browntastic 604

[Carlosfandango]

Love finding these threads - obviously only finding them as someone has kindly updated them!!

Read from the start and thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

A very very cool car, delighted that you now have it inside and giving it a longer lease of life.

Jealous of your garage. In fact, jealous of any garage at the moment as I haven't got one!

Most of my yokes are inside, alas not all.

 

Continued good luck with the Peugeot, bookmarked.

 

CFD

[dieselnutjob]

This week I went to visit Keith Herbert who must be the biggest Peugeot and specifically 604 nut that I have ever met.

He has this car for sale at the moment https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motoring/million-kilometre-peugeot

 

Anyway I bought this stash of parts:-

 

to go with this stash of parts that I already had:-

 

Keiths doors and bonnet have some surface rust but I think are not holed, which makes them better than those on the car.

The only original door that I will have to re-use now is the drivers door, and I have a new skin for that.

 

I don't want any rust in these panels at all, I want this car to last longer that I do so what to do?

 

I am thinking that I should just take every removable panel and get them dipped.  I know that this removes all paint and filler but does it get rid of rust as well?

 

Concerning the driver door should I cut the skin off before dipping the frame and then fit the new frame on after that?

[pshome]

new door for 127€

 

http://www.serie04.com/fr/carrosserie/18470-xxxxx.html

[dieselnutjob]

I forgot to say.  Keith has filled the insides and undersides of everything with wax, which has been great for preserving them, but I think will be a problem for welding and painting anything.

 

That's why I am tempted to dip everything to get rid of the wax so that I can work on stuff.

[dieselnutjob]

  On 12/01/2019 at 14:43, pshome said:

new door for 127€

 

http://www.serie04.com/fr/carrosserie/18470-xxxxx.html

 

One think I learnt from Keith is that a 504 front door won't fit a 604.  The slope of the A pillars is different.

[pshome]

ah, ok, i never stop learning   

[dieselnutjob]

A front door skin for a 504 will fit a 604 door. The rear doors are totally different.

[sierraman]

White spirit will remove the wax. I’d paint the insides with POR15 or similar.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

  On 12/01/2019 at 14:46, dieselnutjob said:

One think I learnt from Keith is that a 504 front door won't fit a 604.  The slope of the A pillars is different.

 

What about 505 doors?

[dieselnutjob]

To be honest my drivers door isn't too bad and I have new skin for it as well. I think I have enough stuff now.

[robbie_1961]

Hello Dieselnutjob,

 

I've only just found this thread and it is very informative, funny and useful to me. I used to own a manual 604 ti back in the mid-eighties and it was truly fabulous. It was that silvery green colour, no alloys or aircon but it did have headlight wash-wipers. Pity the doors practically rusted off but in the 4 years I owned it it never broke down once. I've been looking for a good one ever since and just a few months ago bought a gold one from Keith Herbert. You have just purchased the body panels he replaced donkeys years ago but I just never had the space for them. It's great they've gone to someone that can make good use of them. Mine has the same fault as yours in that it almost dies slowing to a junction, I guess the triple carbs need a good overhaul. Keith fitted a manual choke too but cut a dirty great hole in the air filter housing. If I could I would restore it to original.

 

I saw your old one up for sale a couple of years ago but at the time I didn't have anywhere to keep it. Probably the last roadworthy manual and it featured in magazine road tests in the seventies. Last time I saw it someone had thrown a bucket of matt black over it, yuck.

 

Good luck with your resto and it you need any reference pictures just let me know. Keith drenched the whole thing in oil and underseal so never been welded and no rust!

 

Kind regards,

Rob

[dieselnutjob]

Hello Rob.  I forgot to reply to your post when I read it.  Thank you for posting.

This week I got the front valance and two wings back from a friend that runs a bodywork / resto business in the Midlands.

The valance and left wing were new old stock but covered in surface rust and so he got them soda blasted and painted them in two pack primer.

