405 GTX "style" 2.0. -95

[Atlaskrukvaxt 5]

This is the story of my 405 GTX "style" going from rags to riches. I have pictures of many things but not everything.

 

The car

 

Peugeot 405 GTX "style".

Color code M0KZ

XU10J2C engine, 8 valve multi point fuel injection by Marelli and catalytic converter. 

166 000km driven in the south of Finland, meaning a lot of road salt and and a lot of rain. 

Failed inspection due to brakes in 2015 and had been standing still since then (bought by me in February 2020)

 

I saw the car by chance on the biggest second hand car website in the country and instantly knew I needed it. It was advertised for 350€ and in non drivable condition. At the time of the purchase I lived about 5 hours from my hometown due to studies 

I instantly called the seller and discussed coming to see it, this was a Thurday. Said and done I informed my dad about the car the same day. Friday I went to see it and spoke to the seller, it was a very rainy day so no thorough inspection was done. I quickly tapped the lower sides of the car to listen for rust, turned the steering wheel to listen for gaps in the steering rack, and checked the angle of the rearweels for rear axle damage/wear. 

 

The exterior of the car was in overall good condition, the hose from the radiator was off, meaning the engine had no fluid in it and the exhause was broken off by the last muffler. 

The interior was covered in white mouldy patches. The car overall smelled bad, there was green moss growing in nooks and crannies e.g. on the chrome trim strip on the bumper and side mirrors. The roof liner was hanging down and there was a hole in it from where (I assume) a mouse had chewed its way through it. 

 

The price of the car was negotiated down from 350€ to 220€ on the condition that I'd have it removed from the area before the weekend was over. My dad gladly jumped in his car and came to pick it up on the Saturday. The car was loaded and ready to go around 3 pm (left) and arrived safely at home around 10pm (right)

 

First order of business was drying out the car as there was condensation on the inside. The boot liner was removed where it was discovered the insulation was completely soaked so a water leak was then suspected. The insulation and liner were removed and coupe heaters were put in the boot of the car to let it dry out. The insulation was then inspected under the rear seats which was also discovered to be wet and mouldy so it was removed and fell apart when taken out, needless to say the waterleak was quite large. 

 

The seats were removed along with the floor liner and the floor insulation which was all discovered to be wet. One of the bolts holding down the driver seat was completely stripped so it was impossible to get it out but I used an angle grinder and was super carefull to only grind down the head until I could it the bolt through the floor with a hammer and a metal rod.

 

One of the large circular plugs had been dislodged from floor pan of the driver side rear seat as it had taken a hit from something and was dented.The carpet and insulation were put to dry indoors in a hall for about a week. In the same time the various stains and dirt were removed from the seats with great success. This is some cleaner I bought at the local furniture store for 17€ and the whole bottle went to cleaning the 4 seats and backrests. Before and after results are amazing!

 

The A, B and C pillars as well as the plastic trim were all removed and sprayed with vinegar to kill whatever was growing on them followed by isopropanol to kill off the vinegar smell. The dashboard received the same treatment plus some soapy water to get rid of other gunk. Note to everyone, the gearshift knob apparently disintegrates from soap.  Luckily I have a semiwrecked 405 with an XU7 engine in it so I took the gearknob from it. The interior roof that had the mouse hole in it was taken out and as this car had received a sunroof conversion at some point in its life the roof liner was actually modified and a fabric had been tensioned over the "gap" where the mechanism for the sunroof is housed as well as the sunroof itself when it is open. This fabric was dirty, smelled bad, had mouse poop on it as well as the hole. 

 

I then got the idea to paint the A,B and C pillars a darker color as the rest of the interior (door panels, seat, lower door trims, etc) were all black/dark gray so I went to the local paintshop and the owner helped me look through the RAL color table to find a suitable color that matched the rest of the interior. The color RAL 9003 is pretty much as close as you get to the original dark plastic trim color. I bought about 4dl of the color in semi gloss. I had to fill in some of the edges with a spray can of matte black but luckily there is a plastic weld line on most parts that I used as "edge" so the difference in shade of black/dark gray is not noticable. The original color also shines through a bit in one place on both B pillars but that area is hidden by the seatbelt so it's not worth correcting in my opinion. 

