By now Mathilde, my 1953 Traction Avant needs no introduction. For the record she’s an RHD ‘Onze Normale’ with the ‘Perfo’ engine, dark blue when she came my way but originally silver once I’d delved into the paint layers. I’m going to make this post multi-part (for different subject areas) since it would be too long in one go. This section deals with the Left Hand {nearside} “jambonneau” panels. {As before my camera played up during this time so if you spot a purple hue to everything you’re looking at – its not you 
}.
Where to start? Probably with a quote, when first I realised that the bodyshell repairs were going to be way more extensive than at first realised I went surfing the net for any virtual pearls of wisdom that might be out there {probably hadn’t even discovered AF in those days!}. Of all the things I read the one that sticks in my mind was from the ‘CATS’ Citroen website where it said “repair of the external panels is a specialist job best left to the experts.” Main problem with that was that ‘experts’ don’t come cheap when you’re on a limited budget. So for the basics the “Jambonneau” is a triple-walled structure. If you look in the engine bay you’ll see an upstanding seam starting at the axle-cradle and running up the ‘climbing’ top face of the “jambonneau” before turning a right-angle and running over the battery box to join its neighbour the opposite side. Look under the car and there’s a similar downstanding seam running from the axle-cradle back to a point roughly below the inner wall of the passenger compartment. Between these two seams is a vertical plate – roughly a broad “S” shape on plan. The folded inner wall and outer wall make it a “box” section with a division plate in the middle. Actually that’s oversimplifying the seam does wander away from the plane of the plate the further back you go so there is some “double folding” needed to make a new piece fit.
Whenever I’m going to remove substantial sections that contribute to the strength/alignment of the whole shell I like to provide more support to the frame than would usually be the case. In addition to the axle stands at each end I keep an old timber fencepost that’s good for straightness and I jacked this under the edge of the floorpan and used spare stands with shimming blocks to provide continuous support before the removal began.
Preamble done I picked up my shiniest anglegrinder and ‘expertly’ tore a horizontal line from front to rear into the outer “jambonneau” allowing a decent lap into the premade panel that had arrived from Europe.
First mistake – as I approached approximately the junction point between the {bolt-on} guard panel & shell the anglegrinder slowed down to the accompanyment of increased sparks a flowing. Stopped but not before I’d sawn halfway through a “reinforcement” angle section on the inner face of the outer panel – an ‘expert’ would never have done that. This angle section (I’m guessing) is to stiffen the structure at the mounting point of the guard. Also discovered {don’t fully remember if was at this stage or whilst doing the front section of the sill / rocker panel} that a fair proportion of the rear outer wall of the jambonneau is double-skinned, there are two sheets more or less in contact but separated by a thin leaf of {cotton?} cloth. Obviously all the new panels you buy are single skinned so you need to graft the new one to the outer leaf of the existing {I also plug welded into the inner leaf reasoning that its there for a purpose!}. The other aspect of this is that removal of the outer leaf only is painstakingly slow – you need to use the stone to “wear away” the outer skin NOT the cutoff wheel.
Outer panel torn away there was corrosion in the central plate. AFAIK there are no premade sections available for the central plate so I fabricated a new piece wide enough to ‘span’ the corroded part, cut that away and stitched in the new piece, plugwelding it to the existing along the upper join.
The lower part was left unwelded until the outer panel was in place then the triple thickness joint was seam welded together. In theory seam welding is easier than any other technique but doing this “inverted” does bring extra challenges – those of you with a “rotisserie” will reap dividends here.
yes - some degree of placcy filler "bog" was necessary after all the welding / grinding
Happy fixing,
Rob
}.Where to start? Probably with a quote, when first I realised that the bodyshell repairs were going to be way more extensive than at first realised I went surfing the net for any virtual pearls of wisdom that might be out there {probably hadn’t even discovered AF in those days!}. Of all the things I read the one that sticks in my mind was from the ‘CATS’ Citroen website where it said “repair of the external panels is a specialist job best left to the experts.” Main problem with that was that ‘experts’ don’t come cheap when you’re on a limited budget. So for the basics the “Jambonneau” is a triple-walled structure. If you look in the engine bay you’ll see an upstanding seam starting at the axle-cradle and running up the ‘climbing’ top face of the “jambonneau” before turning a right-angle and running over the battery box to join its neighbour the opposite side. Look under the car and there’s a similar downstanding seam running from the axle-cradle back to a point roughly below the inner wall of the passenger compartment. Between these two seams is a vertical plate – roughly a broad “S” shape on plan. The folded inner wall and outer wall make it a “box” section with a division plate in the middle. Actually that’s oversimplifying the seam does wander away from the plane of the plate the further back you go so there is some “double folding” needed to make a new piece fit.
Whenever I’m going to remove substantial sections that contribute to the strength/alignment of the whole shell I like to provide more support to the frame than would usually be the case. In addition to the axle stands at each end I keep an old timber fencepost that’s good for straightness and I jacked this under the edge of the floorpan and used spare stands with shimming blocks to provide continuous support before the removal began.
Preamble done I picked up my shiniest anglegrinder and ‘expertly’ tore a horizontal line from front to rear into the outer “jambonneau” allowing a decent lap into the premade panel that had arrived from Europe.
First mistake – as I approached approximately the junction point between the {bolt-on} guard panel & shell the anglegrinder slowed down to the accompanyment of increased sparks a flowing. Stopped but not before I’d sawn halfway through a “reinforcement” angle section on the inner face of the outer panel – an ‘expert’ would never have done that
. This angle section (I’m guessing) is to stiffen the structure at the mounting point of the guard. Also discovered {don’t fully remember if was at this stage or whilst doing the front section of the sill / rocker panel} that a fair proportion of the rear outer wall of the jambonneau is double-skinned, there are two sheets more or less in contact but separated by a thin leaf of {cotton?} cloth. Obviously all the new panels you buy are single skinned so you need to graft the new one to the outer leaf of the existing {I also plug welded into the inner leaf reasoning that its there for a purpose!}. The other aspect of this is that removal of the outer leaf only is painstakingly slow – you need to use the stone to “wear away” the outer skin NOT the cutoff wheel.Outer panel torn away there was corrosion in the central plate. AFAIK there are no premade sections available for the central plate so I fabricated a new piece wide enough to ‘span’ the corroded part, cut that away and stitched in the new piece, plugwelding it to the existing along the upper join.
The lower part was left unwelded until the outer panel was in place then the triple thickness joint was seam welded together. In theory seam welding is easier than any other technique but doing this “inverted” does bring extra challenges – those of you with a “rotisserie” will reap dividends here.
yes - some degree of placcy filler "bog" was necessary after all the welding / grinding
Happy fixing,
Rob
Last edited:
