My Traction is migrating north

My Traction Avant is now sold and is migrating north. Like many before it, it is crossing the tweed for a new life in Queensland. My experience selling the car wasn’t too bad. I advertised the car on carsales.com.au and in ‘The Chevrons’. ‘The Chevrons’ is the magazine of the Citroen Club of NSW. In the end I had four interested parties and four offers. One of them was quite silly, but the rest of them were at least in the ballpark. The winning offer was from carsales. I didn’t bother advertising on Gumtree, it seems better for cars less […]

For Sale: 1954 Traction Avant Light 15

UPDATE: 30/4/19 – This car is now SOLD.

My Traction Avant Light 15 is for sale. It will go up on carsales in a couple of weeks. The asking price will be $22,500. The Light 15 was built in 1954 in Slough. As an English built Traction it has more luxuries than the cars built in Paris. It also has 12v Lucas electrics.

More than $20,000 has been spent on the car over the last couple of years including work on the engine/gearbox, front end rebuild, valve adjustment, new fuel pump.

The best thing about the Traction Avant is […]

Traction Avant Front Carpet

My Traction Avant has been missing its front carpet since my purchase. The lack of the front carpet made an otherwise nice car look like a bit of a Jalopy. The traction Avant front carpet is a single piece like the DS. As the Traction is a front engine car, it does not need a transmission tunnel. I was not able to find one that would match my car.

My original aim was to find a front carpet that would match the rest of the carpet in the car. I tried a bunch of places in Australia and I wasn’t […]

Traction Avant drivabilty improvements

The Traction Avant had a number of small issues that were impacting the overall drivability of the car. The car is now much nicer to drive after resolving them.

The original engine driven fuel pump had been bypassed by a very noisy electric pump There was severe vibration on braking Front suspension was worn Valves were out of adjustment on #2 causing poor running and smoke at idle The gearchange mechanism would occasionally get ‘stuck’ The gearbox had a bad oil leak

All the work on the car for these jobs was done by Jason at Pallas Motors. I was […]

Traction engine troubleshooting

Today I started troubleshooting a potential engine issue in my Traction Avant. When the engine is hot, it will sometimes smoke out of the valve cover and there is a single pulse of black exhaust like it is being caused by one cylinder.

My first test was to check the compression of the engine, quite easy on a traction engine as the spark plugs are easily accessible and there is a starter button in the engine compartment. A compression check is always a good check to run on an engine to understand its health.

I found that #1, #3 and […]

2016 French car day

Today was the 2016 French car day. As usual a good day out, including my Traction Avant taking out 1st place in the pre-1955 category.

Attendance was down this year compared to last year as the weather was a bit iffy this morning. But it turned out nice enough in the end. A humorous side show was a member of the Citroen car club arriving in his GS with only three wheels, showing off the ability of Hydraulic suspended Citroens to do it. This car was for sale and he was trying to attract attention, which he achieved. The GS […]

Fixing Leaks from the Traction Avant oil cap

The Traction Avant has a fairly large oil cap that at least on my car is a loose fit. Underneath it there is a metal plate with holes in it which let the oil drain into the engine when filling and presumably stop the oil from splashing out.

Unfortunately on my car, these holes had been significantly enlarged and that means oil was dribbling down both sides of the engine and creating smoke when it hit the hot exhaust manifold.

My assumption was that the extra holes were leading to excess oil splashing up and leaking out of the cap. […]

Traction Avant Wedding car

I helped out a friend today for a wedding with the Traction Avant. Tractions are not often seen as wedding cars, but they are rather striking and work pretty well. For this wedding two Light 15s were used. The big bodied cars would probably work better, but the light 15 was roomy enough for five people. You do notice the extra weight – with only 56 h.p. even four slim bridesmaids mean rather slow progress up hills.

The other light 15 has an ID motor and four speed gearbox installed which probably helps, but the slow progress is part […]

Door mirrors for the Traction Avant

Driving a car from the 50’s often means impatient drives roaring around you when you set off from traffic lights, especially uphill. Sydney drivers are particularly bad for this.

Traction Avants, as with most 50’s cars are only fitted with a small interior rear-view mirror and no outside mirror. This makes parking and lane changing a challenge.

I had seen many tractions fitted with door mounted mirrors so I bought a set from Der Franzose and fitted them today. The mirrors mount on the leading edge of the suicide doors, with a small bracket that allows the mirror to screw […]

The Citroen DS was launched 60 years ago this month

In October 1955, Citroen unveiled one of the most innovative cars ever designed. There have been plenty of new cars that have introduced a new technology, or even a couple, but the DS was so radical that it immediately made everything else on the market seem old fashioned. And this was just the looks. Under the covers, the car contained a revolutionary hydraulic system that controlled the suspension, gear change and brakes. This system would go on to be used for over 50 years. It was also licensed by other marques such as Rolls-Royce and Mercedes-Benz. In addition, there were […]