 

While the paint was drying the floor mat was washed with the pressure washer and dried again in the sun. Lots of sand and what not came out of the carpet. 

 

 

Reassenbly of the floor insulation, carpet and seats were pretty straight forward with some help from my brother. I bought some new green insulation mat for the boot and whatever was left over I puzzled in to a large enough piece for the rear seats (whose insulation I had to throw away). 

 

When the lower plastic trims and seats were back in the car I started working on the things I could in the dark barn where my Peugeot was standing since the main garage was occupied by my brother's Volvo 740 which he had put a T6 engine in. That means the brakes were taken off, inspected and reassembled. I later too decided to put on new disks and pads since there was quite a bad layer of rust on the disks all around.

Remember to paint your brake callipers a different color to increase your car's HP with 10.

 

The calliper on the passanger rear wheel was completely stuck and the break lines' hexagonal nut was almost stripped so I took a file and ground down two of the sides to fit a smaller key. I don't remember the exact size now but let's say original size was 13mm and the key didn't properly grab on to it but the 12 key was too small I took the file and ground down on two sides until the 12 key fit on to it.

 

As for the calliper being stuck, the plastic gasket/seal by the lever of the hand brake was broken so water had gotten in and it had rusted. We disassembled the calliper completely and gently polished the parts with what we call "bears tongue" which almost like steel wool but made from a synthetic material. It's basically sandpaper but in a random mesh and thick like a foam. It's hard to describe. It feels like, well I assume, a bears tongue. I guess kind of like a cat's tongue but not as rough?

 

With the brakes fixed (and my brother's volvo 740 out from the main garage) we took out my Peugeot and towed it to the garage before pushing it in with a towing beam. 

The previous owner had mentioned that the headgasket had been leaking so needed replacement so that was the next thing on the list of things to do. 

 

The removing the head is quite straight forward on the XU10j2 I will type it out the best I can from memory for my own sake (and maybe yours?). 

Start off by disconnecting the battery, emptying the cooling system and draining the oil. 

Removing the air intake and filter, relevant hoses, cables for sensors and what not is easy and straight forward. There should also be a way to depressurize the fuel injection I believe but the amount of fuel leaking out is only a few decileter so remember that if you don't want to deal with it. I just let it flow. It's useful to number the cables to the injectors (and even the injectors) from 1-4 so you can put everything back without having to worry if you put it correctly back or not. I also put labels on all the connections I disconnected kind of describing shortly where I took them from e.g. "down right", "under intake" and so on. 

 

Remove the cambelt cover which is cut in to two. If my memory doesn't fail me you have to actually put the engine to rest on a hydraulic lift, open the left hand side engine mount and lower the engine down about 2 cm to get one of the screws holding the plastic cover in place out. You can undo it without lowering the engine but at least I could not figure out any other way to get the screw out. Please inform me if there is a better way to do this as it is a bit risky and is best done in cooperation with someone. 

With the cover removed one can lift the motor back up and attach it to the engine mount.  Undo the screws holding the fuel lines to the injectors and the screws holding the intake manifold to the cylinder head. Remember to also remove the throttle cable. The intake should slip right off then.

 

For the timing belt I usually use a white permanent marker and mark the belt and the wheel at some point so I know where it has to be when I put it back. In this case I decided to change both the multi belt and the cam belt as they were both over 5 years old but I suspect they hadn't been changed since 2007 so it was about time to change them. To do this the left handside wheel has to come off as well as the plastic cowling inside the wheel arch. The multi belt has to come off before the cam belt can come off so you have to undo the screw holding the tensioner on the multi belt as well as a "hidden" bolt inside the wheel of the tensioner before it start sliding and you can remove the belt. My belt had multiple cracks every centimeter so it was good to remove and replace it.

 

 

When you are down in the wheel arch cast an eye on the steering rack boot. It's difficult to replace but if it is broken you can cut it off and put on a new one going over the "spike" one sees going backwards if you create a funnel using a thin sheet of metal and use the three V's of life you should get it over the "spike" though it looks impossible. The three V's are Vaseline, Will and Violence.

If I'm not mistaken it should be the one circled in red. Luckily I didn't ahve to replace mine but the driver side rubber I had to. That one is much easier though. 

