1972 504 injection restoration

Great to see Chris, keep the photos coming. The 504 I currently have is a 1972 which my father purchased off Roy McPhee in Sydney in 1980. My mum drove it for 30 years, then it went into storage for 5 years and I've been driving it just about every day since 2015. Mine is a carby model and I have modernised it a bit with air con, retractable seat belts front and rear, central locking plus gas struts on the bonnet and boot.

My coil is still mounted on the alternator bracket and I've never had a problem with hot starts....

This pic was taken before I rebuild the front suspension which is why the strut top plates are not in the correct position.
 

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Pug72 said:
Great to see Chris, keep the photos coming. The 504 I currently have is a 1972 which my father purchased off Roy McPhee in Sydney in 1980. My mum drove it for 30 years, then it went into storage for 5 years and I've been driving it just about every day since 2015. Mine is a carby model and I have modernised it a bit with air con, retractable seat belts front and rear, central locking plus gas struts on the bonnet and boot.

My coil is still mounted on the alternator bracket and I've never had a problem with hot starts....

This pic was taken before I rebuild the front suspension which is why the strut top plates are not in the correct position.
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Love it!
 
Russell Hall said:
It's got the air vent in the rear quarter which was late in the year and more or less coincided with the twin lamps. I do recall being horrified by the first American headlamp model around late 1972. My 504 was delivered October 1972 with trapezoids but it was old stock. The family bought another in 1973 with the rear quarter air vent, twin headlights and Australian seats.
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Love your in-depth knowledge off all things Peugeot.
 
1972 was a good year to buy a 504 in Australia. Assembly quality at Heidelberg had picked up a bit after some disastrous earlier cars. The dealer network was ill equipped and disinclined to deal with problems. With a six month warranty and a deft dealer faults could go right through uncorrected. But owners back then were more inclined to put up with fault riddled build quality than today. Assembly work wasn't well paid and done mostly by recently arrived migrants from non-industrial backgrounds. They displayed the assembly skills evident at Alfasud. As a quality control bloke in the plant ( ex Slough Citroen) opined, the cars were beyond the work force. But assembled they were and most people were happy with them. 1973 with the French bans was a different matter. The Waterside Workers union wanted to black the factory totally but the Vehicle Builders union came to a compromise to maintain but not increase production to prevent job losses. A buyer looking for a new 504 was laughed out the door by the salesmen at Renault Richmond. You could get them, but wait time was up to three months if you took white. Some were delivered with missing trim and things like sun visors. The most dreaded thing a dealer could say to an owner was we'll fix it at the first service. I saw a dealer very cleverly put rectification off until the warranty expired and then deny any responsibility. Oddly enough to keep buyer interest Renault gave the $600 assemblers profit back to the dealers to discount. Because Peugeot was not a state owned company there was less hostility towards them than Renault. Apart from that the 1973 cars were ok on the assembly, some rough bodywork and paint faults cheaply rectified but not too bad.
 
julian c b said:
If you ever have problems with hot starting in the future you can fit a relay with a wire from the distributor that sends current direct from the battery +ve to the coil +ve . My 73 cab has never had a starting problem since i did this 10 years ago
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Hot starting problems with a Ti usually indicates the car is running too rich. Very easy to check. :)
 
I seem to recall that the injection cars used a different heat range spark plug to the carby cars. Check that you have the right ones.
 
It will be running round canberra and surrounds a bit. Feel free to give a wave if you see us out.
 
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