During the last week I began to clean and dismantle the engine of that Peugeot 504 using whatever spare time I had.

I started by removing the battery plate, water and vacuum reservoirs and the hoses connecting them. I took a couple of detailed pictures so I don’t forget how to put it back together later.

I spent a while trying to figure out how to remove the radiator, it’s bolted to the car frame and there’s a plastic cover around the fan blades that doesn’t let it move up. The most obvious way seemed to remove the front grill and the body panel behind it but in order to do that I would have to tear apart the original glue and make a couple of cuts. I kept looking and feeling around until I discovered that the air guide is only held by two nuts on the top and locking pins on the bottom.

After removing them, it glided freely upwards and then to the back. With nothing else holding it, the radiator also came out.

That freed up some space in the engine bay. I moved on to the belts. This is a very good time to take note of how everything is installed.

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Then I moved onto the hoses. Some were hard and brittle and others felt like new. But all were filled with rusty mud.

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The water pump was no better, the impeller stayed inside the block.

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The radiator has a lovely copper corrosion growth. After draining it I poured hot water on one side and let it flow, touching along the fins to see if there were clogs. Except for a small hand sized area on the bottom everything seemed fine.

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