Retrosound Model 2 Repair

The Retrosound Model 2 radio in my Citroen DS has been playing up. It would randomly adjust the volume on its own, mostly down. The practical effect of this was not being able to listen to the radio. A while back I removed the face of the radio to take a look and the wire from the volume knob to the radio looked chafed. The face of the radio is separate from the main unit as there is not enough room in the DS to install it in one piece.

Retrosound sell replacement shafts so this seemed like a […]

DS Front End Repairs

A couple of months ago my DS had one of the front suspension boots replaced to cure a bad LHM leak. When this was done, it was apparent the bushings in the steering rack were worn. Since the front of the car was apart, it made sense to order these parts and then have them fitted before the front was put back together. I ordered the parts a few months ago, but for some reason Franzose sent them by the slow boat. This was rather irritating as the DS has been sitting partially assembled for months. Some of these repairs […]

Citroen DS under bonnet insulation

As my DS has a NOS bonnet, I did not want the hot engine to damage the paint. The Citroen DS under bonnet insulation not only protects the paint, but also reduces noise. I was also told that I was missing two brackets that help hold on the insulation.

I was able to purchase a good used pair of the brackets and have some help to get the bonnet off to install the insulation. It comes in three pieces so is quite easy to install. As can be seen in the picture, it does not cover the whole bonnet, as […]

Citroen DS front end wiring – part 5

After all my hassles with the DS wiring, I wanted a better solution. Not only were the existing bullet connectors old and brittle, but their colours had largely faded. Instead of replacing the bullet connectors with new ones, I decided to use multi-wire plugs. In this case, Deutsch connectors. Instead of eight wires on one side and six on the other, there would be a couple of simple connectors to unplug each time the wings are removed. On the DS, the wings are removed for many service jobs, so they come off every year or so.

 

I had […]

Citroen DS further adjustments

Today I attended to a few more minor adjustments to the DS. I plan to take the car to the French car show in mid-July which is a good deadline to complete the most outstanding items.

The first was the bonnet catch cables. When the car was painted, the cables were not routed correctly. There is a channel for them to go through in the front wings. Not being in the proper place puts more pressure on the cables. I doubt it is enough to break them but it is worth routing them properly.

The next was re-fitting the spare […]

Citroen DS rear indicator repair

As part of my DS restoration I had already replaced one of the DS rear indicator housings. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the quality of the reproduction part. It had been suggested to me that these are actually quite easy to repair. Instead of paying good money for an inferior part, I decided to give it a go. I’ve never soldered before, and the repair entails soldering the live wire back to the housing. I found a rusty old soldering iron in a box of old tools under my house and managed to get the job done. The solder was […]

Citroen DS front end wiring – part 4

I had gone as far as I could on my own with the DS. It was time to bring in the experts. I had spent a number of hours trying to get the lights to work. I made some progress, but was unable to get them to work correctly. Luckily Jason, my friendly DS mechanic was able to sort out the mess pretty quickly. Turns out there were multiple problems all contributing to the strange results I was seeing. People criticise British car wiring, but French DS wiring is no better.

Firstly there were some bad connectors that needed replacing. […]

Citroen DS window cranks

You would think that mounting the DS window cranks would not be worthy of a full post, but there was more to it than I thought! My car had the wrong window cranks installed prior to the crash. From my research they were from a DS model produced between 1962-1964. This was an opportunity to fit the correct units while I was purchasing parts.

Something as simple as this turned into a much more involved project. Firstly the window cranks I purchased were not much good to me. They did not come with all the parts I needed to […]

Mounting the DS rear bumper

The restoration of my DS is almost complete. The DS rear bumper is now back on the car and from the outside the car looks complete. I’m really happy with how it looks.

The bumper is actually quite simple to mount. In retrospect I should have removed it in one piece instead of disassembling it. It would have saved me a lot of time. The two bumper irons are bolted to the body with big rubber isolators to provide a small amount of ‘give’. What I find odd is that the nuts are really narrow. You need a 26mm […]

Citroen DS Tail light

The rear bumper bar has been ready for fitting since February. I had not yet mounted it was one of my tail light housings was not working and I figured its easier to replace this with the bar off the car. A friend in the Citroen Club gave me a used one, which was better than what I had, but also not working. My next option was to purchase a reproduction part. The quality of reproduction parts for the DS can be quite spotty, so I was interested to see what the reproduction DS tail light assembly would be like.

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