Keith's front wing wasn't so good (though better then mine).  Superficially it looked OK but once stripped it had had some holes plated over and filled.  My friend Chris removed all of that, cut back to clean metal and shaped and welded in new metal, this one is also now in two pack primer.

He also painted the insides with a coat of stone chip.

He told me that I need to paint the insides in their final colour though because twin pack primer doesn't actually seal the panel.  For that it needs a layer of lacquer.

So I was looking for pics of 604s in various factory colours and came across this Dutch link https://www.octanemagazine.nl/de-604gti-van-opa/

Gorgeous isn't it?

[dieselnutjob]

I have made very little progress this year so far.

However today I cleared out the last of my rubbish from the garden which means a deal done with SWMBO.  Also work has been insane since lockdown but I have decided to just start booking in leave in the calendar anyway.

This Thursday I have booked a day's leave and a mate to come teach me how to weld.

This evening I jacked up the back of the car.  I am short of storage space so the easiest place to put my new axle stands is under the car.

Things that I am planning to achieve this summer:-

finish off the garage door

pull the engine out

weld up anything needing welding in the engine bay

Paint the engine bay

 

[dieselnutjob]

I was reading the process to remove the engine on a 604.

You are supposed to remove the bonnet and pull it out the top.

However to get the engine off of the gearbox you have drop the steering rack, front cross member and radiator so that you can pull the engine forwards.

I am thinking that I have to pull the cross member off I might as well just put the cross member on some sort of stand and lift the body off, dropping the engine underneath.

I don't have somewhere to work on the engine (the garage isn't big enough) so I have either pull it out the top, build a table over the front of the car and work on it there, or I can drop it on the floor and lift the front of the car as high as possible and work on the engine on the ground.

I'm not sure which is least bad.

To lift things I have a 80x80mm steel box section running across the garage.  

The box section is 2.1m above the ground and I could mount pulley wheels onto it so that a hand winch can go horizontally along the beam so not loosing the length of the winch.

Also I could just use some big ratchet straps somewhere on the body shell slung over the 80x80

This 80x80mm steel rests inside the i of a pair of 152x152 beams (what most people would call an RSJ) that hold up the roof.  This are the 37kg per metre ones which I think are normally used to support pretty big buildings so I don't think there will be any issue there.

[dieselnutjob]

I have taken a week off work.

Ordered this last week and hung it from my 80x80mm square tube.

I modified it by removing the chain at the top and putting a pulley wheel.

The wire is pulled by a fence puller which will see half the weight of the engine due the above mentioned pulley.

got the bonnet off

I struggled a bit with the fan shroud because the bottom screw just span, so I removed the fan instead.  Once I got the rad out I realised why:-

it's designed just to snap in and out which I couldn't see from where I was

So at this point I finished for the day.

A colleague (or rather an employee for a supplier) offered me a 1 ton chain winch so after dinner I popped over to his place to pick it up and it turns out that his neighbour is a serial Citroen licker

[Tadhg Tiogar]

  On 26/04/2021 at 21:09, dieselnutjob said:

.... it turns out that his neighbour is a serial Citroen licker

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Someone in the CCC will doubtless be able to identify who owns it 

[dieselnutjob]

One thing that surprised me is that so far none of the nuts and bolts have given me any hassle.  The only thing seized was a hose clamp which snapped rather than undoing.  Maybe the spirit of Keith Herbert is interceding for me from above.

Seriously my 16 year old Jag causes me more hassle with rusted up stuff than this 46 year old Pug.  With the Jag I have started a policy that as far as possible any bolt removed is tossed and replaced with a new one.  Given how well the originals have lasted on the 604 I think I would be better off putting the original ones back.

[dieselnutjob]

  On 26/04/2021 at 21:31, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Someone in the CCC will doubtless be able to identify who owns it 

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Apparently the turbo CX is coming up for sale.  It looks like it's in great condition.

[dieselnutjob]

I think that the brake booster is going to have to come out.

If I had room for a proper engine hoist I could pull the engine forward and then up, but with my lash up I can only really do a straight lift up.

