DS Preparation

[pottsy]

Many of you fellow froggie chaps & chappettes know that I'm preparing Moby Dick to take part in the Peugeot Re-Run starting in April this year. This will involve the Whale taking part in a 10,000 Km drive from Sydney to Sydney via Bundaberg, Roma, Pt Augusta, Melbourne & the Snowy. Definitely the scenic route! On the way we'll be having all sorts of fun with Hillclimbs, Autocrosses, Motorkhanas and Navigational trials.

Now I'm in the process of preparation at the moment and I thought I'd bounce off the Brains Trust where I've got to so far, and seek any further advice in regard to things I still need to do.

I have a checklist of spares I plan to carry with me which I'll publish later and seek input for, in the meantime this is what I have so far done to the Great White Whale.

Engine is only 30000Km old since a full rebuild, so I don't anticipate any major mechanical failures. Clutch was new then too, is not slipping and feels good, so I reckon it whould be OK.

Drive shafts are excellent. Right hand hub assembly I have replaced because the bearing felt a bit loose and this has also got rid of the rattle that was apparently an upper ball joint with excessive play. All four driveshaft boots are new.

I've fitted a new Bosch alternator (85A) which is a standard variety available nearly anywhere. The cooling system has been completely cleaned and re-worked (see the DS Cooling Saga below!) and the lower hoses, the thermostat, the radiator cap and the radiator mounting rubbers are all new. All the drive belts are new and I will carry the old ones as spares.

The hydraulic system has been flushed with new LHM and the brakes bled. I've also replaced the brake controller as this was the alleged reason for rapid cycling of the pump and premature sinking of the back suspension. (Both now appear to be fixed!) Regulator return line is newly replaced with high pressure power steering hose.

I've created a new undertray from 2mm aluminium checker plate. The spheres will all be re-gassed, and I'll be carrying a Pleiades Emergency Repair Kit on board.

The gearchange mechanism has been carefully tightened and re-lubricated, as has the clutch operating bits. Clutch cable was new in October last year, and I have a spare on board. I plan to fit some new tyres to a spare set of rims, as the relatively brand new Michelins are too expensive to wear out in motorsport.

I still have a rhythmic "rump rump" noise when driving along. Varies with speed but it doesn't change when braking, so I'm discounting driveshafts as the source. The left rear wheel bearing is a bit noisy, however, and is high on the list for attention.

Still to come is the sign writing and the bullbar to complete the illusion of a replica of Jean-Claude Ogier's car from the 1970 Ampol Trial.

Apart from an exhaustive list of spares, can anyone suggest anything further I need to address?

Cheers, Pottsy.

 

[DoubleChevron]

Hmm,

my usual preparation would apply .... ie: fill the petrol tank, and if I'm really careful, checking the oil and tire pressures :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:

Seriously though if the cooling system is in good shape I'd just head off with a small box of tools and some common sense to deal with temporary "failure to proceed" moments

seeya,
Shane L.

 

[Roger Wilkinson]

Make sure it won't catch fire, particularly from problems with the fuel supply system. Secure carby inlet, fuel line not rubbing on anything, that kind of thing.

And don't take too many tools and spares, you will weigh the car down too much. No matter how many parts you take with you, you will never have the ones you actually need.

Roger

 

[David M]

Moby DS

I'm sure that you've thought of everything. Replacing everything that is rubber is commonsense and kept us fault-free on our big trip. You didn't list a fire extinguisher (in light of Roger's sensible input). But I guess it's probably part of the event regulations.

 

[GreenBlood]

Hey Potts, have a little read of this, written by a freind of mine a fews after the Ampol Rally...

Australia’s immense distances have developed a tradition of city to
city dashes which has become part of the Australian motoring folklore. One of the more recent involved a 1970 Citroen DS21 with fuel injected
engine driven from Perth to Brisbane, a distance of 2,747 miles at an
average of 76.2mph. This is the story of that drive.

In 1970, Jim Reddiex, Citroen dealer and enthusiast from Brisbane,
Australia, was charged with preparing three fuel injected vehicles for
the forthcoming Ampol Rally – the latest of a string of Round Australia
trials that had captured the public imagination since the early
fifties. In these trials, such marques as Peugeot and Volkswagen had
proved to Australians that these small European cars could not only
handle the rough conditions but win against home-grown and American
competition.

