Citroen DS rear bumper reassembly

The world’s slowest Citroen DS reassembly continues.   Today’s job was to reassemble the bumper in readiness to put it back on the car.   I had taken the opportunity to polish the bumper while it was off the car.   Since the DS rear bumper is made from stainless steel it came up very well with a bit of autosol.

I went through a whole bag of ebay polishing attachments from my drill, but each one made the bumper just a little bit better.   I also took the time to fit a new overrider on one side.   You have to be careful parking a DS – it gradually sinks!   I had parked the car with the rear just touching the back wall of the garage.  As the car sank, the friction ripped the overrider from the bumper.

When I was disassembling the bumper, I was not able to remove the bumper irons.    This time they came free and it was a much better way of removing the bumper from the car.   In fact, I probably didn’t need to disassemble the bumper other than it made polishing easier.    After a year I had forgotten what a couple of key parts in my ‘rear bumper’ bag were.  These are illustrated as part 11 below.

The part is shown vertical here, but turns out it is horizontal and is used (with the rubber plug shown in #2) to stop the bumper touching the rear wing.   A bit of help from the aussiefrogs forum and I was back in business.

The DS rear bumper assembly is made up of a few different pieces that need to be bolted together.   This means that if the bumper is damaged, only the necessary pieces need to be changed.  It is much easier to do off the car.

I found it easier to first mount the top piece, then the two connecting pieces, then the main bottom bumper bar.   I am missing one of the rubber stops which I will need to order.