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Long time lurker here. Over the last eleven years, I’ve been slowly restoring a 1.9 GTI that I’ve finally finished this summer (are they ever truly finished?). The 205GTIDrivers forum has been invaluable throughout – there’s been an answer here to every problem and question I’ve had – so here’s a heartfelt thank you to all who’ve posted and answered because I don’t think I could’ve done it without you. So I thought I’d share the restoration and some photos to give something back. I’ll break the story into parts so I don’t overload you but let’s begin with a bit of background… Probably like many of you, I decided to buy a 205 because my dad had one when I was a kid, a red 1.6 GTI that was one of the first sold in the UK and that he claimed had previously been owned by the producer of the TV soap Crossroads (not sure about that – he rarely let the truth get in the way of a good story). It was his favourite car he ever owned and I loved it too. It seems it was scrapped in 2011 but, if you fancy a laugh, look up how many miles the DVLA says it had on it then. My plan was to find a 205 that I could work on. I’m personally not into show cars where everything’s polished to infinity but prefer the look of a survivor, a car that’s in great condition yet can be used because function has been prioritised over form – I’d rather have several layers of rust prevention than be able to eat of it. I also wanted to do as much of the work myself, only outsourcing the jobs I really couldn’t or shouldn’t do. I’d previously done up a Series IIA Land Rover and helped a garage with the restoration of an Audi so I wasn’t completely green but, all the same, I knew I’d need to learn a huge amount. But that was half the point. The car I found was essentially a non-runner – it had no current MoT and plenty of advisories on its last, wouldn’t start and, when it eventually did, immediately ran out of fuel. But, being a 1988 non-sunroof phase 1.5 1.9, it was what I wanted and, well, I was looking for one to restore. I bought it without having driven it… or any 205! It was December 2012. My Dad's 205 The one I bought

So where do I start, apart from I am new here , never been on any forum before and really need some advise/help, so apologies if I do not follow the correct etiquette. I purchased a 205CTi back in 2000, drove and loved it for years but ended up putting it in a garage and sort of forgetting about it. When we moved 6 years ago I transported it to a barn where it has been sat gathering dust until now when I need to move it. The car was in excellent condition, except the drivers seat had a small rip in it. It has done just over 98k miles, had 3 former keeper and has a full set of old MOT's & service receipts. I has not been started for at least 8 years as I am to nervous just in case the cam belt has rotted and snaps. So why I am posting this, what should I do with it? 1. Try and sell it 'as is', if so any idea of how much to advertise for or where to advertise (prices seem to vary loads on autotrader). Anyone interested, as I think this is my preferred option? 2. Restore it and sell it, if so anyone know who might do this for me in the Essex area and thoughts on costs etc. 3. Find another location to store it, as the prices are going up and worth the storage costs. Thank you in in advance and if you need any more information, please let me know.

Morning guys, I'm really struggling to find a 205/Peugeot restoration specialist on my area - can you guys help me out? I live near Lowestoft in East Anglia. Kind regards, Charlie