During the sixties, Citroen had proved ideally suited to this style of
long distance rallying, including an excellent showing in the first
London to Sydney Marathon. It was considered a good chance for the 1970
Ampol Round Australia by those in the know. The 1970 Citroens were the
first of the fuel injected D models – albeit with only a four-speed
manual transmission – which at that time had not appeared on the
Australian market.

The three rally cars were late leaving France by boat, so if any sort
of pre-rally preparation was to be done, they would have to be
off-loaded in Perth and driven to the eastern states. In the case of
one car, this meant a trip of 2,750 miles. The idea captured the
imagination of various people, including the Public Affairs Department
of Ampol, which commenced a publicity barrage about a cross-Australia
sprint.

These long-distance sprints had been part of Australian motoring
folklore, attracting extremely courageous men to undertake city-to-city
dashes. They predated the Cannonball runs so favoured by latterday
American cultural guerrillas by over seventy years. The early runs had
been officially sanctioned until 1930 when two deaths resulted in
further attempts being made quite illegal. Hence, it is difficult for
genuine attempts since that time to be both correctly timed and
recorded even in the motoring ‘black market’. Such is the mystique that
has developed that many rumours abound about fantastic epic journeys.
The grapevine reports a Pontiac to have completed a recent
Cannonball-style run from Perth to Surfers Paradise (on the Gold Coast
only 60 miles from Brisbane) in less than thirty hours. Steve Cropley
and Peter Robinson, both respected international motoring journalists,
gained a certain notoriety by driving a 4.9 litre V8 engined Ford Falcon from Perth to Sydney at a much lower average speed than the Citroens had achieved. This is not to decry their efforts but to highlight the difficulty of cataloguing the history of these feats. The Reddiex effort, just seven years before, had vanished in the mire of
non-publicity.

The memory plays tricks after a time. Even Jim Reddiex’s recollections
of the details of the trip have either faded from mind or been altered
in some way in the intervening twenty-one years. His account of the
trip roneoed for the local Citroen Car Club magazine had the elapsed
time as just under 2 hours – a typing error of four hours – from which
a myth grew and still flourishes.
The Citroens, with the enthusiastic help from Ampol had attracted
enough attention that the Confederation of Australian motor Sport were
becoming increasingly annoyed as more and more news about plans for
highly illegal “flat-out” drives filtered through unofficial sources
and in the press.

Eddie and Larry Perkins, father and son team of some considerable
repute, gambled their licenses and were to drive the Perth to Melbourne
car. Max Stahl was then part of the hierarchy of CAMS and was also to
co-drive one of the Citroens with David Mackay across Australia and in
the Rally. As CAMS became more impatient, even to the extent of
threatening to revoke its approval for the Ampol Rally, Stahl wisely
declined the drive. Mackay teamed up with Graham Watson, also his
co-driver in the Rally. Reddiex was only later to become involved in
rallying as a competitor with a notable World Cup win for Citroen in
1974 and was therefore personally immune from CAMS’s possible
retribution. His co-driver for the Perth to Brisbane dash was Dick
Mortimer, a Director of Citroen Cars Australia.

Their car, registered PPN-505, was to bear number 11 and be driven in
the Rally by the husband and wife team, Jean-Claude and Lucette Ogier.
Reddiex was to head up the service team to keep all three cars in the
Rally. Jean-Claude Ogier had come so very close to winning the first
London to Sydney Marathon with Lucien Bianchi. On the very last and
very easy stage, a spectator’s Mini crashed head-on into the Citroen
which was holding a comfortable lead.

Because Ampol had been very keen on getting pre-publicity for the
rally, it became common knowledge that the “dash” was on. Even the
timetable was public knowledge. A South Australian Police officer told
Eddie Perkins that he would “see him at the border (of West
Australia).” Because it was now so very public, it became incumbent on
the police to do something to prevent it.

The solution was very simple. All three cars would leave Ampol House in
Perth at midnight, twenty-four hours before schedule. Only one fuel
stop would have to be rearranged, but the cars would need a hurried
preparation. This consisted of a 350 mile warmup, tightening of the
heads and adjustment of the tappets. Twenty-five gallon tanks were
fitted to supplement the standard fifteen gallon.
With some fanfare, the cars crept out of Perth, where the Reddiex car
developed a misfire, then completely died. It took five unscheduled
stops to rectify the problems associated with push-on electrical
connections. Enthusiastic over-attention had loosened an entire block
of connectors around the distributor and alternator.

