Citroen DS crash repair, pt 3
The doors have now been removed from the DS to prepare them for paint. The DS makes this easier than most other cars as the panels are all unstressed and fairly easy to remove. It also makes a colour change easier as the underlying chassis is black and its only the removable panels that have colour.
The doors were in pretty good shape. They had much better paint than the wings and the boot/bonnet. There were a few older dents and so on and a bit of filler, but no real damage. At some point in its life, the car had some rust removed from the bottom of the doors. This repair is noticeable but not as obvious as others.
As well as the previous rust repair, I know the car has previous collision damage on the front right. This can be seen with the front wing now it has been rubbed down.
The main consideration is to choose the final colour. The car is currently painted AC424 Rio Red. I find this colour too orange for the DS. It was only offered in 1971 and more popular on the GS.
The other colours under consideration are:
- AC411 Rouge Carmin
- AC423 Rouge Massena
- AC419 Rouge Cornaline
- AC421 Bordeaux
- AC403 Rouge Corsaire
So far we have tested AC411 Rouge Carmin and it looks nicer than AC424 Rio Red, but perhaps is a bit pink in the sunlight. We couldn’t find the formula for 419, and the other one I will probably test is AC423 Rouge Massena. I think 421 Bordeaux is too brown and AC403 Corsaire is too bright.
The early 3rd nose models had a unique cross member that was changed for 1971 and on. Luckily I was able to find a good used unit. As can be seen, mine did not fare well in the crash.
