A couple of months ago my DS had one of the front suspension boots replaced to cure a bad LHM leak. When this was done, it was apparent the bushings in the steering rack were worn. Since the front of the car was apart, it made sense to order these parts and then have them fitted before the front was put back together. ...
As my DS has a NOS bonnet, I did not want the hot engine to damage the paint. The Citroen DS under bonnet insulation not only protects the paint, but also reduces noise. I was also told that I was missing two brackets that help hold on the insulation. I was able to purchase a good used pair of the brackets and have some...
After all my hassles with the DS wiring, I wanted a better solution. Not only were the existing bullet connectors old and brittle, but their colours had largely faded. Instead of replacing the bullet connectors with new ones, I decided to use multi-wire plugs. In this case, Deutsch connectors. Instead of eight wires on one side and six on the other, there would be...
My car show season normally kicks off with the French car show. The show is timed for Bastille day, so always occurs mid July. It was a lovely sunny day for the 2018 French Car Show, so the turnout was great. This was in contrast to 2016 (the last one I attended) where poor weather kept the numbers down. I took the DS for...
Today I attended to a few more minor adjustments to the DS. I plan to take the car to the French car show in mid-July which is a good deadline to complete the most outstanding items. The first was the bonnet catch cables. When the car was painted, the cables were not routed correctly. There is a channel for them to go through in...
My Traction Avant has been missing its front carpet since my purchase. The lack of the front carpet made an otherwise nice car look like a bit of a Jalopy. The traction Avant front carpet is a single piece like the DS. As the Traction is a front engine car, it does not need a transmission tunnel. I was not able to find...
As part of my DS restoration I had already replaced one of the DS rear indicator housings. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the quality of the reproduction part. It had been suggested to me that these are actually quite easy to repair. Instead of paying good money for an inferior part, I decided to give it a go. I’ve never soldered before, and the...
I had gone as far as I could on my own with the DS. It was time to bring in the experts. I had spent a number of hours trying to get the lights to work. I made some progress, but was unable to get them to work correctly. Luckily Jason, my friendly DS mechanic was able to sort out the mess pretty...
You would think that mounting the DS window cranks would not be worthy of a full post, but there was more to it than I thought! My car had the wrong window cranks installed prior to the crash. From my research they were from a DS model produced between 1962-1964. This was an opportunity to fit the correct units while I was purchasing...
The restoration of my DS is almost complete. The DS rear bumper is now back on the car and from the outside the car looks complete. I’m really happy with how it looks. The bumper is actually quite simple to mount. In retrospect I should have removed it in one piece instead of disassembling it. It would have saved me a lot of time. ...
The rear bumper bar has been ready for fitting since February. I had not yet mounted it was one of my tail light housings was not working and I figured its easier to replace this with the bar off the car. A friend in the Citroen Club gave me a used one, which was better than what I had, but also not working. My...
Before I can get the DS back on the road, I need to sort out the front end wiring. This controls the headlights, indicators, horns etc. There is obviously something wrong here as I had been seeing strange behaviour in the lights. I spent some time on this late last year, and made only minimal progress. I had some suggestions to check the...
When I completed the boot lid last week, I forgot an important part. The boot lid struts! I was going through my parts box last night to mount the window cranks and noticed them. The boot struts keep the boot lid open. They are quite simple, consisting of a spring inside a tube. This means the Citroen DS boot struts do not wear out...
Today’s job was to work on the DS door trim. Most importantly, re-mounting the door cards. The door cards were new in 2014 and still in great shape. The grey velour goes very well with the darker shade of red. Before I mounted them, I took the opportunity to spray the inside of the doors with some fish oil and lubricate the window...
The DS is finally looking more like a car, now I have mounted the boot lid. A couple of weeks ago I prepared the boot lid for mounting. This involved adding the seal, locking hardware etc. Today, I added the top seal and then fitted it to the car. The top seal has metal clips to hold it in place. Its...
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...
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