1988 Peugeot 205 GTI from UK and Ireland - Comments

Clutch.

The following were replaced as a preventative measure: HT leads, sparks, brake discs.

This is possibly the best supermini you could ever own. Not only is it blisteringly fast (especially with K+N Filter, boost valve, and performance exhaust), but this little car thinks it's on rails. If you try hard enough, you can get it to oversteer (with Spax suspension, anyway), which is great fun on roundabouts. It's very good for upsetting ponces in their fleet Vectra 2.5 V6 SRi's, because they don't like to be beaten off the lights by a 10 year old Pug. Still looks immaculate but for some small car park blemishes. It's done 110,000 miles and still going strong.

I'm a small independent engine tuner, and it really does make me laugh what some people fall for.

The standard exhaust on the 205 GTi 1.9 is better than any aftermarket "race" system in terms of flow. I've tested five different popular aftermarket systems and not one of them flowed any better than the standard system. Three were actually worse. Noise does not equal power.

The standard induction system can only be improved by switching to Weber DCOE carbs or even better, throttle bodies. The induction kits are marketing nonsense. The resulting induction noise is cool, but it doesn't improve power.

This is an "old school" engine which responds to mechanical mods rather than bolt on crap. To get more power out of it you have to remove the head and smooth out or enlarge the ports. If you have big bucks to spend, a set of bigger valves will give you a decent increase.

I have a customer running a 1.9 with 155 bhp on the standard induction system, exhaust and cam. It's been tested on three dynos and shows within 2bhp on each. When he brought the car into me it was making 125 bhp. It involved £600 worth of work which isn't cheap, but then compared to £300 for bolt on stuff that makes no real difference, he thinks he got a bargain.

WITH REGARDS TO THE POST ABOVE.

Please can you inform me on what was done to the peugeot.

I am very interested to get this done, are you able to do it?, where are you based?.

Please e-mail me at keynote191@hotmail.com, cheers

Michael.