By Bas Snijder:-

Actually my car's story is kind of interesting (I guess) in that it has travelled halfway round the world. I bought it new in 1984 in Geneva, Switzerland . The dealer salesman tried hard to talk me out of a diesel at the time ! Later in 84 we moved to Athens in Greece and took the car with us. In 85 I was transferred to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and again decided to ship the car over (was a little too far and too risky to drive). We stayed in Dubai for 10 years and I used the 305 daily ,when not travelling by plane, including for regular trips to Abu Dhabi, Oman and Qatar through the various deserts. During summertime day temperatures typically reach 46-48 degr C. However thanks to meticulous maintenance particularly on the cooling system I never had any overheating at all. Every 80.000 km I would change , not only the cambelt and check/adjust valve clearances, but also waterpump, all waterhoses, thermostat, expansion tank cap. Corrosion inhibitor gets changed every year. I change oil every 3-3500 km with oil filter changed every 2nd oil change. Oil used was intially API CD ,SHPD (Super High Performance Diesel such as Shell Myrina), was later changed to API CF-4 (Shell Rimula X) and is now Caterpillar Diesel Engine Oil, API CG-4 oil, SAE 15W40. The interior surfaces of the engine are shiny as if they were new with no sludge/soot deposits anywhere, not even in the valve cover.

In 95 I was transferred to Malaysia and although the car was already 11 years old I again decided to ship it over. This was despite the fact that Malaysia, like the UK, uses RHD cars whereas mine is LHD. In practice no big deal though. Now it is almost mid 99 and I still use the car daily, including for regular trips to Singapore and Thailand. Last summer we drove up all the way from Kuala Lumpur to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, approx 2500 km one-way and without problems.

On the A/C: when I moved to Dubai in 85 I arrived in July. After about 2 km driving there in the midday sun I noticed that the capacity of the retrofitted unit was woefully inadequate. That was the beginning of a long quest to improve things. First I thought that the car was not well insulated so I put in extra material between roof and roofliner and below the floor carpeting, all of which made absolutely no difference. Then I found out by studying other cars that they all had tinted glass whereas mine had plain glass. This was not so obvious because some tinted glass for example on Japanese cars is hardly recognizeable as such. Solarfilm is not allowed on carwindows in the UAE, except for the local Arabs, so I had no choice than replacing ALL the windows in the car by tinted ones. I also found out that the Peugeot tinted windows were 1 mm thicker than the standard white glass ones (4mm vs 3).

This improved things quite considerably but still not what I would call acceptable. Later on I made modifications to the routing of the (added) vent lines behind the dashboard to help the flow of cold air. That made it semi OK. It will never be perfect because the A/C unit is fitted in a small place behind the glove box , which was cut to half its original size. The car heater is still there as well. The compressor is relatively small as well and fitted below the alternator and driven from an extra pulley next to the alternator drive pulley on the crankshaft. What does not help is that my 305 is an Estate and relatively large inside.Here in Malaysia the temperatures are much less extreme as compared to the Persian Gulf and the A/C is just fine for here. I also added 50% solar film which improved things further. The car looks quite 'exclusive' now with these semi darkened windows.