The only warning light in the Citroen DS I wasn’t sure worked was the temperature warning. You can test the bulb by pressing the button, but that doesn’t testing the sender and the connection. Today, I found it does work, and that my temperature gauge is pretty accurate; The DS overheated today and I was greeted with the little temperature light and the...
by admin · Published February 5, 2014 · Last modified September 17, 2024
It is hard to find somebody who prefers four door cars on aesthetic grounds. Sure, four door cars may be more practical, often cheaper to insure and easier to live with, but when buying a classic car, those considerations are not nearly as important. Mercedes Benz have always provided a range of handsome coupes in their range, which are still even years...
The seat covers project is now complete! This evening I finished the back of the drivers seat (started in part 7), and installed it. I also did the hard task of putting the centre arm rest in place too. I didn’t fit the ashtray back as it was black for the Targa seats and should be white. At some point I...
Last year I removed the old targa door card from one of the rear doors and fitted the new velour door card. Today I was up to doing the front door. This is a job that gets far easier with experience. Some of the websites mention needing far less of the clips than I used, but the holes were all drilled in my...
What the best differential ratio is for a straight six engined E-Type (Series 1 and Series 2) is one of those topics that generates plenty of opinions. So much so that my car has had two changes over its life. US delivered E-Type started life with a 3.54 ratio, which my car now has. This is the same ratio it had when new...
There are two ways to get to the Hunter Valley – the boring way, on the F3, sitting in holiday weekend, bumper to bumper traffic; or you can take a bit of a detour and go via the Putty road. This weekend, I chose the Putty road and to take the E-Type, and this decision was vindicated by a great drive with minimal traffic,...
Removing the seats from the car is an easy way of cleaning underneath them, and the trim underneath my seats was rather dirty. A good clean showed the original vinyl trim in good condition, which was great to see. Shame about the blue carpet, but that will be a project for the future. I found that it was easier to remove the...
I had wanted to buy this book for a while, as the author, Bernd S. Koehling had written some interesting blog articles on his website, so I figured I would try a couple of his books too (I also purchased Volume 2 which will be the subject of a later review). Added to that, he obviously has great taste in cars, and I would...
The passengers seat is now complete! In part 5, I was able to remove the old targa covers and get the seat down to foam. After a test fit of the covers, I felt they were too baggy, so I bought some additional foam from Clark Rubber. I went with the 25mm high density foam and bought four pieces. 2 61x52cm for the...
The Citroen DS, being such an iconic car, has inspired a plethora of books on it’s design, history, restoration, models etc. The one that is the most recommended is ‘The Original Citroen DS – The restorers guide” by John Reynolds, mostly because of it’s excellent set of pictures; but this book is currently out of print and quite expensive. (You can get it...
Now the rear seat is complete, it is time for the front seats. I started with the passengers seat, so I can still drive the car if necessary, as I expect once i’ve done the passengers seat I will be faster on the drivers seat. The seat rails are bolted onto the car with 4x11mm bolts, and the rails are held to the...
The JDCA had an informal E-Type register run up to the cafe at Swane’s nursery in Dural. An informal run meaning that the cars had to be on full registration to attend – not a problem for me. There are around 140 E-Types on the club register, so a nice variety of cars that can show up to a run. (I think the...
A few weeks ago, I wrapped the steering wheel on the DS and used a 3M adhesive. On the whole, this worked well for the main part of the steering wheel, but the ends were lifting up. I re-glued the ends with some araldite and covered them in black electrical tape. Lets see how well that works. I also had the...
Today I changed the transmission fluid on the DS. I’m glad I did as the colour was a bit more like coffee than a nice clean red. A lot of the members of the aussiefrogs forum swear by Nulon G70 (additive) so I also added some of that to the fluid too. I used a Penrite gear oil, which turned out to...
The 450SLC had been idling rather roughly and stumbling when taking off from stop. This got a bit better when I changed the coil, cap and rotor – and at that time I noticed that the leads were not in great shape, especially the one to the coil. There are a lot of leads for sale, many of them inferior quality. The Beru HT...
Lets face it, R134A is rubbish when it comes to cooling older cars. It is significantly less efficient than R12. Systems that are not designed for it struggle to keep the car tepid in the Australian summer. Added to that, the air conditioning on the 107 models from Mercedes was never their strong point either, so when you couple a marginal system, that...
This post is a flashback to 2009 when I upgraded the lights on my 1988 560SEC I owned while living in Michigan. When I moved to Michigan in 2007, I bought a 560SEC. The car was a bit rough, but Detroit is not a city you can really live in without a car, and it wasn’t expensive. Being a midwest car, it...
In part 3, I was halfway through installing the covers on the upper part of the rear seat. Today I was able to complete the job – the rear seat is finished, in the car and looking great. To finish the job, I had to insert the final hog rings on the upper part of the seat. The foam and springs were...
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