The radio in the car is an early 2000s unit I originally bought for my 1986 300E when I lived in Denver.   When I sold the 300E I put a cheap radio back in and kept this unit.   It’s a Pioneer Premier which is like Lexus is to Toyota.   It was a pretty good radio for 2001 – with MP3 CD function and more.    I had the radio fitted to the SLC after I purchased it in 2003 – the car had a fairly crappy 90s unit installed at the time of purchase.    Its doing pretty well to still be working after 20 years.   At some point I will probably install a retrosound unit similar to the 250SE, but that is a future project.

The first task was to remove the radio and check to see if it had power or not.   As I didn’t install the radio myself, I did not have the correct DIN removal tool.   I purchased a full set of DIN tools online.   I figured it would be a useful tool for the future.

The purchase was definitely worth it, as I had the radio out in a matter of minutes.    The pioneer tools were a perfect fit – I guess they haven’t changed them in 20 years!   Some of them have rather odd shapes, so but its good to have all the standard types.

The steering wheel is only loosely on at the moment as the odometer is out for repair.  I found it easier to remove the instrument cluster and give the radio a bit of a push from behind.   As with the other stuff I removed, the 450SLC radio wiring is pretty messy.   I didn’t try and clean that up as I’ll do it at the same time I replace the radio and probably install new speakers.

Once the radio was out it was pretty apparent what the problem was.   The yellow wire for permanent 12v was connected to and old bit of speaker wire I had removed.    The switched 12v was working correctly however.    This old bit of speaker wire had been connected to one of the old car phone bits which was in turn connected to the fuse box.

As modern radios use more power than the original Becker units, I figured the best approach was to run a new wire from the battery to the radio, with an inline fuse.   This is pretty easy to do with the under dash panels removed.   There is a big rubber grommet near the battery that lets a bunch of vacuum lines and wires go from the engine bay to the cabin of the car.   I was able to push a new wire through fairly easily.   It was actually easier to do it from the cabin to the engine bay as the vacuum lines turn almost 90 degrees once they enter the cabin.     I then use an inline blade fuse holder and a connector to the positive battery terminal.

A quick test showed the radio working.   The new 450SLC radio wiring is much neater than before and I have a working radio again.

While I was there, I had another issue to investigate.   I had replaced the sunroof switch about 10 years ago, but without the instrument cluster removed, I couldn’t plug it in without removing the rear dome light switch.   This gave me access to plug in the sunroof switch.   At the time I figured a working sunroof was more important than a working dome light.    However, with the dome light switch plugged back in, I blew fuse #1.   In the end I just disconnected the switch again.   I have not really missed the dome light since I disconnected it.

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Firstly there were some bad connectors that needed replacing.   Next, some of the wiring inside the wings were wrong.   Thirdly there were a couple of bad grounds.    I had been mostly looking at the connections where they join the front wing.     We were aided by a great diagnostic tool that I plan to purchase.   It let you test for voltage, ground, send 12v to test a component and much more.   It’s called VGate PowerTest.

The lights on the DS are great for a car of its age, especially the high beams aided by the inner driving lights.

Since the connections to the wings are not great, in the future I plan to replace the individual bullet connectors with a single harness connection for the 8 wires on the passengers side and 6 on the drivers side.  This will make removing the wings easier.  Not sure why Citroen didn’t do this as standard on the DS wiring.

Next we fixed a couple of bad connections for the rear indicators.   I need to solder one of the connectors back, and if that does not work, purchase a new one.       The final wiring related fix that was needed was the door contact switch on the passengers side.   The connectors on the reproduction switches are not the greatest, so the 12v wire had fallen off.   I had tried for ages to get it with magnets and hooks, but apparently the trick is to use a long piece of coat-hanger with a hook bent at the end.   We retrieved the wire and put new connectors on it.     The wiring on the car was now back to working again.     In the future, I plan to put the driving lights on a relay like the headlights, install a battery disconnect switch and use harness connectors at the top of the front wings.

As we did all this work, we identified a number of other things that needed attention:

• The door mirrors were reversed.   I didn’t know the passengers side is a few cm longer, and I had it on the drivers side.
• Chrome trim on the side of the roof is rather beat up and can be replaced without removing the roof.
• The bonnet release cables are incorrectly mounted.
• Windscreen washer cables not correctly routed and one jet is blocked.
• LHM leak from the front is caused by leaks from front suspension boots, in particular the passengers side.
• Window rubbers/felts on the outside/inside are wrong and don’t fit well.
• Passengers side front window needs adjustment.
• There are some missing pieces near the top of the bonnet that help hold on the insulation mats that I am yet to fit.

