Is this the best project car you have ever seen?

Ah~......... Untracked air outlet and speed meter surrounding plastic! Nice!

A tacho that goes up to 8000 RPM? Shane, you're dreaming!

Roger

It's a GS tacho .... I've got an unbutchered dash freshly painted panel there to fit with no gauges .... I want to be able to be able to keep track of the way the motor is running when it's first back on the road. I'll just lay the panel with the gauges in it into the dash recess and put the unbutchered panel in there. Dash gauges don't match the "plain" appearance of an ID19

seeya,
Shane L.

Rear glass went back in easily.... It took searching every car in the yard to find a set of body rubbers for it's rear end (someone has always already pulled them out to see how rusty it all is).





The windscreen was a bitch to get in ..... It's not quite snugly in, but it's not going to get any better. You see when it was cast the lower edge of the windscreen was "up 'n' down" in the mold. It needs to be about 0.5mm shorter in the middle for the retaining strip across the bottom to fit. correctly.



Urrggh... rusty nuts 'n' studs ...



I've never seen a reflector housing like this before. I guess they have all been replaced with different housings from later cars over the years.







Has anyone got any smart ideas on how to retain the rear reflectors. I'm thinking of maybe finding some plastic nuts and bolts I guess fitting new captive nuts and burying it all in grease would stop it rusting again.

seeya,
Shane L.

Shane,

The repro brackets use a brass retained nut, and plated steel spring so eliminating rust in an area that is very prone.



You could just tap brass nuts and fit into the cages?

Cheers
Chris

Car looks great Shane!

Brass ... now that's an excellent idea. Gee's those new lenses look good ... As for the car looking great ............. It's good the photos hide so much :roflmao:

Ditch the Posidriv screw that retains the indicator lamp surround and replace it with a bolt. There's a small trap here in that early cars can use different thread pitches to later car and you can usually tell by the nut an bolt head size. You may well find some threads seem too tight when using a late nut or bolt and that's probably why! The boot hinges definitely fall into this category and trying to fit early ID hinges to a later car using late nuts on the studs may reveal this problem. Compare the nut thickness and you should then be able to pick a different thread pitch between thick and thin nuts.

Those indicator surrounds don't have the extended lug that the screw goes through. I have a couple like that and I guess they are just a push fit??? Maybe, using a pair from the D Special parts car would be sensible.

Some anti-seize on the threads would be a good idea and remember different metals can sometimes set up a galvanic pair - e.g. stainless screws into steel and the reverse on items like the bumpers - the steel rots first. Make sure the spring strip will not be trapped by the housing or you will have trouble removing the lamp unit later.

Hi David,

yeah, these cars are M5 x 0.75, later are M5 x 0.8. The boot hinges are M7 x 1.0, I have pulled a later bootlid for ages... There likely M8 x 1.25 (this seems to be the favorite fastener for later years).

I'll need to look at the parts manuals to see how it's all held together. The problem is this is the best car I've ever messed with, the fact it actually has the holding brackets there for the trumpets is a first for me. These are usually completely rotted away in my experience. Likely I'll just end up screwing everything together with M5x0.75 bolts and nuts, completely covering them in grease to the point where they'll need to be wiped clean to find them if it's disassembled in the future (I've never seen anything rust when greasy ). I'll see how much those reproduction brackets GB has listed above are though.

I'll look at the DSpecial hinges, these ones are ok (ie: I haven't broken any of the threads off yet). the hinges themselves look battered in appearance so I'll wander the yard and check the other cars for better ones. This issue with them is you need to unscrew the 'C' pillar cover to swap the best ones on...... There held on by spherical lumps of rust that were M5 x 0.75 studs into the alloy 50year ago. I have managed to unscrew the ones on this car, but I'm positive the others will all shear off rendering the hinge no good.

seeya,
Shane L.

Shane, I have some ID boot hinges and pillar covers if you need them.

Roger

Thanks Roger,

I'll check the other around the yard before you spend hours going through sheds hunting I've found these always get destroyed once you remove them from cars too.... No matter how well you try to store them

seeya,
Shane L.

Shane,
Looking at your windscreen lower strip securing bolts I see no eccentric washers on the holding brackets to hold the screen in position.

Re the rear indicator retaining brackets, as Chris suggested the repros have a brass captive nut.
A brass nut in 5x.75 pitch would be easily fabricated.

The 5x.75 pitch bolts are not that easily recognised, whilst most have double chevrons stamped in the many, many of them also had plain heads, just to confuse the issue. The 5x.75 pitch nuts are usually thicker, there are exceptions.
Both of course have 8mm hex heads.

The main different hex head size is in the 7x1.0 pitch bolts. Early, (pre 1969) have a 12mm head generally with double chevrons impressed, later have 11mm heads for both bolts and nuts.

9mm threaded bolts generally have a 14mm hex head, fortunately they stay pretty much the same though the model years. Impossible to purchase locally, most had the double chevron logo in the heads.

Pozi-driv is a good thing, better torque loads than Phillips, though they didn't take off as the choice for "cross head" screws other than in Europe. Both were introduced by Phillips. Thread size for self tapping screws is generally #6,#8 and some 10, with both Pozi-driv and slotted heads. This applies to both early and late Ds, including Sloughs (with some exceptions to their fasteners for locally sourced product) throughout the model run.

The little Aussie is looking good.

cheers
r

One day, in the not too distant future, you're going to finish this car...a potentially traumatic experience???

Bruce.

