The Devil in Disguise drive
On Sunday, I attended the Devil in Disguise drive with the Citroen Club. So the story goes the drive is named in memorial for a member of the club who is sadly deceased who was apparently a mild mannered man, until he got behind the wheel of his DS, when the Devil in Disguise came out!
On this trip, the Devil was the weather – being around 35C, a bit too hot for old Ds. Of the about 10 cars on the run, most people had brought a more modern car, apart from me in the DS and a 2CV. Despite the conditions, the DS did pretty well. The temperature was in the high range of the gauge most of the way up, but it never got out of the normal zone and I was able to cruise along the old Pacific highway at 80km/h with no problems. Even up the hills, dropping down to 3rd gear provided more cooling capacity with higher RPM as there is no ram air effect with a 3rd nose DS, the air is sucked by the fan. The Velour seats were a great change from the vinyl that I had last summer and made the trip fairly comfortable despite the weather.
As I had done the same drive in the 250SE just a few weeks before, the comparisons were quite interesting. The 250SE being an overhead cam straight 6, likes to rev and does its best work in the high rev ranges. The 250 also has shorter gearing so it feels a bit faster despite the additional weight (and being almost 50% more powerful). The DS likes to waft along, ironing out the bumps and the motor is happier in the lower rev ranges.
On the way back, the temperature was up even more and there was more traffic on the road. To keep the temperature down, I had to keep to about 70-80km/h on the motorway, and I had to stop and let the car relieve itself for a bit after some heavy traffic on Pacific highway.
Overall the cooling is much better than before the radiator was cleaned out and the new water pump fitted, but not perfect. I need to check the heating valve, as I tried to turn the heater on to help the engine a little and wasn’t able to get any heat out. It may even be worth trying something like water wetter to give the cooling system that little extra help.