Hello all, I'm new to this forum although over the last few months I've been updating my progress over on Detailing World. I'm going to upload all of the content from there onto here, so apologies if the time frames done quite make sense! I purchased this car in September 2017, I had been searching for a little 205 for a year or so, but never found one local, and nearly all of them needed a lot of work. (that also turned out to be the case with the one i've bought!) With GTI prices sky rocketing, I decided to go for a slightly cheaper but just as good alternative, a little CTI. The market for these is very hit and miss, not many around, and not many good examples. I found this 1986 Space Grey Phase 1 205 around 2 hours away. Chap had owned it for 2 years, driven it a handful of times and kept it in a large empty unit of which he had free use of due to being the site maintenance man of a large industrial estate. The bonus of this is that the car had been dry stored for the last 2 years of its life. I initially walked away from the car due to it needing paintwork, engine work and interior work, however the 2 hour car journey home soon let me change my mind, I later called him with an offer, to which he accepted. Add photos: Collection day: And soon it was next to my restored MK1 VTS: (which I have since regrettable sold on) First job was to go through all the paperwork and date organise it and file it correctly, there was plenty to get through! The original dealer 'stag hill' had done a lot of the servicing on the vehicle in its early life. Next I moved onto giving the old girl a good check over, carried out a full service, replaced the timing belt and waterpump, radiator, thermostat and replaced all the cooling hoses with some replacement hoses from BakerBM. As you can see in this image, the coolant consisted of nothing but K seal, something that later down the line came back to haunt me... more on that later. Timing belt covers where all broken and in need of replacement! Good second hand upper covers where sourced, and a modified re-made lower metal cover was purchased. (plastic lower cover is prone to breaking) Whilst waiting on new parts, I sourced the correct 1.6 phase 1 pepperpot alloys and had them powdercoated and new Pirelli P1s put on. With the engine service all complete, I installed the new wheels and assessed the bodywork. Bodywork is not to bad, unfortunately someone had decided to paint the trims black whilst leaving them on the car! :wall: they where kind enough to mask with 2 inch masking tape next to the trim but nothing else!! Which resulted in a ********** line of overspray, all around the car. Shocking. On the plus side, the engine bay was looking good with a new battery, powdercoated airbox and correct period jack all installed. Interior condition is not horrendous, however some of the dash plastic trim is broken and needs replacing, which is incredibly hard to source! A few weeks later... replacement matts, correct phillips headunit and a bit of TLC. I moved onto the bodywork issues, a few weekends work with the polish and tar remover saw the bodywork back to life. The NSR quarter will require paint though.

Hi there, I've been a member of this forum for while now since buying a 1.9 GTI a few months back. I wanted something interesting to get my teeth into and still had fond memories of my Red (orange in places) F reg 1.9 that I sold approx. 8 years ago.... After looking in the usual places I came across one advertised for £850 with 3 weeks MOT and only 10 miles from my house, registered in 1992 with 107,000 miles. I went round to see it, took it for a spin, noted the large amounts of blue smoke from the exhaust, totally solid drivers side rear suspension, vague gear stick, fairly naff brakes and thought to myself "this is PERFECT" :-) An hour later after parting with £750 I had it parked on my drive! During the test drive I was shown the immobiliser which seemed to immobilise the car even when you didn't want it to, so my first mission was to rip it out... Turns out it was a Sigma unit fitted approx 1993 that was screwed into the floor in the passenger side footwell, had an alarm too with a bonnet switch etc and within a couple of hours the whole lot was in a heap on the garage floor (best place for it). Thankfully my wiring repairs must have been good because she started straight away once I'd finished.. no more "ignition on, press the fob, fingers crossed the LED would go out after 10 seconds" nonsense... Whilst I've been on the forum I've enjoyed seeing everyone's photo's of their restorations and thought it about time I posted my own shots of a stripped out engine bay, and wheel arches with scraped off underseal...so here we go!! So far I've got the engine out, and stripped back the underseal from the passenger side arches and the sill. Rust wise it seems really good, there's none underneath at all that I've seen so far, just the usual places in the engine bay (under the jack) where there's a small hole. There was some surface rust down the legs that run down the behind the headlights but it came off with a wire brush on an angle grinder so I gave it a quick coat of primer to stop it coming back... the primer in the arches isn't permanent, it's just to stop it rusting over xmas when I probably won't have any time to continue for a few weeks. I plan to use the epoxy mastic two part stuff that gets mentioned on this site occasionally. I've recently taken off the rear bumper and am now thinking about dropping the tank out. Then I can go all over the underside to the same standard... rear beam needs taking out too. Later on I intend to get the car re-sprayed professionally as the lacquer is peeling pretty badly in places (boot lid and wings) On the list of jobs done so far.......... in no particular order.... Discover that the master cylinder is pumping more fluid out the back than front, filling the servo with brake fluid and running down the pedal. I've now bought a new servo as I was concerned what state it would be in after being half filled with brake fluid, and a new master cylinder from a 406 so that I can use the GTI-6 callipers that I bought on ebay. Got some seal kits so I can rebuild the front and rear calipers. Replaced the heater matrix as it was leaking and making the (original Clarion) radio go rusty! Removed the engine, found that in the past some loon has snapped one of the bolts attaching it to the gearbox! Great! Found the gear linkage ball joint on the subframe to be TOTALLY loose. Inspected the shocks and found all four to be original Peugeot items with 1991 stamped on them! Bought new shocks and springs... Bilstein / Eibach combo that most people seem to go for. As mentioned above, started removing the underseal to make sure all is well underneath... Got a PTS stripe for the grille... no idea why I got it so early on, I'm sure it'll be ready for fitting sometime next year! Pulled all wiring back into the footwells and given the engine bay a scrub. That's about all for my intro, I promise to make regular updates as and when I have the time to work on the car. Future posts won't be so photo heavy, just wanted to get up to date.. Thanks for reading... Jon

