My name is Ken Parker. I am 56 years old, currently live in Richmond,
CA (SF Bay Area) and have owned Peugeots exclusively since 1970. I
make my living as a flamenco guitarist and psychologist and, in the
latter category, am thinking about starting a support group for Peugeot
owners and/or Peugeot widows (as in football widows.)
My first, bought in 1969, was a 1961 404 4spd. missing a first/reverse
tooth that I traded a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Special for (what was I
thinking?) at a music store in Mill Valley, CA. After selling the 404
to go to Spain I returned after a year and bought a 1971 504 that I
drove for a couple of years. I bought a 122S Volvo as an investment,
cleaned and tuned it and sold it to go back to Spain to recharge my
flamenco batteries. From then on I have only owned Peugeots.
In 1978 I bought a pair of 63 404's, one of which I forced my
girlfriend to drive for a while. She actually ended up liking the car.
Then in 1986, with the same girlfriend, I bought a pair of 504's (a 74
and 75) which I kept going for many years. The 74 found a new home in
1991 and the 75, with a recent valve job and an upgraded 5 speed
transmission, is sleeping under a tarp outside my house. A 84 GL
wagon, my first 505, joined me in 1996 and I bought an 84 STX 505 in
2002.
I started working on cars in the late 60's when a mechanically
inclined friend of mine helped me change a master cylinder on my first
car, a 59 VW bug. After that, with the help of John Muir's VW book I
made a series of horrendous mistakes (e.g., broke a stud "tightening"
down a rocker arm shaft on the Oregon coast and had to be towed 300
miles home) and finally learned to be a bit less impulsive on repairs.
A friend of mine co-owned a shop in Mill Valley, CA that his older
brother had built in 1926 and opened for business in 1929. After
returning from Spain in 1978 and before going for my psych Ph.D. I
started working at the shop in Mill Valley. The brothers were
spectacular mechanics and could fix anything. Everything (valve jobs,
drive shafts shortened, drums resurfaced, clutch pilots cut) was done
in-house and they worked on everything from lawn mowers to moving vans
to Porsches.
I started out changing oil and plugs and running for parts. WIthin
six months they would say, "The Toyota out in the yard needs a clutch."
I would put it up in the air and do it. Whenever I got into trouble
they would help me out. I became pretty good at disassembly and parts
cleaning and never that sharp on diagnostics. On payday I would visit
the Snap-on truck or go to a Proto tool warehouse in San Francisco and
buy tools.
I worked in the shop for about four years and, as the demands of
graduate school and internships got to be too much I stopped working in
the shop and did occasional brake jobs, clutches and tune-ups for
friends. All along, and to this day, I still do all the work on my
cars and my wife's 94 525i BMW.
I realize that I have incredible blind spots with regard to automotive
reasoning and diagnostics, but once I am pointed in the right direction
I tend to do the work properly and carefully. The list has been good
to me and I owe a lot to Brian Holm, Joe Grubbs, Bob Bruce, Peugeot
Pete, Phil, the guy that I bought the water pump pulley from in Costa
Rica and several other contributors that have taken my idiotic
questions seriously.
For years I paid way-too-much for parts at Shamrock Motors in Mill
Valley until one of the mechanics there turned me on to a place in the
East Coast that wouldn't sell to me because I wasn't a dealer but they,
in turn, turned me on to Grove Motors in San Luis Obispo. I bought
parts from them for years for a fraction of what I had been spending in
Mill Valley. Some years ago I discovered Western Hemispheres in Santa
Cruz. I buy a lot from them and became good friends with Jacques over
the years. Jacques developed in interest in Flamenco and often came to
shows that I played in in Felton, a town near Santa Cruz where I play
from time to time. I miss him a lot. He was a gentleman of the first
order.
Most recently, along with getting parts from Miles and Cory at
Western, I have started buying parts from Marcel at Marin Auto Works
(formerly Custom Auto) in Mill Valley. They are very fair pricewise
and give me all kinds of free advice.
From time to time my faith in Peugeots seems to fail me and in the
midst of doing a power steering ram or struggling with a bewitched fan
clutch I think about my wife's 525i and how little trouble it has
caused me compared to my 505's. I find it very annoying when I get on
the internet to look for a part and all the large parts houses have
listings that go from Nissan to Plymouth to Pontiac without mention of
the Peugeot.
Other than that, like many of the other members, I love the ride and
handling of the car. I think I would like to scare up a mid 80's V6
with a good body. Until then, I'll probably continue with my pair of
84 505's (a GL wagon and an STI sedan) that were cheap to buy ($750 and
$1150 respectively) and have cost me little since getting the cars.
Since 1996 the wagon has cost me about $1000 in repairs and the sedan
about the same over the last three years.
Ken
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Received on Sun Mar 13 22:19:56 2005
