Citroen DS front end wiring – part 1

The Citroen DS has easily removable front wings. They can be removed in a matter of minutes for various maintenance jobs. Instead of one big plug like you would find on other cars (e.g. a Mercedes-Benz), individual bullet terminals need to be connected up for all the wiring to things like indicators, headlights, horns etc.

Turns out that when my car was painted, the labels for the wires came off. When it was re-assembled, the car was doing some really strange things. This pointed to the wires not being connected back the same way. This was further complicated by the […]

Finally, a working blower motor

My story of fixing the W126 climate control can be summed up by: If everything points to a problem with an expensive part, don’t waste your time trying to replace the cheaper parts around it in a futile hope it will solve the problem!

After trying a used Climate Control Unit, new fan resistor etc, I finally bit the bullet and bought a rebuilt climate control unit. This solved the problem. In retrospect I probably didn’t need to buy the resistor and I certainly didn’t need the used CCU. It also pays to shop around as a rebuilt CCU was […]

W126 Climate control woes

I’ve been fighting with the W126 Climate Control system for the last few months – and it’s been winning. When I purchased the car in November last year, it was a very hot day and the A/C worked great. It had a new radiator, so I took the evidence of leaking coolant to be history rather than a current problem. Turned out the water pump was leaking and over the next 3 months that leak got worse. My theory is that the leaking coolant shorted out the compressor clutch, as it stopped working around the same time.

I was able […]

300SE poor hot starts

The 300SE has been suffering from poor hot starts. It required a lot of cranking before it fired. On a K-Jet car, this is normally caused by a faulty fuel accumulator. From what I understand it’s the job of the fuel accumulator to hold fuel pressure after the car is switched off. I also planned to change the fuel filter as I didn’t know when it was last changed.

I also had the small in-line filter that fits in before the fuel distributor. It will have to wait as I didn’t have time to change it this time.

Obviously […]