spanner:

Spindly thermostat of doom thing gently clipped back on:

'Proof' the job is done - list with heater matrix crossed off...

 

Rest of the coolant hoses plumbed in, filled with water, then cross everything that the liner seals oil and water don't become one.

I don't have access to my youtube account on this even older laptop so you'll have to do with this random video host that i promise doesn't just link to some virus page.

(if you don't want to click, it's a 9 second video of the engine running and not pissing water everywhere, and also the liner seals are doing their job! Evident in the video is the fuck-off massive hole in the exhaust that I will need to get fixed...)

https://files.catbox.moe/4x0s50.mp4

 

Ok, next on the list is the N/S axle seal. Repeat of proceedings for the driver's side.

Previous person to work on this was even more of a monkey than me. None of that mating surface damage has anything to do with me. 

Whoever did this also then didn't do anything to prevent the issue from happening again... The studs weren't greased so they corroded and got stuck in the aluminium casting again, making it very difficult to get the half-shaft out.

Next to very carefully cut the old bearing and retaining ring off the half-shaft:

which i eventually managed

Pressed on new bearing and ring, then installation reverse of disassembly etc...

 

Dragged the front bumper out of storage and used the press to pop a rather large dent out of it

Then test fitted on the car to see what it'd look like with a mouth. Note L spec bumper has no overriders like the pickup:

Also in this photo is the very cheesy steering wheel wrap i added

 

So it runs, before we get it moving would be sensible if the brakes worked, especially as less than a metre in front of the car is a steep drive, and i live on a hill...

Filled with brake fluid and bled the system, all surprisingly straightforward and brakes seeming to be working fine. 

 

Next onto the clutch, which i have read is a right pain the arse to bleed. 

It was. 

Pushed the piston in on the slave to try and help things:

No dice i thought. The clutch fork was only moving very slightly and the clutch not disengaging. 

Suggestion is to reverse bleed, attaching a line from the front brake caliper to the slave.

Tried this, pushed hard on the brake pedal and 'pop'.

Somehow there was a tiny pinhole in the brake line running from the front to rear of the car. I have no idea how that happened, and you cannot see it with the naked eye. Can only imagine it might've gotten slightly pinched against the floor of the car? I have no idea. Either way with brake fluid pissing onto the floor I tried to stem the flow and made up a new brake line:

Annoying that i had to then re-bleed the system, but at least that happened before we got out on the road...

Ok, so back to the clutch then, as it still wasn't working. Was only getting resistance for the bottom 1 inch of pedal travel. 

It was then that I remembered something from ages ago - the original clutch pedal rod was very bent, so I'd relaced it with one from a Peugeot 604 as i couldn't get a hold of a 504 one at the time.

Photo for reference:

But looking back at this, strikes me that the old one looks ever so slightly longer?

Luckily i don't throw anything away, so dragged it out of a bin pile and found a picture of a new part (£39 + £20 shipping from Greece, no thanks!) for reference, and got to whacking the old one back into shape:

Yeah that wasn't helping was it...

Note the pedal now sits much higher off the floor. Good stuff

And can see the clutch fork is moving a lot more now.

But what's this? The clutch still isn't disengaging. Noooooooo

 

Then i remembered that I got the pressure plate and clutch disc from different places, but both off Facebook Marketplace, which is probably the worst place to get car parts. 

Part numbers are a bit confusing for the clutch mechanism (or I'm just stupid), but i had an incling that something was up. 

Which unfortunately means...

 

Comparison of the new clutch discs and the one i originally took off the car:

Manual says max disc thickness is 8.4 +/- 0.1mm

Measured the new disc thickness, it was up to 10mm in some places. I know you're supposed to measure from the rivets but that's proper out of whack imo

The pressure plate fork design is also quite different to the original

With this and the disc installed the forks were completely flat, whereas they protruded quite a bit with the old setup (i suppose some of that will be down to clutch disc wear though)

Can see in this photo that the thow-out bearing had barely grazed the surface of the forks:

Ordered a different clutch kit (ebay ad photo of the pressure plate as i have no pictures of it on the car)

And then separately managed to find the exact same clutch disc as was in the car previously (stamped 1984 with lots of tasty asbestos i imagine):

 

All installed in the car (and as a bonus got to check whether I'd actually torqued the flywheel bolts last time i was in here, which luckily i had done) and reinstalled.

All good, clutch now working.

Not exactly sure what was up there, can only imagine that the clutch disc was somehow damaged/warped causing the pressure plate forks to be too retracted, or perhaps the pressure plate was mismatched with the disc? But either way at least it's behaving itself now...

 

Which means it runs, it stops, and it moves. So time for some paperwork

I had almost considered not doing this, as at present it's registered to a dead man (unlimited free parking woo), but decided against as the risk of it getting clamped/towed and not being able to get it back would probs see it get crushed. Maybe with something not so rare eh?

 

Provided there aren't any more nasty surprises, the list now stands at:

- Centre section exhaust

- Carb needs properly setting up

- Paint the bonnet

- Final fit of front bumper

- Tyres

- Cavity wax and refit all the bungs that i removed from the body whilst welding

- Put the pinstripe on