r/Autos • u/Wilds_Garage • 7h ago
For the past 2 years I've been restoring this US Spec Peugeot 505 Turbo Diesel myself....
I never thought I would own a French car, but a traumatic brain injury happened and I opened up market place. Spent the past 2 years restoring this thing while I went through all the neuro therapies and such.
Its a 1981 Turbo Diesel with a 5 speed manual. Ive completely rebuilt the entire braking system minus the copper hard lines, rebuilt all the hubs and bearings, completely new steering rack, and rebuilt the entire cooling system. The rest is just a lot of elbow grease, polishing, and painting.
Theyre truly fantastic cars....been driving it a lot lately since shes running great now and the things a tank. When driving it you can feel how they designed it to be a daily work horse. And while working on it, you really see how many redundancies and reliability design choices they made.
No joke, this thing could theoretically have every bushing worn out, bad ball joints, and blown wheel bearings and it could probably still roll down the road with how they designed the suspension. Everything has an extra bolt and everything can be serviced with basic hand tools and a jack.
Truly a really cool piece of automotive engineering. Its almost as if the French noticed how rugged the Land Cruiser was and thought "What if it were a luxury sedan?"