Reddiex caught the other cars at the first fuel stop at Southern Cross.
The trio proceeded up through Coolgardie and Norseman and onto the long
flat stretches of the Nullarbor Plain (literally treeless). With hardly
a bend in the bitumen for five hundred miles, the Eyre Highway allowed
the cars to exceed the proposed eighty mile per hour average quite
comfortably. With virtually nothing to relieve the tedium except the
4000rpm limit they had set themselves, the crews had plenty of time to
listen to the drumming of the wheels reverberating in the underground
limestone caves that make up a large part of the Nullarbor.
The final unpaved stretch of road barely slowed them despite the nearly
three hundred miles of corrugations, cattle grids and infamous
bulldust. A year earlier, Bianchi, in the London to Sydney Citroen, had
travelled the two hundred and seventy miles of dirt between Eucla and
Ceduna at an incredible average of one hundred and three miles per
hour. It must be remembered that, at that time, for any vehicle to
tackle the Nullarbor was quite an adventure. To average one hundred
miles an hour was crazy. All three Ampol cars were quite standard apart
from factory fitted stiffer damper valves. No hydraulic fluid additives
were used and the engines had no special performance tuning. They
didn’t even have the ubiquitous ’roo bar, deemed essential equipment
for even casual holiday motoring in these parts of Australia. At Port Augusta, just north of Adelaide, the Perkins car left them to
head for Melbourne for an elapsed time of twenty-nine hours. The Mackay
car headed east via Renmark and Hay, reaching Sydney in a total time of
thirty-one hours. Reddiex swung north-east up the Barrier Highway and
on to Broken Hill, where the local Ampol Service Station had arranged
fuel, sandwiches and coffee. The appreciative crew, dawdled away a
twenty-five minute respite, not totally committed to the record
breaking possibilities. The 4000rpm limit had meant that the cars were
merely cruising, albeit at 100mph. Reddiex knew that in less than two
weeks, the cars had to withstand the punishment of a car-destroying
Round Australia Rally and was keenly aware that he was the one who had
to keep them together. To him, it was a way for the drivers to get to
know the cars.

Reddiex says that there was little impression of the speed they were
travelling. To him, it was uneventful. He remembers following, then
passing an old Holden utility, which then latched onto the Citroen’s
tail. He remarked about this humiliating state of affairs to Dick
Mortimer, who was driving at that stage. Mortimer opined that the
Citroen was pretty well run in by then and a dose of top speed probably
wouldn’t hurt it. The ute was soon left behind. This was the only time
they carelessly went over the imposed rev limit. Reddiex still
maintains that the old DS fuel-injected cars were all capable of a
genuine 130mph, given winding out through the gears and an enormous
run-up!

Reddiex recalls seeing police only once. Near the end of the trip, a
police car followed them at the outskirts of Warwick. He would watch
the car in the rear vision mirror disappear behind a rise in the road
and “go like hell’ and then come back to the speed limit when the car
again reappeared. Eventually, the police tumbled to the fact that the
Citroen was ever so slowly disappearing from view and gave chase.
Reddiex knew the road extremely well. Only a mile further on, it
dropped sharply down the eastern escarpment of the Great Dividing Range
at Cunninghams Gap in a series of long swooping bends on rough tarmac,
a drop of a thousand feet in only a few miles. In those conditions,
very few cars could stay with a Citroen, let alone six cylinder family
cars that were then being used as police vehicles.

Despite the enforced slowdown, the Citroen managed the one hundred
miles from Warwick through the sprawling suburbs of Ipswich and
Brisbane to the centre of the city in only eighty minutes. Reddiex had
phoned Ampol from Warwick to tell them they were approaching and to be
ready with the official timing gear. The Ampol people guessed he might
take two hours from Warwick at best, with the consequence that on
arrival at Ampol House, Reddiex had to sprint through the lobby and
into an elevator to the sixth floor where the Public Relations
Department registered his time of arrival, incredulous at his pace!
They had complete 2747.6 miles in 35 hours and 51 minutes.

The Rally

There is little point in elaborating on the cars’ performance in the
rally. It has been covered in the motoring press more than adequately
and Bill Tuckey’s recounting of it from a Renault team perspective in
his book ‘From Redex to Repco’ makes rivetting reading. At the end of
the Rally in Sydney, the Ogiers were co-winners with the Datsun 1600 of
Kenyan’s Edgar Hermann and Hans Schuller, with a loss of sixty points.
Both teams disputed the loss of points attributed to them, but mutually
agreed that sharing the win was the only course of sporting action
appropriate. A protracted battle with the organisers would blunt the
edge of any win. How different from today when results of major
sporting events are sometimes decided in the courts!

