| When purchased, my 560SEC did not have working climate control. Not only did the A/C not work, but the heater had a mind of its own, occasionally bursting in to life and turning on full heat. Curiously for a car that has been in Australia since the early 2000s, the car had not been converted to R134A. My first step was to see if the system could work. Overseas readers may not know that in Australia it is illegal to sell freon to the general public. R12 has not been available for many years. Therefore, I booked the car into […] Today I attended a Citroen Car club tech day. Since most Citroens are equipped with hydropneumatic suspension, the club has equipment to pressure test spheres. It has been five years since I tested my spheres, so they were well overdue. The sphere pressure check equipment consists of a hand pump and pressure gauge. The club is also equipped with re-gassing facilities, although those were not available today for the rebuildable spheres in my DS21. The tech day did have a hoist available, but my preference is to remove the spheres at home first. As with last time I removed them, […] I discovered at the MBCNSW Dyno day that my 560SEC was running dangerously lean. Lean enough to cause damage to the engine. While I was in the USA for work, I went to the Mid Florida Auto show. I met Pierre Hedary there (who runs an independent Mercedes workshop), who suggested that I should start by testing my fuel pressures and that he had a couple of videos on youtube to help. The first video was on checking KE Jetronic Fuel Pressures. The second video was on KE Jetronic EHA adjustment. As I own two KE Jetronic cars and one […] A couple of weeks ago, while I was in the USA I attended the Mid Florida Auto Show and Lake Mirror Concours. This posting is a few weeks old, as I didn’t have the cable for my camera to transfer the photos. I was in Orlando for work, and Lakeland is about an hour or two away. The Mid Florida Auto show is normally a picturesque event set on the shores of Lake Mirror. This year, Tropical Storm Nestor hit North Florida. While Nestor was a fair way away, it was close enough to cause torrential rain in the Central […] This weekend I planned to drive down to Canberra for the MB Spares and Service clearance sale. Originally I was going to do a Saturday day trip, but I noticed that the Marques in the park show was running the next day. From what I read this is a fairly large, but still informal show, with normally a few hundred cars in attendance. I decided to make a weekend of it – stay down Saturday evening and then attend the show Sunday morning. It worked out quite well – I attended the show from 9Am to 11:30 and then headed […] Today I traveled down to Canberra for the MB Spares and Service used parts clearance sale. I managed to score a few bargains that will hopefully come in handy in years to come. MB Spares and Service closed down the spares side of their business a couple of years back to focus on the service and restoration. The spares business catered for both new and used parts. So they can consolidate down into one building, excess used stock was on sale today. Having a stock of good used parts is quite useful for a restoration and service business. The point […] Today I attended the Linnwood house car show. In prior years, this was focused around the Rolls Royce display, but this year it was more of a general car show. I like this car show as it is informal, no marshals, security guards or crowds. Just rock up with your car and park in the vast grounds outside the historic house. This year the main displays were from Rover, Wolseley, Austin and various classic American marques. The car of the day for me was a lovely 1937 Packard Super 8. These cars are hugely impressive in the flesh – pictures […] The Citroen DS cooling system is somewhat unique in that it relies almost exclusively on pulling air through ducting to cool the radiator. Most cars have a grille where the faster the car moves, the more air is pushed over the radiator. On modern cars this is the grille below the bumper. It is only at idle they only rely on pulling air through the radiator. The Citroen DS has a large plastic fan attached to the camshaft pulley. That fan sits behind the radiator and then pulls air through based on engine speed. The DS21ie and all DS 23 […] After my Citroen DS was painted, there were a couple of cosmetic things wrong with the car that were far more noticeable. One of them was the DS window rubbers and felts. The previous owner had used generic units, and they didn’t fit all that well. Proper reproduction units are available, which are the right size and use the standard mounting points. I didn’t get a chance to take before and and after photos, but the new DS window rubbers and felts look much better. As well as the proper window rubbers and felts, the correct mounting hardware is […] I changed the differential ratio of my E-Type about two years ago. My car was first delivered in the USA, so it came standard with 3.54 ratio. Most of the 4.2 cars were standard with 3.07. When the car was restored in the 90’s, it was converted to 3.07. However, the previous owner converted it back to 3.54. My conversion put it to 3.07 again. The car still has its original speedometer, which means both the speed and odometer were incorrect. This page lists the different Jaguar E-Type differential ratios. There are generally two ways of accounting for the differential […] | |
