Ever since I bought the DS I had wanted to have a working temperature gauge. DS Temperature gauges are quite rare – only sold as standard in cold climates and on some high end models. My car had received a replacement instrument cluster some time in the past, but since the car was not sold with the gauge, the wiring was not present....
Today spend more time working on the paintwork of the DS. I finished wet-sanding the car, and the lower panels have all been polished with both stage 1 and stage 2 of the Auto Glym Paint Pro I have been using. Overall the car is looking much better. Despite going through the paint in a few places where it was very bubbly, there...
Mercedes W111 220SE/250SE Coupe/Cabriolet For reasons of their own, Mercedes gave the 220SE and 250SE models the same designator (111.021 for coupe and 111.023 for cabriolet). In addition, the chassis number was shared with the 220SE sedan. This was not continued for the later W111 coupe and cabriolet that have their own model designator and sequence. From what I know there were:...
The DS was painted at home by the previous owner which resulted in the paintwork being extremely dull and rough. Today I had the whole today aside, so I wanted to get started on improving the paint. I started with a wash as the car was a little dusty. From there, I used a clay bar to try and remove any contaminants...
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...
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