The bumper is actually quite simple to mount.   In retrospect I should have removed it in one piece instead of disassembling it.   It would have saved me a lot of time.   The two bumper irons are bolted to the body with big rubber isolators to provide a small amount of ‘give’.   What I find odd is that the nuts are really narrow.  You need a 26mm socket but the nut is only about 2mm.  There is plenty of room for a normal sized nut that would be much easier to grip.   There are rubber covers for the exposed threads which is probably what prevented mine from rusting.   The bolts are right behind the tyres meaning they are exposed to water/mud being flicked up from the wheels.   I put a  little grease on the bolts before installing the covers.

The bumper should be mounted with the rear wings removed.   It is too easy to damage them otherwise.  I tried and put a minor scratch on one of mine.

You also need to be really careful with the rear wings once the bumpers are mounted.   There are little tabs on the DS rear bumper to stop the wing touching it, but they don’t work especially well and some rubber backing for the bumper would make sense.

The post Mounting the DS rear bumper appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

I went through a whole bag of ebay polishing attachments from my drill, but each one made the bumper just a little bit better.   I also took the time to fit a new overrider on one side.   You have to be careful parking a DS – it gradually sinks!   I had parked the car with the rear just touching the back wall of the garage.  As the car sank, the friction ripped the overrider from the bumper.

When I was disassembling the bumper, I was not able to remove the bumper irons.    This time they came free and it was a much better way of removing the bumper from the car.   In fact, I probably didn’t need to disassemble the bumper other than it made polishing easier.    After a year I had forgotten what a couple of key parts in my ‘rear bumper’ bag were.  These are illustrated as part 11 below.

The part is shown vertical here, but turns out it is horizontal and is used (with the rubber plug shown in #2) to stop the bumper touching the rear wing.   A bit of help from the aussiefrogs forum and I was back in business.

The DS rear bumper assembly is made up of a few different pieces that need to be bolted together.   This means that if the bumper is damaged, only the necessary pieces need to be changed.  It is much easier to do off the car.

I found it easier to first mount the top piece, then the two connecting pieces, then the main bottom bumper bar.   I am missing one of the rubber stops which I will need to order.

The post Citroen DS rear bumper reassembly appeared first on Classic Jalopy.

The front bumpers (the rears were pretty similar):

The post Citroen DS bumpers polished. appeared first on Classic Jalopy.