Fitting new Citroen DS door cards

Citroen DS door cards are quite simple as the door handle etc is above the actual door card. So all it comprises of is the arm rest and a small hole for the window winder mechanism. The door card is held onto the door through a series of metal clips that attach into holes drilled into the door. The holes are fitted with plastic plugs that are gripped by the clips.

The door cards come without the clips, but with the attaching holes pre-cut into the backing of the door card. The clips have to be eased onto the backing […]

Citroen DS seat cover replacement part 3

In part 2, I was able to get part way through removal of the old Targa seat covers for the upper part of the rear seat. Today I was able to complete the removal of the old Targa covers and start fitting the new ones.

I was helped by a website created by an owner of a DS20 Comfort who has documented the same process using the same covers from Citro Toon. The website is in French, but pictures are universal and Google translate helps with the rest.

Despite the website, this part of the seat has been the most […]

Citroen DS seat cover replacement part 2

Today I made good progress replacing the seat covers in the DS. In part 1, I had removed the old cover from the bottom of the back seat. Today, I was able to fit the new seat cover. I’m really happy with the result – it looks great!

I found that using lots of small bulldog clips to get the cover in the right spot was a big help – I could position it and check it before I used the hog rings to actually secure the cover. I had purchased a set of hog ring pliers for the install […]

Removing Citroen DS door cards

Removing door cards on a Citroen DS is quite simple. The door cards are held on by the window winder and a series of metal clips. The metal clips attach to the back of the door card, and align with holes in the door that have plastic ‘cups’ that the metal clips slot into. The window winder is removed by pushing back on it and exposing the pin that can be pushed through from either side.

To ensure that the door card does not get wet, there are plastic protectors for the larger holes that are needed if access to […]

Citroen DS seat cover replacement part 1

While I was In Europe in September, I purchased some new interior pieces for the DS. This included a set of seat covers, door cards, headrests and armrests. While there wasn’t anything wrong with the seat covers, the door cards were in poor shape, and I wanted to go to a cloth interior from a targa (vinyl) one, which is not correct for this car and not breathable in the Australian heat.

I started with the bottom of the back seat, as I figured this would be the easiest (it is just a big rectangle and one piece), and […]

New coil, cap and rotor bring the SLC back to life

As outlined in a previous post, the 450SLC broke down a week and a half ago and the NRMA helped me diagnose it down to a bad coil. Yesterday, my new coil, cap and rotor arrived so I got down to getting fitting them t the car.

A quick test of the new coil had the car roaring back to life, so I swapped the new coil in properly. This job can be done with the tools found in the Mercedes tool roll (screwdriver, 8mm and 10mm spanner), which helped as the car was not near my tools.

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Mercedes W111 Coupe/Cabriolet RHD Manual vs Auto

I recently had a question on my previous post around RHD/LHD 111 Coupe/Cabriolet about the numbers of Automatics vs Manuals.

This is an interesting question and not one that I have the answer to. However from my own observations of RHD models for sale and at shows, manuals are fairly common in the 220SE, rare in the 250SE and 300SE and then extremely rare for the 280SE, and 280SE 3.5.

I keep notes of the cars that I see for sale, and from my albeit small sample size, I have:

ModelCoupe ManualCoupe AutomaticCabriolet ManualCabriolet AutoTotal (inc unknown) 220SE792523 250SE0230326 280SE06018 […]