 

(borrowed from the internet, search term on google was peugeot 405 steering rack)

 

With the multibelt removed mark the cambelt and wheels with a white marker to have an easier time putting on the belt back, if you put on a new belt simply transfer the markings from the old belt to the new, but be very careful that they are in the right place.

The belt comes off by releasing the idler and just pushing it off. I find it easier to take it out through the wheel arch though. 

 

Next step is to remove the valve cover. Straight forward 10 bolts to remove and it comes right off. 

The difficult part in my case was the next step, separating the exhaust from the cylinderhead as working on the exhaust manifold is quite difficult with the head still attached. Instead separating the exhaust manifold from the catalytic converter was done. In my case the two are joined together with two bolts that are under spring tension keeping the two in contact. Unfortunately the bolts and nuts were in such a bad condition that we had to use a reciprocating saw to cut them from under the car. We made new bolts later from some random bolts we had in a drawer, a tool grinder and a threading tool. 

 

With the exhaust separated, intake manifold disconnected, and valve cover removed the bolts holding the head to the block were undone and the head came right off. 

There was clearly visible area between the two central cylinders where gas had leaked between them. 

 

Intake port no.2 (counted from the right) had some visible discolouration.

 

I after removing the old gasket I gently sanded the head with 320 and 480 grid sand paper attached to a piece of wood going across the whole block in one motion to remove residue. 

 

With the cylinderhead and top of the cylinders sanded, the threads were cleaned by going through each hole with the right size thread bit and when all were done all holes were cleaned with pressure air. 

The orientation lugs (?) were placed in the cylinder block, the gasket was placed on the cylinder and the cylinderhead was put on top of it. The bolts were then put in and tensioned to 15 nM if I'm not mistaken. If I recall the following step was 70nM followed by a 260 degree turn which seemed a bit excessive to both me and my dad but those were the specifications. Imho 220-240 segrees would have been enough, the last couple of degrees were almost scary to pull. Always use a racket with a force gauge when you do this. 

 

The new belts were placed with the white dots from the marker working as guides to make it easier. I found getting the bolts for the exhaust manifold and catalytic converter was easier to get in place from different directions. The left hand side was easier from under the car and the right hand side was easier from the top. 

 

The reassembly was pretty much the same as the disassembly but in reverse order.

Some smaller things that were done were changing of pollen filter, oil filter and air filter.

 

The engine started but was then only running on 2 cylinders, I posted about it here however luckily I got it working. 

The broken exhaust was fixed with a muffler from a citroen that I modified slightly to fit. I bought it because it was the right diameter of the pipe and had the same type of joint as the peugeot. I just cut off the mounting points and the final pipe and welded them to fit my car. 

 

The roof liner was the next on the list of things to do, here is the original roof liner that had the mid section cut out for the sunroof conversion. I bought some fabric from a local custom car/boat dressing company for about 50€. Note, if you are ever doing this you only need about 1,5 by 1,5 meters of fabric. I bought 1,5 by 2 and it was way too much.

 

Unfortunately I didn't take more pictures of the process but I placed the fabric on the floor and placed the old liner over it and simily cut out the square shape leaving about 5cm clearance on all 4 sides. The fabric was then attached to the liner with a staple gun (same method as whoever did the conversion).

I gentyl cut out the holes for the lights by cutting an X inside the two holes and stapling the fabrics up around the corner of the liner. I also placed velcro on the roof liner to prevent it from hanging down in the middle . I measured the distance roughly in the car then marked it on the fabric. The velcro was selfadhering. 

Before continuing with the roof I used a spray paint (RAL 9005) suitable for fabrics and sprayed on the fabric part that covers the sunroof if one wants to hide it. I couldn't take out the piece I'm talking out as I would have replaced the fabric on that one too then. I built a small enclosure for painting inside the car to not get any paint on windows or carseats and it all went well in that way. It didn't turn out great but I will almost always have the sunroof visible so hardly anyone will ever see the failed spray.

