504 Adventure - Success!
From: Rabin Rutten-James (rabin505@sasktel.net)
Date: Wed 07 May 2008 - 21:49:53 EDT
Well - after a lot of late nights, my 76' 504 successfully made the 1400 km round trip from Regina SK, to Gimli MB for the race school my wife got me for Christmas. It wasn't without some drama, but thanks to Bob Bruce I was able to make the needed repairs and finish the school. Car handled really well considering the lack of power compared to the other cars on the track, and really held it's own in the twisty bits.
During the build up I was able to get a lot of info from the Aussiefrogs site on swapping my 505 Turbo front suspension onto the car (Complete with brakes). The car runs 3 degrees of negative camber, but with the alignment set just right (~2mm of toe in) I had zero inside tire wear and the car handles fantastic. I didn't get a chance to swap out any of the rear suspension, but it was still very nice to drive on the track. It still understeered a little bit, but it doesn't plow excessively at all. The wider front stance along with the neg 3 degrees of camber really do make the car quite fun to drive - and although it hunts a little on rutted roads - it's more than manageable. (HUGE thanks to Thanos as well for all the set up info!)
When I arrived at the race school, there was a little snickering (OK a LOT of snickering) when I pulled up amongst the newer cars, but once I was on track and doing some excercises it surprised a lot of people. The first instructor was pleasantly surprised as he drove the car and quickly commented on how fun it was to drive. Instructors that went along afterwards while I drove had a hoot - often laughing out loud at the way it soaked up the bumps! It was particularly fun cuttting this one corner quite tight and running the unloaded front left tire over some concrete blocks that normally beat other cars up quite well - the 504 just soaked it up and held the line beautifully! The euro spec motor with the new Weber really revs nice, and while under powered, it had a decent power band and the car was a hoot to drive.
The stock 504 LSD also worked excellent with the Redline 75W90NS in it - seemed to lock it up really quite nice and I lost no drive at all in the corners when the inside tire got light. (Had several people say I was on the verge of two wheels on some corners!) I even had the pleasure of having to slow down while doing passing manouvers when a late model Nissan Sentra couldn't keep up in the twisty bits...
I did have a couple mechanical issues, the most severe being the rad fan exploding and taking out my radiator at the end of day one. A quick call to Bob Bruce with my desperate pleas for parts was answered with new OEM parts! I borrowed a fellow racer's car and bombed into Winnipeg to meet with Bob and collect the parts. Had a great chat with Bob (who was great to finally meet after all these years on the list) and off I went with my new OEM 505 radiator (even was in a peugeot box!), fan blade, and hoses to upgrade my old 504 set up. Bob even had his friend pull off an expansion tank off one of his cars in storage which I needed as well, and I picked that up on the way back to the track.
I had it all installed for the morning of day 2 and the car ran great - and way cooler than before! The only other issue was sediment from the fuel system gunking up my new carb which fouled the primary jet - it idled or it ran at WOT... cleaned it up at lunch and it was perfect again for the rest of the day and all the way back home.
Here's the link to some pictures of the event: http://forum.ssccracing.org/viewtopic.php?p=31537#31537
Car is looking pretty tattered and rusty - but after this weekend she'll be a rolling restoration to get her back into pristine condition.
Rabin
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Recommended format for your email subject lines:
Model # [Model Letters] Year Subject
Examples:
505 88 V6 Mileage
405 Mi16 89 Ignition Coil source?
************************************************
To unsubscribe from this list send a blank email message to PEUGEOT-L-UNSUBSCRIBE@YAHOOGROUPS.COM
************************************************
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/peugeot-L/
<*> Your email settings:
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Wed 07 May 2008 - 21:04:44 EDT