Restoring a Peugeot 405 Mi16x4 1990: I have made a series of videos of the progress to youtube, so I won´t be going into detail here but here is summary of the story so far: When I bought the car in 2010 it developed a loud whining noise right away. I removed the engine and disassembled the gearbox and transfer case and found out that the noise came from loose center differential pins and that the transfershaft splines were nearly gone. I fixed those and a few other little ones while I was at it and got the car back on the road. That didn´t last long however as the rear differential started leaking oil. I took the rear suspension off the car and restored it. The rear part of the car also had quite a bit of rust that was taken care of. The underside was painted and the rear suspension installed. The progress has been quite slow lately, but I am trying to find time for it. At the moment the rear differential is waiting in the corner of the office to be shimmed and assembled Project video playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8G94bPmUCS04whRfXfRGYjMRxLZrDbUV Direct links to the videos: Part 1 - The Beginning https://youtu.be/s6fHhqQRqEY Part 2 - Restoring The Rear Axle https://youtu.be/hNRnSEA46zg Part 3 - Rear End Rust Repair (1/2) https://youtu.be/qn_NVq7lPZY Part 4 - Rear End Rust Repair (2/2) https://youtu.be/Zc2E7ExYqoE Part 5 - Rear End Paint Job https://youtu.be/cIencfXGZjI Part 6 - Installing The Rear Axle https://youtu.be/wZIZjvBPs4o

Dear All, Well, it's taken me a while, but I have finally managed to lay my hands on a nice 'Cherry Red' (currently orange!), phase 2 GTI. She runs pretty nicely (although the idle is lumpy - nothing a good clean out won't sort), and she's just shy of 100,000 miles, so not bad! Unfortunately, she's been defiled by a baseball cap wearing boy racer, and has a few, less than original modifications. Namely: Stupid jet nozzle exhaust back box. Ridiculous myopic eye headlights. Perspex sunroof bubble! An abundance of carbon fibre effect vinyl, and to top it all off, An invincible class aircraft carrier ski jump spoiler, cunningly fashioned from foam rubber and sikaflexed onto the rear hatch (I curse you for that!) I now plan to strip her down (removing all of the abominations), give her a general tidy up. and get her a full respray. The only mods will be the triple air-horn and klaxon out of my now defunct GTX (god only knows where I'm going to put them!) and a modest CD player. Here's some pictures. She actually looks much tidier in these shots than up close (but it was an incredible day today!) Can anyone tell me the story behind this type of reflective boot trim? Obviously it's very different from the more common black slatted type, but does it have any significance? I can't decide whether I like it, and as the bloody stupid spoiler is going to be such a bitch to remove, I did wonder whether it would be easier just to switch the entire tailgate for another? Is this sacrilegious, opinions please!? And look at this abomination! There's a bit of rust forming around the rear passenger's wheel arch, which I need to get on top of in a hurry. This appears to be where the panel is coming away from the arch, and there's a bit of water getting in. Fortunately, I don't think it's gone too far yet, so I was planning just to clean it down to bare metal and treat it with rust killer. I was then going to re-attach the panel with tigerseal and clean-up, prime and paint. Would you agree that this is a suitable approach? Any advice is welcomed. Shot of the damage from inside. As I said, I think it's quite early on, so I should be able to kill it without chopping anything out! If you're reading this, and the below is your handiwork, my apologies, but you should be ashamed of yourself! And here's the noisemaker! All round I'm pretty chuffed, she's in pretty good nick. I've owned her for just over 24 hours, and already two people have tried to buy her from me! I have never been this cool! Any advice, tips or just comments on the above would be most welcome. Cheers, Mike