The motoring press characterised the Citroen team as a ‘factory’ entry.
In fact, Reddiex confesses to being exceptionally amateurish. It was
only later that he came to appreciate the special techniques normally
associated with a professional team. The Ogier car received a sump
guard, a bull-bar, a Halda, some driving lights and map lights. There
was no reinforcing of the suspension. Except for the factory-fitted
harder damper valving, the car was mechanically quite standard. There
were no special additives. Ogier insisted on a tin of Bardahl! By the time Reddiex had commenced preparation on the Mackay car, he had
found out that welding around the front suspension welding bolts was
considered essential. To do it correctly meant removal of the engine.
There was no time for such nonsense! The Perkins car received a
reinforcing plate across the rear sway bar.

It was this lack of preparation that might have cost them the Rally.
The Ogier car, subjected to some air-borne driving on a section later
deleted from the Rally, eventually broke apart around the front
suspension and was held together with a long wood bolt which did little
for the precision of its handling. Reddiex recalls his feeling of
trepidation as the car climbed the short ramp to the winner’s podium.
He was sure it wouldn’t make it! Mackay and Watson eventually finished
eighth. Perkins lost a lot of points after landing on a rock, breaking
an inboard disc and differential extension, later to crash badly,
plummeting sixty feet into a creek bed, destroying the car. Such is the
inherent strength of the Citroen monohull that they were uninjured. The same night, a private Citroen, entered by John Bryson of Jaguar
fame, also crashed out of the Rally. This car, although a privateer,
was being assisted by the Citroen service team. It was being driven
extremely quickly and would lead the ‘factory’ cars into service points
and gain a modicum of service time before the ‘real’ cars arrived. It
would benefit from such assistance as the best of the second-hand tyres
that the others had discarded!

Such was the pressure on the service crew that in eight days
Reddiex slept twenty-five minutes in a bed. At one point he was so
tired he could no longer see the road as he preceded the Rally to set
up yet another service point. He was barely able to drive above walking
pace. Shouting at and even bashing his comatose companion was to no
avail. His companion couldn’t be woken. Reddiex could no longer
continue. He pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the
engine. Up jumped his co-driver shouting “Wha’s happened?”
He remembers driving the ninety miles from Brisbane to Toowoomba and
falling asleep three times by the side of the road. The trip took
hours! For a man who had just three weeks previously set the fastest
time ever across the continent, it was an irony that eludes the affably
laconic Reddiex.

The following dawn, drinking tepid instant coffee in a country town
cafe in the middle of new South Wales, he and his co-driver were
pondering over the sense of two grown men chasing other grown men
across a barren continent when the 6am radio news bulletin from the
local radio station had the Ogier’s car in the lead. Suddenly, the
foggy brains cleared, the red eyes were no longer stinging. They had a
job to do!


Ralph W

Cheers
Chris

 

[pottsy]

Thanks Chris. That makes stirring reading!

It looks like I'm sort of "sympatico" with the level of preparation Car 11 received. And I reckon the 30 odd thousand Km the engine has now done since rebuild is a reasonable running in process.

My suspension bolts have been welded, albeit a bit roughly, but I may look at a small plate for the rear area.

Oh, and Dave, the fire extinguisher is securely attached between the driver's door and the driver's seat.

Cheers, Pottsy.

 

[Roger Wilkinson]

the fire extinguisher is securely attached between the driver's door and the driver's seat.

Cheers, Pottsy.

I hope it's a big one. I lost a 1963 DS19 to a fire under the bonnet a couple of years ago. Yes, the carby inlet had a screwed fitting. Yes I had a fire extinguisher, but it was only a 1kg dry powder jobby and by the time I got to the fire it was already too big for the extinguisher. Those little ones don't give you very long. I now carry a 2.5kg in the car and I reckon if was going to do a really serious trip I would take a 4.5kg.

Roger

 

[GreenBlood]

Thanks Chris. That makes stirring reading!

It looks like I'm sort of "sympatico" with the level of preparation Car 11 received. And I reckon the 30 odd thousand Km the engine has now done since rebuild is a reasonable running in process.

My suspension bolts have been welded, albeit a bit roughly, but I may look at a small plate for the rear area.

Cheers, Pottsy.

Isn't it a great insight into how little prepareation actually went into those cars, I remember when Arthur Lewis bought PPN 505 (Arthur was/is Brisbane's guru of all things Citroen) At that time I rented the living space of an old Queenslander, of which Arthur used the ground floor as his workshop. He remarked with surprise at how original the car was, small things like duel suspension boots - a boot within a boot, the reinforced sump guard, holes drilled where additional instruments had once been, quite amazing. Compare the preparation that a factory entered car gets today, some of the current WRC cars are literally worth millions and are nursed through relatively short stages.