The booster is in the way.

I just went around the engine bay spraying stuff with penetrating oil so that it can work overnight.

[Asimo]

  On 26/04/2021 at 21:09, dieselnutjob said:

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This has given me a flashback to lifting the Alpine body off of my PRV6. One Halfords trolley jack and some logs!

[dieselnutjob]

Today I didn't make as much progress as hoped.

I got the brake booster after a bit of a fight.  This clip pinged off and I spent an hour looking for it but it's gone.

I think I would like a garage floor made of magnetised steel sheet so that when something falls it doesn't bounce but just "sticks" where it falls.

Still, there is a lot more room without it

The power steering pump is actually underneath the battery tray, which is welded to the shell.

 

so there is not way that the engine will left up with that attached to the engine.

It came off okay

The power steering pipes are all attached to things with 17mm nuts and they are all really tight.  I haven't succeeded in undoing any of them.

so ordered some "flare nut spanners" off Amazon prime. 

I also had a look at the rack/engine interference situation.  There are two lugs on the bottom of the engine for attaching to the transmission and they hang down lower that the top of the rack, and basically I think that the engine will only come back 2cm before hitting the rack.

[phil_lihp]

There's an impressive amount of effort going into this project, best of luck with it.  I'm pretty sure yours is still the only 604/Tagora I have ever actually seen in real life.

[dieselnutjob]

I spent a couple of hours trying to drop the rack and failed

the rack is right at the bottom of this photo.

the power steering ram is sandwiched between the rack and the cross member

you can see one of the bolts that holds the rack onto the cross member in the photo, and above that is much longer bolt that attaches the ram to the cross member by going all the way through it

That long bolt can't come out because it hits the rack, and the nut is underneath all those pipes.

I think that's why Peugeot say to drop the whole cross member.  However the engine is sitting on it and getting to the engine mount bolts looks pretty difficult.  You can hardly see them let alone get tools on them.

[Asimo]

Have you seen this? 

LHD, not edited and of course in French, but there might be some clues there.

 Like they didn't remove the crossmember.

 

[dieselnutjob]

I will have a look at that later. Thanks!

Today I removed the entire exhaust.  It took me about 5 hours.

Now I have entire exhaust from the exhaust manifolds all the way to very strange back boxes off and in individual parts.

These things take some time when you are on your back under the car on axle stands and you don't want to break anything.  You can't just pop down to PartCo and buy a new exhaust for an early 604.

I can now see the engine mount bolts; hooray.

[dieselnutjob]

The video before that one is where they actually do the work. The last ten minutes is them moving the engine around without it coming out and I'm not sure why. 

My starter motor is out. 

[mk2_craig]

How much structural work do you think is required within the engine bay DNJ?

[Dead_E23]

How have you been getting on with your Milwaukee ratchet?  Is it making stuff any easier?

[dieselnutjob]

  On 29/04/2021 at 13:54, mk2_craig said:

How much structural work do you think is required within the engine bay DNJ?

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I need to get a wire wheel on there before I can answer that.  I know from experience the rust is always 100 time worse than it first appears.

  On 29/04/2021 at 15:48, Dead_E23 said:

How have you been getting on with your Milwaukee ratchet?  Is it making stuff any easier?

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It's a brilliant, brilliant tool. I love it.  I am using a DeWalt 1/2" hammer driver thing for the big stuff, and the Milwaukee for everything else.  The only problem is that in some really tight spots (and there are plenty on a 604) it's too big to get in there.

The DeWalt LED torch is crap.  The detents on the swivel head are too weak and it's like a drunk mate who just falls over all the time when you ask him for help.

[dieselnutjob]

Photos from yesterday

I thought that the manifold nuts would be impossible.

They just laughed at a ring spanner.

However I was able to got a blowtorch on them and with a combination of 3/8" extensions and UJs, or a 1/2" if I got lucky they all came off.  It was just a case of finding gaps like this

exhaust off