The electric DS

The Citroen club held its monthly meeting at the Tesla showroom, where club members got to test drive the model S. As well as seeing the Model S, one of the members of the club brought along his electric DS to compare with the Tesla. I have to say I was very impressed with what he had done with the car. Not only is it 100% electric, but he has managed to preserve the character of the DS. This includes the hydraulic system.

From the outside the car looks like a stock DS, albeit with some additional buttons on […]

450SLC door striker replacement

The drivers door on the 450SLC had become harder and harder to close properly over the past year or so. It normally took a couple of tries before it would latch correctly. I therefore decided to try replacing the door striker, which do wear out over time. The part number of the new striker was 115 720 06 04.

As can be seen in the photo, the 450SLC door striker had worn over the years, particularly the plastic insert. It is a much better design than the striker used on the W111, which is a two piece unit. Over […]

2015 Tesla Model S Review

The Citroen Car club had its monthly meeting at the Tesla showroom this month. Tesla were offering short test drives to club members as part of the meeting. The Tesla Model S is one of the few modern cars that interest me, so I jumped at the opportunity. In my view, the Tesla is the first ‘green’ car that is a great car as well as being green. Nobody bought a Prius because it was a great car, they bought it because it was supposed to be green.

The Tesla Model S is a great car despite it being electric. […]

Traction oil service – how simple

The Traction Avant is the easiest car I own to do a basic service. There is no oil filter, so the oil is simply drained and topped up. The transmission is right up front, and not obscured by the ducting of the DS, so it can be done while sitting in front of the car. The downside of course is that since there is no oil filter, you need to do it more often, and there are a lot of grease points to consider.

I wasn’t sure when the last service had been performed on the Traction, so I wanted […]

DS sill trim – replacement part 1

The other day I had removed all the sill trim from the DS. I also re-routed the speaker wires so new trim can be fitted. Next step was to fit the silver trim that faces the outside of the car, but is only visible when the doors are open, and the inner weather strip.

The trim is glued on, but needs to be slightly trimmed to size, and on the rear doors, cut to accommodate the closing mechanism. I used spray adhesive. The trim also folds around below the car and is sandwiched between the sill and the stainless steel […]

Re-routing the DS rear speaker wires

I had originally tucked the wiring for the rear speakers in the DS under the marine carpet that was on the inside of the sills. However, I am now replacing that and gluing down the correct vinyl, so wanted a better solution.

The DS wiring harness actually goes between the inner and outer sill, along with some hydraulic lines. This is not normally accessible, but I already had the stainless steel sill covers off, so it was a good time to re-wire those speakers. It is not easy to feed the wires in there, but worth it I think.

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Citroen DS sill trim – removal

The sill trim on my DS was in poor condition – the rubbers were perished, the outer sill trim was cracking, and the trim on the inside sills had been replaced with Marine carpet. Most of the information I could find on the Internet referred to a DS Pallas, and I wanted to keep my car as a DS Comfort.

The photo above illustrates the setup on the DS Comfort: From the bottom, you have the stainless steel outer sill trim. This is also present on a DS Pallas, not not ID variants (e.g. ID19, D Special, D Super […]