Remember too, speeds in this story are in MPH, Jim was actually cruising at 160kph plus across the Nullabor with no suggestion of the car overheating, as I said earlier - if you have fully checked out your cooling system these cars in original form are more than capable (even in those extreme conditions) of running all day all night without cooling problems.

I love the comment that the front suspension arms having cracked their mounts were being held together with a wooden nail, and Jim's trepidation that on winning, the car might collapse as it drove onto the winners podium - lovely stuff.

Cheers
Chris

 

[UFO]

Pottsy

I reckon if you collect crucial phone numbers and make the right calls you would be amazed where and how assistance would get to you. Check your PMs.

And of course, Shane is right, the part you do not take is the one that fails.

 

[cabbage tree]

That sounds a great escapade you are about to undertake (and the account of the historic Ampol run is definitely stirring stuff !). From one who knows very little about Citroens, one thing that I noticed in your list, is that you said that all the lower hoses had been replaced. I immediately thought -what about the upper hose(s) because these are the ones subject to most heat and most pressure (water, vapour and air) - less difficult to replace usually , but far more likely to give out. just a thought. -and good luck.

 

[Rob T]

I still have a rhythmic "rump rump" noise when driving along. Varies with speed but it doesn't change when braking, so I'm discounting driveshafts as the source. The left rear wheel bearing is a bit noisy, however, and is high on the list for attention.

I have recently fitted Alfa 156 wheels to my CX. Rims came with tyres that have about 20% tread remaining. The rear tyres have a very square block style tread pattern and show some uneven feathering on every second block. The Alfa suspension must be a bit 'squishy' to have allowed this. It is amazing how much noise these tyres transmit into the body, especially at low speed (40 kph) although it does seem to be getting less as the tyres are wearing into a more even pattern.

Anyway, the point is that the noise sounds just like a crook wheel bearing (and I have had some experience with those). So maybe you should try a swap with some other tyres before making a final diagnosis.

 

[Brett R]

I still have a rhythmic "rump rump" noise when driving along. Varies with speed but it doesn't change when braking, so I'm discounting driveshafts as the source. The left rear wheel bearing is a bit noisy, however, and is high on the list for attention.

Pottsy,
a few days ago I thought I was up for a rear wheel bearing on the 23 also. A noise had developed from somewhere on the rear of the car- sounded like the nearside - wasn't brakes.

I propped the car up on the stand to check the bearing for play, smoothness etc. With suspension in low position it felt fine... in higher positions a scraping noise was present. Turned out the rear height corrector guard plate was (just) rubbing on the edge of the tyre tread and, when driving, sounded like a worn wheel bearing. Due to the nature of the D's rear trailing arm suspension, clearance only became critical as the arm extended...Bent the cover back into shape and problem solved. I live up a few kms of dirt road so can only assume a rock flicked up and bent the guard out of shape. Only took a couple of inches or so for it to touch.

Not saying you're not up for a wheel bearing but- before you strip the hub, have a quick look at the corrector cover just in case!
Cheers

 

[pottsy]

Thanks for all the input Chaps.

Rob. I will juggle a couple of wheels around soon and see what effect that has. I've got some spare rims and plan to get a couple of "expendable" tyres to put on the car for the run. The Michelins may be light truck jobbies, but they're still quite new and I want to preserve them for as long as possible.

I had the beast on stands this morning and ran it with the wheels off and the front suspension jacked up to normal running height (via a jack, suspension pressure fully released)

In top gear there's quite a bit of noise from around the gearbox, so maybe this is the source. If that be the case, there's not a lot I will be able to do about it other than add some Nulon G70 and fresh oil.

Brett. I'll be working around the rear suspension in the next few days. You must have been relieved to find such a simple fix! It doesn't happen often with these cars!

Cabbage. The bottom hoses I was able to fabricate from easily obtainable parts (Ford F100 bottom hose and Valiant V8 bottom hose). These were the source of the correct angled bends and flares to match up either end of the metal centre part to the radiator and the water pump.

Unfortunately the top hose isn't as readily amenable to cobbling together from bits. It's in good nick, however, and I have a spare (S/H) which I will be carrying. A new one is financially out of the question at present.


Cheers, Pottsy.

And keep those suggestions and comments flowing Folks!