I also replaced the lens for the reproduction tail light with the original one.  In my case it was the housing that was dead and the lens was very poor quality.

It is hard to see from the photo, but the quality difference is immediately apparent when handing them.

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To test properly, I bought a proper test light.   This did allow me to more easily identify some of the wires and get basic stuff like the indicators hooked up.   I also got the side lights working correctly.    Headlights and main beams appear to be hooked up properly but one side is still not nearly as bright as the other.    This is especially apparent on high beam.

The first photo is the dipped beam and the second is the main beam.   The driver side is great, the passengers side still needs some work.   I was also not able to get the driving lights working yet.   I need to check, but it does not look they are using relays like the main and dipped beam.    It may be worth adding relays for these lights as well.    The Citroen DS headlights are very good for a car of its age (when they are working properly).

At least the lights are not staying on after the switch is turned off, and the light switch actuating the horn, so some progress has been made!

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This helped somewhat, but I think there may be something not hooked up right at the headlights.   As my car has been fitted with relays, the headlights should both come on at the same time from the passengers side wiring.   They kind of do, except one side is only on very dimly when the other side is on full.   So I also need to check the actual headlight connections.   I did get the indicators to work on the drivers side, so at least that is something.   The horn still blows when high beams are engaged.

I also read more closely the wiring diagram that helpfully indicates the colour of the connectors for each wire.   My car has some level of re-wiring in its past, as these do not correspond to what is actually there.    It is not original to the car, but the more I work on this wiring, the more I am tempted to replace the individual bullet connectors with one big plug.

I also had a go at replacing the passengers door contact switch which had broken.   This should be a 30 second job.   However, the ground wire fell back into the cavity and I was unable to reach it with pick tools and various hooks.   This will have to be a job for another day.    Maybe I need one of those inspection cameras.

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Turns out that when my car was painted, the labels for the wires came off.   When it was re-assembled, the car was doing some really strange things. This pointed to the wires not being connected back the same way.    This was further complicated by the fact that my car was modified for headlight relays.   This is a good thing,  but the way it was done meant some wires were no longer used.    The general way the wiring  is supposed to work is that each front wing is independent and the wiring is only for that side.   My car has been fitted with relays, which have broken that philosophy in that wiring from the passengers side crosses over to the drivers side.  Some connections (particularly on the drivers side) are no longer needed.   This is primarily because the battery is on the passengers side.

When I got the car back I was getting some really strange behavior from the front end lights.   So I disconnected everything again.

My thought process was to first identify the source wires with a multi-meter by turning on each function in the car.   I could then use a test lead to identify the destination wires.   I got a few odd results, but I was able to try and identify wires and colour code them.

A friend came over to help with this process as its easier to have one person turning switches and the other armed with a multi-meter.   Our efforts were not all that fruitful. So far we have the horn blowing when the high beams are turned on.    I’m also seeing low beam on the opposite side but not the drivers side.

I then moved to a far simpler task for the re-assembly.  I had purchased new washers for the rear wing bolts so as not to scratch my new paint when removing them.

As can be seen, there is a big difference in the old cracked ones, and the new ones.

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The DS wiring harness actually goes between the inner and outer sill, along with some hydraulic lines.   This is not normally accessible, but I already had the stainless steel sill covers off, so it was a good time to re-wire those speakers.  It is not easy to feed the wires in there, but worth it I think.

The cables can be fed through next to some other cable that has an opening that leads into the right spot.   many of the openings actually lead into the box section which is inaccessible.   This opening allows you to push the cable into some kind of chamber, and you’ll need tweezers to grab it and pull it out through along with the factory wiring harness.

The hardes part, is getting the wires up through the bottom of the C-pillar.   In the end I found a brake bleed hose was the best compromise between flexibility and rigidity to push it up through the cavity.   The brake hose is too wide to pull up the speaker cable, but you can first attach a single wire to hose, pull it through and then use that single wire to pull through the speaker wires.

From there, the factory has provided an opening to the boot for the boot light that can be used for the speaker wire.

All in all, this job took a few hours, although much of it was experimenting with different ways of pulling the wires through.   It is much neater and means if I ever need to get to the speaker wire, I will not need to pull up my new trim.

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