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...
The Citroen DS is known for its single spoke steering wheel. It is one of the many things that make this car so unique. The steering wheels up to the 1971 model year were thin wheels wrapped in black plastic tape. (I understand some very early cars had a different system). Later cars had the soft ‘safety’ steering wheel. My car, being a...
Regular readers may recall that I started installing the missing rear interior lights for my DS21. These interior lights are only found in the DS Comfort – they do not exist in the Pallas model, nor the ID models such as D Special, D Super etc. After a few questions on the Aussiefrogs forum, and a lot of adjusting in the car I finally got...
In my opinion, the BMW E39 is still hands down the best looking 5 series BMW have produced. It significantly sharpened up the looks of the fairly boxy E34. It was later replaced by the bulbous looking E60. The current model still follows on too much from the E60 aberration. The BMW E39 has now depreciated to the point where they are an...
Citroen DS door cards are quite simple as the door handle etc is above the actual door card. So all it comprises of is the arm rest and a small hole for the window winder mechanism. The door card is held onto the door through a series of metal clips that attach into holes drilled into the door. The holes are...
In part 2, I was able to get part way through removal of the old Targa seat covers for the upper part of the rear seat. Today I was able to complete the removal of the old Targa covers and start fitting the new ones. I was helped by a website created by an owner of a DS20 Comfort who has documented the same...
Today I made good progress replacing the seat covers in the DS. In part 1, I had removed the old cover from the bottom of the back seat. Today, I was able to fit the new seat cover. I’m really happy with the result – it looks great! I found that using lots of small bulldog clips to get the cover in...
Removing door cards on a Citroen DS is quite simple. The door cards are held on by the window winder and a series of metal clips. The metal clips attach to the back of the door card, and align with holes in the door that have plastic ‘cups’ that the metal clips slot into. The window winder is removed by pushing...
While I was In Europe in September, I purchased some new interior pieces for the DS. This included a set of seat covers, door cards, headrests and armrests. While there wasn’t anything wrong with the seat covers, the door cards were in poor shape, and I wanted to go to a cloth interior from a targa (vinyl) one, which is not correct...
As outlined in a previous post, the 450SLC broke down a week and a half ago and the NRMA helped me diagnose it down to a bad coil. Yesterday, my new coil, cap and rotor arrived so I got down to getting fitting them t the car. A quick test of the new coil had the car roaring back to life, so I...
I recently had a question on my previous post around RHD/LHD 111 Coupe/Cabriolet about the numbers of Automatics vs Manuals. This is an interesting question and not one that I have the answer to. However from my own observations of RHD models for sale and at shows, manuals are fairly common in the 220SE, rare in the 250SE and 300SE and then extremely...
During the 10 years and around 40,000 kms I’ve owned the 450SLC, it’s proven to be extremely reliable. Sure i’ve had a flat battery once a couple of times, and a fuel pump that would cause the engine to occasionally stall until it was replaced, but it has never left me stranded, until this weekend. About 100 meters from my driveway, the engine...
The Auto Collections Las Vegas bills itself as the worlds largest Classic car showroom. It is basically a classic car dealership that also allows the general public in to ‘view the collection’ for a fee. This means that the cars are changing (except for about 10% that are not for sale), and it is a nice escape from the smoky environments of...
I’ve had issues with the blower on the 450SLC for a few years now. I would get all sorts of noise and irregular operation from it. Unlike in some models, the blower is actually pretty easy to get to in the 450SLC, but the problem was new blowers were very expensive (I was seeing them for over $1,200) and used units...
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