 

With the fabric attached to the liner I brought it out to the car where I first attached it to the roof by attaching the light trims so it was at least staying up. The corresponding velcro was then placed roughly where it needed to be so I placed 2 strips next to each other to make sure I got it in the right place. I then started putting in all the interior trims by starting with the B pillars, then C and finally A pillars. Unfortunately I broke the a pillars a bit (yes, both of them), the clips connecting  them to the B pillars broke but I used a thin double sided tape to keep them joined together.  Finally I just opened the sunroof completely and drew with a black sharpie (would not reccomend doing that if you have a light color fabric) roughly 5 cm inside the edge of the roof hatch. I then cut that out, made some extra slits and tensioned the roof by putting the edge rubber trim on to it. I simply pulled on the fabric and pushed on the trim then moved about 3 cm and repeated the whole way around.

 

My supervisor came and inspected my work.

He noticed that the plastic trim was too short for the hole, you can see the gap there. My excuse was that the guys that made the conversion were not proper enough when putting on the edge trim so they made it too short. 

As you can see I decided to completely black out the interior of the car. Only white parts are the sunvisors, and the trims around the lights, seatbelt plastic trims and adjustment knobs

 

 

I did some break tests on my car and I wasn't happy at all with the braking, there was definetly air in there at first so I kept bleeding and bleeding the brakes I went through 2 bottles of dot 4 fluid. I also noticed the "load sensing spring" for the brake compensator was broken so I used a quite thick gauge metal wire and extended it to fit the old spring and reach the hole where it is supposed to be. I also tensioned the handbrake wire a bit. It will need replacing probably in a year or so. 

 

When I didn't get better braking results I decided to buy new disks and pads all around and with them I got the braking distance down to 85 feet (about 25 meters) from 60kph (37,5 mph) on gravel. I found a formula somewhere online (in imperial units, which is why I even mentioned them) that went something like the speed squared divided by  a factor for gravel (between 0,4 and 0,55) multiplied by 30.  I tried to find the website now but couldn't. 

 

 

Anyway I got the range of 86 to 105 feet as being acceptable on both extremes. My car stopped in 85 feet from 60kph on gravel so I was very happy. 

 

I then went and had my car inspected which is mandatory here every year and it passed easily. The inspector only wanted me to replace the windscreen wipers. 

 

For those interested,

 

Difference in brakes

14% for front brakes, allowed is 30%
8% for rear brakes, allowed 30%

parking brakes were 26%, allowed 70%

Shock absorbers

5% different in the front

0% different in the rear

 

This is the exhaust test left is at idle, right is at more than 2000 RPM

in my case that 0,08 value at idle max allowable value was 0,5 and that 14.00 value max allowable was 100 so it was very good.

 

Final step was washing the car, cleaning the exterior with clay, polishing and waxing the car. 

 

From left to right, clay, polished, waxed.

 

 

 

And here is the final car

 

 

I'm now looking for some alloy wheels to put on.

Future plans are either tuning this engine with a performance cam, sport cat and MAXXECU system or putting in a XU10J4R/L3 (RFV from a xantia) and do the same modifications. I'd love to get it to about 200-230 bhp while staying NA but my brother thinks we should turbo it. We'll see..  

 

Thank you for reading!

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Atlaskrukvaxt
extra image at the end I did not mean to put there.

[Atlaskrukvaxt 5]

I was quite tired yesterday so let me correct some mistakes I made yesterday when writing.

 

The color I bought for the pillars was not RAL9003 (white) it was RAL9004 which is dark gray. RAL9005 is pitch black. We also looked at RAL9011 but it was not as close of a match as RAL9004.

 

When removing the cambelt cover I mean the side engine mount that is closer to the cam belt has to be opened and the engine let down. And please inform me if there is a better way of doing it or (anything I've described.) 

 

With the bolts for the catalytic converter I meant that the cambelt side is easier from above and the other side is easier from under the car. It's quite difficult to reach with your hands though so it's good if you have a friend with long arms to help you. 

 

The formula for the braking distance is incorrect in the image the velocity (V) should be squared, otherwise it is as shown to me. Still didn't find the source though. 

 

I was mistaken with the exhaust test. The Co2 value (14) was not allowed to be 100 but the HC ppm (31) value was the one that had an alowable max value of 100. 

 

Thank you again. 

[estland 3]

Very nice reading

 

My 405 also had a missing drivers side mirror cover. I added some filler and painted it to match the car's paint. Looked much better, than before

 

Does your sunroof work ok? These days the cables tend to rust stuck.

