Before I can get the DS back on the road, I need to sort out the front end wiring. This controls the headlights, indicators, horns etc. There is obviously something wrong here as I had been seeing strange behaviour in the lights. I spent some time on this late last year, and made only minimal progress. I had some suggestions to check the...
The windscreen washer has not been working on my 450SLC for a couple of months. The wipers started up, but no water squirted on the windscreen. On quick inspection, I assumed it was the pump as it was rather rusty. The W107 windscreen washer pump is a poor design in my view. It appears that the motor is below where the water is...
When I completed the boot lid last week, I forgot an important part. The boot lid struts! I was going through my parts box last night to mount the window cranks and noticed them. The boot struts keep the boot lid open. They are quite simple, consisting of a spring inside a tube. This means the Citroen DS boot struts do not wear out...
Today, I was reading an excellent article on Curbside Classic about the legendary Paul Bracq. Bracq had a long career with Mercedes Benz, BMW, Peugeot. He also worked at an independent styling house. Part one covers his time at Mercedes-Benz and part two the rest of his career. I highly recommend this article. Bracq was responsible for one of Mercedes-Benz most elegant designs of...
Today’s job was to work on the DS door trim. Most importantly, re-mounting the door cards. The door cards were new in 2014 and still in great shape. The grey velour goes very well with the darker shade of red. Before I mounted them, I took the opportunity to spray the inside of the doors with some fish oil and lubricate the window...
The DS is finally looking more like a car, now I have mounted the boot lid. A couple of weeks ago I prepared the boot lid for mounting. This involved adding the seal, locking hardware etc. Today, I added the top seal and then fitted it to the car. The top seal has metal clips to hold it in place. Its...
About 18 months ago, I had my E-Type upgraded from sealed beams to Halogen headlights. Last night, I took the car on the first extended night drive since the upgrade. What a difference! The Halogen upgrade also included relays and wiring directly from the battery to the lights. Before this upgrade I never felt particularly comfortable driving the car at night. With this...
I stopped by the upcoming 2018 Shannons Sydney Autumn Classic auction today to check out the cars on offer. A big part of this auction is numeric plates. These have proven to be a good investment for many of the last few years. Personally I regard them a bit like Bitcoin, the latest fad without fundamentals. It’s not like you can enjoy driving...
I don’t feature the E350 Wagon on this site much. It is the main family car, mostly driven by my wife. The S211 is (in my view) a much better option than the plethora of SUV’s on the road. The lower ride height makes loading babies and prams easy and it drives and handles like a proper car. Just after Christmas, the rear...
The world’s slowest Citroen DS reassembly continues. Today’s job was to reassemble the bumper in readiness to put it back on the car. I had taken the opportunity to polish the bumper while it was off the car. Since the DS rear bumper is made from stainless steel it came up very well with a bit of autosol. I went through a whole bag...
The Citroen DS boot lid is almost ready to be mounted on the car. Before Xmas I was able to finally fit the badges properly. The next task was mounting all the other hardware and fitting a new boot lid seal. The latching hardware and handle goes on quite easily if you have a 36mm spanner. The only fiddly bit is getting the drainage...
Adding overzealous private security guards rarely enhances an event and the 2018 CARnivale was no exception. This event used to be held in the city and was relocated to Parramatta Park a few years ago. It is now much smaller and the cars are squeezed into a small area so unnecessary security barriers can be put up to contain them. This year...
The British Motor Museum has more cars than they can display in their main collection. Unlike most museums, they open up their reserve collection to browse. The cars are obviously packed in close together to fit them all, so harder to see all the details and photograph. I still think its great that the museum opens this part of the collection to the public....
The British Motor Museum contains the world’s largest collection of historic British vehicles. It was a really impressive museum and worth a visit if you’re ever in the UK. It is a nice combination of early vehicles, examples of popular British cars, concept cars and competition cars. The museum is located in Warwick, near Birmingham, about an hour or so north of London on...
The National Motor Museum arose out of the collection of the previous Lord Montagu (3rd Baron Beaulieu). It is housed at the Montagu family estate at Beaulieu in the New Forest. Lord Montagu’s father was a keen early motoring enthusiast and his personal vehicles started out the collection. Starting with the five original cars in the 1950’s the museum has expanded out to hundreds...
The Alpine Eagle is a variant of the infamous 40/50 ‘Silver Ghost’. It was actually referred to by Rolls Royce as the Continental model. However, the Continental was a replica of the cars entered in the 1913 Austrian Alpine Trial. During the 1912 Trial, the three speed gearbox had proven insufficient. Therefore, four cars were prepared for the 1913 season with four speed gearboxes. ...
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