I got the W123 280CE out again today and gave it a quick wash down. It was covered in bird poo from it’s time for sale and I doubt I’ll have much time to work on it until later this year so I wanted to get that off. Drove it around the industrial complex where the garage is and the more I look...
Yesterday I put the 280CE up on the hoist to see where the water leaks were coming from. I had bought the car knowing it was leaking, presumably from the radiator. From looking underneath, it looks like the leaks are actually coming from the water pump, not the radiator. That should make the job more time consuming, but cheaper overall. In addition, I...
Today I went to the annual French Car display day. This is organized by the French Car clubs including Citroen, Peugeot, Renault, Simca etc. It’s held on a weekend around Bastille day, which this year happened to be the day of the event. It was a good day and good to see familiar cars and faces of the Citroen Car club members....
It had been a while since the E-Type had been on a good long drive, so a friend of mine came over to the warehouse and we took the E-Type out for the drive below. View Larger Map I’ve done most of this route before – Galston Rd is always a good one, as is Bells Line of Road. I was also impressed...
I had to go to Canberra for work today, so I decided to take the 250SE on a road trip. I hadn’t taken it for a long drive for a while, and I thought a road trip would do it good. It was too cold to open the roof, but It was nice to get the car out on the open road....
I’ve always been partial to Mercedes-Benz pillarless coupes, owing a 450SLC, and having owned two 560SECs and a 250SE coupe. That means I was unable to resist a 1982 W123 280CE on ebay that I wasn’t planning on buying. The CE looked like fundamentally a nice car that needs a few things done to get it back to where it should be....
I had been unable to use the blower in the 450SLC for the last couple of weeks as it was making a terrible scraping sound when I would run it. About two years ago I ‘rebuilt’ the blower with a new motor, but with my existing case and fan cages. A new W107 blower motor from Mercedes is prohibitively expensive, but you can...
After suffering the humiliation of a ham fisted owner the DS is back on the road thanks to Jason Hantos. It’s also all ready for another year of rego, success! Quite a hassle to have it towed
The 450SLC spent the last two days at Arthur Rizzo Motors getting ready for the next year on the road. The car was hesitating a bit, and not idling quite right, but a new set of plugs seems to have fixed that. (#1 was a bit coked up). The steering was feeling a bit floppy – so a new tie rod end...
But at least it won’t get dust in the gear selector. I obviously stuffed up in my repair of the carby fuel inlet as I noticed fuel leaking from there, and in trying to tighten it a little, broke it off. It’s a good lesson as amateurs will make mistakes from time to time and they can cost money. As luck would have it,...
The bumpers on the Citroen DS were a bit scruffy, so I used the autosol metal polish to shine them up. They were not nearly as bad as the C-pillar trim, but they came up really nicely with a bit of polishing. The front bumpers (the rears were pretty similar):
I spent a lot of time researching the Citroen DS major production changes when I was buying mine. For easy reference I put the details in the table below. Obviously there were many more changes during the production run, but these were the major changes that make a difference when buying a car. This table is for the DS range, not for...
Today did more maintenance on the Citroen DS, including: Oil and filter change Rotate tyres Cleaned all the dirt out of the space behind the rear wings Changed the small ID style hubcaps on the rear for the correct DS type Still a bit of work to get this car where I want it, but getting there slowly. For future reference on the oil...
While the Citroen DS can be a rather hot car due to the engine being right next to the drivers knee, it is generally not a good idea to let it get even hotter through an engine fire. The weber carburettor that is used on the DS has the fuel inlet fitting press fit into the top housing of the carby, which as...
Today I spent more time doing small improvements to the Citroen DS. The car originally had single side mirror on the drivers side that I think was for a later car. This mirror was never able to stay in the right spot and would always fall back against the car over 70km/h despite how tight it was. I also wanted to...
In other news, an aeroplane fuselage arrived at the garage today. I’m storing it for a guy who plans to restore it some day. Apparently his father crashed it some time ago in Germany and he would like to restore it. He needs to work on the wings and engine first and needed a safe place to store it.
This was a car that I fully expected to hate, yet was pleasantly surprised once I got to drive it. Having driven more than my fair share of Toyota’s, my assumption was that this car was basically a Camry with some leather and a Lexus badge glued onto the front. This is certainly not the case. My then girlfriend (now Fiancee) was looking...
The Radio upgrade on the Citroen DS is almost complete. It’s taken over a month (albeit only a few hours a week). Today I properly installed the speakers. The DS front speaker is a 3″x7″ size which is not very common. Der Franzose carry a drop in replacement, but it is an original paper style speaker and I wanted to go...
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