Bruce Llewellyn said:

One day, in the not too distant future, you're going to finish this car...a potentially traumatic experience???

Bruce.

Click to expand...

Nah ... then we drive it for a while ... then move onto to the "painting the ID19 bit "..... Then "painting the mighty CX .... properly this time" thread ... the sky is the limit. While you have crappy old citroens, you'll always have hobbies to tinker with (I'd love to get my hands on my father Traction and get on the road .... that'd be a good project...... Oneday ).

seeya,
Shane L.

if your having trouble with these early metal tail lights ..... It'l be earths, the design of them means you have to have a good earth connection where the globe holder is "sort of" folded in. This will never be satifactory, so I'll run an earth wire to them both with a nut and bolt (earthing it back to the bolts that hold the lights in). I'll chase up some LED brake lights for it too. Those modern higher wattage brake light bulbs seem to melt the lenses on these early cars. No brakes lights work ... bugger it all I can't remember plugging the wire back onto the brake switch into the car, so I'll have to pull it apart and check.







I found these up in the roof of the shed... These are the hinges and pillar trim off this car ... I remember as I couldn't unscrew the trumpets. Those others must have been in the boot of the car as spares (that explains the battered look to them, once these things are removed from cars for storage, I find they always end up trashed). These ones will polish up really well. I just need to cut the bolts apart without damaging anything and replace the captive nuts with brass & lots of grease to stop further rust.

seeya,
Shane L.

I've been going in circles with the car for a while now.... Though I have had barely any time to look at it. There has been a constant drip that seems to drip directly beneath the front height correct.... I've had the corrector back out, made it spotlessly clean, check and triple checked every connection ............ bloody drips always on the ramps just below it ......... sigh ........... it must be weeping onto the crossmember, running down it and dripping from beneath the heigh corrector. I'll find it someday ... grrr.... Certainly it wastes a shitload of LHM over time.

Anyway, I decided to setup the front end before I bolted to much back on. These cars are simple, really I should just set it with a tape measure for toe in ........... but I wanted to fiddle with the wheel aligner .... check it works correctly for the CX and range rover.



I like this old aligner as I understand how it works ... first your prompted to calibrate the sucker .... until i thought about it, that seemed to be a bizare way to calibrate something.

First you clamp the wheel sensors on to the side of the machine, level the bubbles and ties the front sensors together with some elastic string. obviosly the bar through the machine is exactly straight, so you have just set 0.00 degrees toe in/toe out.



Then you put the sensors verticle and the sensing strips down the rear wheels have a small weight hang from them to calibrate centre.... bloody strange that ...



then you hang these from the rear wheels I couldnt' understand how they worked. one "wheel prop" on each is how they were setup. I can assume they were using the aligner by just pulling the lines back to the rear wheels like this.



I found a service supplement in the back of the manual that states "if the calibration of the rear fails, check the rear hanger like this"

Someone has glued a new end onto the hanger.... Note: the it's way out of calibration and there is only one here.



THIS is how the rear should be setup... How the hell were they using this .... they must have been doing hugely inaccurate aligments. We are two of those "props" short and one adjustment plate short.



Oh gee's ...... See the "DS" only problem ................ I can't adjust the rear out enough to make the lines a right angle back to the rear axle. :roflmao: It's cos the rear track is so much narrower.



I turned up a nice tight bush to slide onto the rear hangers, and tack welded a metal plate to the top.... Then calibrated it so it's actually acurate.



How simple is the way this thing works... no fancy lazers or high tech stuff... a ribbon that's obviously attached to a angle sensor. The only thing that matters is the back axle lines are calibrated so your aligning the front axle to the rear....



Look how crazy narrow the rear of the car is ... and how far that frame is extended to be inline with the front.



only two of these to make up and it should all work nice and accurately.



the machine come with these fancy incredibly heavy rotating and sliding in all directions turntables too...

seeya,
shane L.

Ho hum... that aligner sure is sensitive.... the front end is tight as a drum except for the steering relays. I whipped them apart on the old black car (the bearings were badly pitted and dry, but they still worked fine without being notchy).....

Anyway, rather than just tightening these I thought I better whip 'em apart and make sure there not dry.



Um, they dont' come apart The lower track rod looks like it doesn't unbolt They must have been different on the other ID19 .... or maybe I'll pulled the whole trackrod through the relay... hmmmm.....



So I just whipped the top off ....



The top cup show only a small amount of wear and the bearings are good. the grease was just old and hard.



I guess I'll have to clean and pack the bottom cup and bearings from above. What a PITA Oh well it's all fun right

seeya,
Shane L.

Pull the relays apart and do the job properly.

All early Dees has the lower arm attached to the relay arm. The upper and lower relay arms on power steering cars were a different length from those on manual steering cars. Try to find some power steering ones. It is not easy.

Roger

Roger Wilkinson said:

Pull the relays apart and do the job properly.

All early Dees has the lower arm attached to the relay arm. The upper and lower relay arms on power steering cars were a different length from those on manual steering cars. Try to find some power steering ones. It is not easy.

Roger

Click to expand...

Does the whole track rod slide up through the center of the relay I can't remember. I want to keep these ones on the car, the relays and track rods appear to have no wear at all.... so I'd like to keep the mechanical bits from this car in place (I dont' think this car has done many miles from new given the lack of wear on everything !).

seeya,
Shane L.

No, the relay shaft comes out through the bottom of the relay. If you keep the manual arms you will have slightly different steering geometry.

Roger