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1987 505 Turbo Revival: Part Deux


MGR550

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Second go at reviving a neglected gem; another 1987 505 Turbo with auto trans and ABS, largely untouched since 1996 and has 47k miles on it. Paint is very sunburnt, but absolutely no rust as far as I can tell.  According to the guy I bought it off of who couldn't get it running, I am the third owner. Apparently the car was bought new by a doctor in Pennsylvania for his son to commute to Princeton for school, then was parked when he finished. According to the window sticker, the car was sold for $24 700 USD back in the day! It was an absolute mission bringing the car home, between my car trailer splitting in half on the freeway with the 505 on it, and the usual incompetence by CBSA at the border, but its home now and I've poked at it just a bit. 

Plan is largely the same as with the previous revival, fuel pump and filter are first up and should be arriving this week. Looks like the previous owner suspected ignition for the no start because its got new plugs, wires, coil, and ignition control module already. No warning lights or error codes on the dash, but it hasn't actually fired or anything yet so It might not be fully awake to do any proper checks. 

The abs stuff and auto trans dipstick really make it tough to get in behind the intake manifold to get the fuel rail bolts off, but as I learned last time properly cleaning and flushing the fuel system and especially the injectors is a must. 

Matt

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Man that looks like a score!  If the paint damage is limited to clear it might be fairly easy to bring it back while keeping original paint.  Looks great in the pics!

Rabin

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  • 2 months later...

Alrighty, update time again. Had to remove the AC pipes to get at the back side of the fuel rail, but it seems the circuit was empty anyways. Fuel injector rail out, injectors were very sticky and didnt want to open for anything at first. Got a new external fuel pump, filter, and pressure regulator. Fuel guage was reading 0 so I added some fresh gas in, tried to fire it up and it coughed a few times but not much more. First sputters of an engine after sitting for a long time make me so happy haha. Took the feed off the fuel rail and purged it a bit, fuel was nasty brown old stuff. Was draining the tank and there was much more than I put in so I pulled the tank out and it has so much crud in it! I should be able to clean the tank out well enough with just sloshing around, but fuel sending unit resistance strips are gone from corrosion. The in-tank pump is seized solid, any idea what part # or where to look to find a new one?

Thanks,

Matt

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https://public.servicebox.peugeot.com/classic/AIDE/8505/03_505.html?id=sous_menu0|0_9

Groupe 1

1450.93 up to 84

1450.62 sedan since 84

It's probably hard to find today but it's just a pump to feed the main pump under the car so you don't need anything too fancy, I think you can even test the engine without it as long as you're not low on gas.

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Just to test the engine I would pull the pump out of the tank and just use the external pump. In my experience I have had 3 of these intank pumps seize and they always have blocked fuel flow to the external pump keeping the car from running. On one of my cars I just removed the intake pump and just ran a line to the bottom of the tank which worked fine. Also I have had success hitting fuel pumps with a hammer and bringing them back to life.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Fuel system is now sorted out and seems to be working. 

Main problem now is a very intermittent spark. I took the plugs out and they were pretty fouled, so put some new ones in. Tested to see if they spark ok and in 10 seconds of cranking with the plugs out and grounded, I only got a few sparks. Same thing when swapping the ignition ECU. I suspect the coil or maybe the hall pickup at the distributor are flaky. Coil is relatively cheap, hall sensor not so much without testing it first. 

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Pretty sure the hall sensor is the same as a VW distributor from a 1.8L Jetta from say 1987 (I think).  They use the same distributor cap, so should be easy to source.  Same wire, and same plug - so should be good if you can source the VW one.

Rabin

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  • 5 months later...

Quick update on the silver one:

VW hall sensor seems to be a direct swap and as far as I can tell it did help the problem some. It now fires on probably two of the cylinders each turn when cranking and it sounds like it wants to go but still not quite there.

The vacuum tubes for fuel pressure reg and manifold pressure are surely cracked so will replace those next. Still have to set the timing properly but that's a bit tough to do when its not running. I'll probably pull the injectors again and double check that they're not dirtied up now that the fuel pump has circulated fresh fuel through the lines. Maybe time for a new coil too just to make sure. Should I bother checking the turbo inlet accordion pipe for cracks? taking it off to check might crack it if its not already..

Hoping to get it running and road ready this summer, so lots of usual maintenance stuff once it can get from storage to the house under its own power. I don't really have space for both 505s and I'm a bit of a manual trans snob, but the lower mileage, ABS, overall cleanliness, and original documentation are appealing🤔 Assuming this one doesn't have a cracked head or any other driveline problems once I get it going, its going to be a coin flip which one I keep.

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Pulling off that accordion pipe is a pretty big risk everytime you take it off. If the accordian pipe feels stale and not very flexible then it will probably crack. Unless you have spare accordian pipes, I would leave it alone until you have nothing left to check. Have you verified that the injectors are actually squirting fuel?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Gave the accordion pipe a poke, felt nice and pliable. I also haven't checked the turbo itself yet either so may have to take off the accordion pipe anyways. The pipe from the turbo to the intercooler was off when I got the car so some stuff might have fallen in at some point. I should check that the compressor wheel isn't gummed up and spins freely.

Double checked the injectors again and sure enough a few were gunked up and not flowing right so now thats remedied (also verified they're not stuck open either).  Swapped the coil for a new NGK unit as well. There's not many of the usual replacement parts left to swap other than the spark plug wires (which it definitely needs as a few have been nibbled on by rodents by the looks of it, but is not shorting the spark), distributor cap, and rotor. I swapped the fuel pressure reg a while ago as well, but I don't really trust it as I had tried the same one on my black car and it didn't run quite right (though I also did other changes to it at the same time) so might swap that back to the original. Once the salt is off the roads I'll bring my black car to the storage barn and start swapping parts that are suspect like the plug wires, IAC valve, and ECU to hopefully see whats left to change. The original ECU for this silver car doesnt seem to fire the plugs at all when I test on it, but the old mostly-functional-partially-fried ignition ECU from the black car gives pretty promising results. Bit of a brain-dump post but I've got too many projects with spring coming up to keep track of everything without writing it down lol.

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Those old fuel pressure regulators are pretty common failures after sitting for many years in my experience. I pulled all of my pressure regulators off of all of my parts cars to test them with a Gauge. In doing so I found only 1 of 4 I had was actually within spec and not leaking. Plus its always a good peace of mind to confirm and know an important part works correctly.

Interesting you speak of the fried ECU... I had a friend of mine (who is an electrical geek) take apart an ignition ECU in one of my parts cars and found a blown chip... Crazy what time does to these things.

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