Hi all, So I have now had my 205 for about a year and finally got round to starting some proper work on it. I thought I would make a thread so people can start to see what I have been up to and provide advice or thoughts if they wish! I bought the car as my first project in about September 2013 but with work commitments, no garge and moving from Aberdeen to London and back in the space of 12 months I struggled to find time to spend on it. I now have a single garage which is just about big enough to work in (I roll the car half out every time I work on it!) and some time so hopefully will make good progress. So the aim: I wasn't sure what the full scope would be when I first bought it and maybe didn't realise how much work she would need but having talked to a few people I have realised I wouldn't be entirely happy until I had carried out a full rebuild! So the plan is a pretty much nuts and bolts rebuild, including respray and engine overhaul as well as treating any rust, refurbishing or replacing the interior and putting all back together in time for the summer. Extremely ambitious for someone with no prior experience and a full time job, but aim high and all that! I hope you enjoy the thread - I intend to add pictures and comments/thoughts/ramblings as I go...

Hi everyone. I decided that i want to post a topic of my cars restoration project. I bought the car in 2010 10 march. It was in very bad condition. The engine was completely taken apart and was in the trunk of the car. The car had big rust problems. And had front springs cut down half way and the rear beam was completely dead and the car was sitting almost on the ground. The previous owner had done loads of bad things to the car. The original seats and wheels where gone as well. So I decided to buy the car and wanted to restore it to it`s orogonal condition. That's how it looked like when i started to work on it. First i decided i need to start with the engine. So i bought a complete 1,9l engine. And after short time i first installed it in the car. As you can see the front end of the car is nothing but rust. Shortly after the engine was started for the first time i understood that the engine had oil problems. So the engine went straight back to it`s seller. And working on the car i understood that i need to weld new front end. So i stripped all the car and found more and more rust Taht was just the rust at the front end. The rust was also at the side skirts and rear of the car. After long period of welding. The car needed to be primed and painted. The car from factory had electric windows and central locking. Before me someone had changed the doors and had cut the wires. Since then the car had manual windows, but i knew that i will put the electric windows back in. I toed the car to the painters garage. And he did a complete respray. Except for the engine bay. The car had two colors. but i didn`t like that. I wanted it to be just red. I didn`t like the red paint that it had. It seemed to me that is too light and looked a bit pink or orange. So i found the red tone that i liked. It was the paint from volkswagen. Tornado red. In the time when the car was painted i started to work on the engine. I send the engine to my friend who is a big 205 gti fan and also a good engine builder. He helped me with the engine rebuild. The engine is standard 1,6 with a head with big valves. I had problems with the electrics in the engine compartment. I didn`t know which wires go where. And the engine didn`t run when i hooked up the wires. And there where some empty wires as well. So i got an electric to help me. He had to work pretty hard to fix some bad wires and get the car working. Sometimes i thought that this project will never end cause i always could find something broken, or something i had to redo. It was 2 years already since i started working on the car and finaly it started to look like one All this time my car had no exhaust. So i had to custom build a new one. Starting from the downpipe all the way back we welded a stainless steel exhaust 60mm in diameter with the back box from magnaflow. My plan is to finish the car till summer. Get the original recaro seats, and drive as much as i can. Sorry for my english. I hope it was interesting for you guys to read John

Anyone tried leather dye to fill in where some cracks show but aren't bad enough to re-trim? Eg bolster in ok condition but just a few lines that if filled in would make the seat look much better? Using this sort of stuff: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/TheScratchDoctor/Leather-Repair-/_i.html?_fsub=1970209017&_sid=358705047&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322 any experiences welcomed! Cheers Neil