[Atlaskrukvaxt 5]

On 5/17/2020 at 6:35 AM, estland said:

Very nice reading

 

My 405 also had a missing drivers side mirror cover. I added some filler and painted it to match the car's paint. Looked much better, than before

 

Does your sunroof work ok? These days the cables tend to rust stuck.

Thank you and sorry for late reply!

Yes it works completely, I was really surprised that it is holding water away too since we have had bad experiences with "aftermarket" sunroofs on our volvo projects.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Atlaskrukvaxt

[Atlaskrukvaxt 5]

Hi!

I thought I'd post an update on what I've done on my car since last. I have not photographed everything but some of it. 

After finishing the main build I started looking for some new wheels to put on my car. I found some slightly banged up 7x16 AEZ alloy wheels with 2-4 mm of uneven thread still left on them for 80€ so I bought them. I washed and dried them before sanding down the silver paint, degreasing them and putting on a coat of RAL9005 (pitch black) gloss spray paint from a can. The following day i put on some "chrome imitating" paint and a few layers of clearcoat. It didn't turn out great but at least there are no scuffs or rashes on the wheels anymore. 

 

And here is the car with the wheels on it.

 

The car looks a bit high, the wheel dimensions are 205/55/16 and my brother and dad thinks perhaps 205/50/16 or 200/50/16 would be more suitable but I don't mind the slightly higher ride height. However there is an issue I'm going to make a separate thread about. link to thread

 

I also replaced the anti roll bar on both sides. Only the driver side (left) was actually in need of replacing but I went ahead and changed both as they were only a few euros each. The left hand side had the screw bent so the bolt sheared off when I tried to get it out. Luckily a lot of thread was left so I could put 2 nuts in the remaining bolt and heat it up with the oxy ethylene torch before twisting it out. The thread took some damage but I ran a die through the hole and it seemed to have worked. 

 

I fitted some larger speakers from a Mercedes w200 something that we had for spare parts. The shelf speakers were a bit too large for the original holes so I designed some spacers and a new speaker cover in solidworks so my cousin could 3d print them as mine isn't in working order currently. They were printed in some left over PETG that he had on a prusa mk3. I gave them a light matte black spray paint coating from above as they caused too strong reflections in the rear window which was visible in the rear view mirror. 

The second image really doesn't do it justice. The top is matte black and the "sides" look like a dark copper color that is fading in to brighter copper further down. I love it. I decided to not postprocess the printed parts further to keep the "cool factor" from it being 3d printed. 

 

I bought a "new" stereo for the car too. The old philips was lacking RCA output so I bought a kenwood KDC 5050 (typical mid 90s car stereo) which i modified by adding a csr8645 bluetooth receiver and hijacking the audio output from the CD unit inside the stereo. This requires a "silent CD" to play. You connect the bluetooth, insert the silent CD and the bluetooth signal hijacks the audio output. In my case I had to use a "low speed" cd to get the stereo to read it. 

 

Both the power steering pump and the control unit for the blower fan gave up. Both the replacements came from my semi-wrecked 405 with the xu7 8v engine. The fan is working but the power steering seems to have some air in it still. It is mostly noticed if I sit for a long time with my wheel turned (e.g. in a drive in) when I got to straighten it out there is a very noticeable delay in the power coming to the steering. Any suggestions on how to solve this issue is very much appreciated, might even make a separate thread for it. 

 

Last thing I have done is I finally covered the old phone antenna hole with a plastic chrome trim from our general car store. A dot of black silicone under it to keep it completely water tight was the only thing I put to hold it there besides the plastic nut on the inside. 

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

[Atlaskrukvaxt 5]

I forgot to mention, I had some issues with a ticking noise in the engine, I mentioned it in another thread and posted a short video on youtube about it.

 

Turns out the valve clearance for cylinder 2 was 0 and the cause was the metallic spacer that was underneath the cup had gotten out of position so the valve remained slightly open the whole time. The metal spacer was in overall good condition, it had just a bit of wear on one edge in one place but it didn't affect the functionality that much. I'm glad nothing more serious had happened because of it. I just moved it back in to place and closed the engine back up and now she runs fine. 

 

Thank you for reading. 

[IRISH_MI16 2]

Awesome project! One of my favourite colours on a 405 aswell.

406 hdi discs and calipers are a direct bolt on for the front and much bigger than the factory brakes. Just upgrade to the 22mm master cylinder too.