Citroen DS front end wiring – part 1

The Citroen DS has easily removable front wings.   They can be removed in a matter of minutes for various maintenance jobs.   Instead of one big plug like you would find on other cars (e.g. a Mercedes-Benz), individual bullet terminals need to be connected up for all the wiring to things like indicators, headlights, horns etc.

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.