This evening the Citroen Club organized a night drive to La Perouse. It was a lovely warm evening, perfect for taking the DS out for a drive. The meeting point was Harry’s Cafe de Wheels in Tempe, which is a bit of a Sydney institution selling pies etc. Despite living in Sydney most of my life, I had never actually been there....
A few months ago I had started polishing the DS using Auto-glym paint pro and the cheap Chinese polishing machine I bought on eBay. I achieved good results on the roof, but overall there was much to do. Today I used stage 1 on the bonnet and front wings. Took a few hours but much better than before. In the first photo you can...
Today I managed to make my second Citroen Car Club tech event. Today was bucketing down with rain, so my intention of regassing my spheres went out the window as I didn’t feel the need to lie down in puddles to remove them and the lift was otherwise occupied with an old caddy. Nevertheless it was good to get to the event see...
The vinegar flush I tried yesterday removed a lot of silt from the DS radiator. Each of the bottles I captured the old coolant in had a fairly decent layer of sediment in the bottom the next day. Despite the flushing, the radiator still looked dirty, so I used the bottle of Wynn radiator flush as well. It also removed a fair...
The only warning light in the Citroen DS I wasn’t sure worked was the temperature warning. You can test the bulb by pressing the button, but that doesn’t testing the sender and the connection. Today, I found it does work, and that my temperature gauge is pretty accurate; The DS overheated today and I was greeted with the little temperature light and the...
The seat covers project is now complete! This evening I finished the back of the drivers seat (started in part 7), and installed it. I also did the hard task of putting the centre arm rest in place too. I didn’t fit the ashtray back as it was black for the Targa seats and should be white. At some point I...
Last year I removed the old targa door card from one of the rear doors and fitted the new velour door card. Today I was up to doing the front door. This is a job that gets far easier with experience. Some of the websites mention needing far less of the clips than I used, but the holes were all drilled in my...
Removing the seats from the car is an easy way of cleaning underneath them, and the trim underneath my seats was rather dirty. A good clean showed the original vinyl trim in good condition, which was great to see. Shame about the blue carpet, but that will be a project for the future. I found that it was easier to remove the...
The passengers seat is now complete! In part 5, I was able to remove the old targa covers and get the seat down to foam. After a test fit of the covers, I felt they were too baggy, so I bought some additional foam from Clark Rubber. I went with the 25mm high density foam and bought four pieces. 2 61x52cm for the...
The Citroen DS, being such an iconic car, has inspired a plethora of books on it’s design, history, restoration, models etc. The one that is the most recommended is ‘The Original Citroen DS – The restorers guide” by John Reynolds, mostly because of it’s excellent set of pictures; but this book is currently out of print and quite expensive. (You can get it...
Now the rear seat is complete, it is time for the front seats. I started with the passengers seat, so I can still drive the car if necessary, as I expect once i’ve done the passengers seat I will be faster on the drivers seat. The seat rails are bolted onto the car with 4x11mm bolts, and the rails are held to the...
A few weeks ago, I wrapped the steering wheel on the DS and used a 3M adhesive. On the whole, this worked well for the main part of the steering wheel, but the ends were lifting up. I re-glued the ends with some araldite and covered them in black electrical tape. Lets see how well that works. I also had the...
Today I changed the transmission fluid on the DS. I’m glad I did as the colour was a bit more like coffee than a nice clean red. A lot of the members of the aussiefrogs forum swear by Nulon G70 (additive) so I also added some of that to the fluid too. I used a Penrite gear oil, which turned out to...
In part 3, I was halfway through installing the covers on the upper part of the rear seat. Today I was able to complete the job – the rear seat is finished, in the car and looking great. To finish the job, I had to insert the final hog rings on the upper part of the seat. The foam and springs were...
The Citroen DS is known for its single spoke steering wheel. It is one of the many things that make this car so unique. The steering wheels up to the 1971 model year were thin wheels wrapped in black plastic tape. (I understand some very early cars had a different system). Later cars had the soft ‘safety’ steering wheel. My car, being a...
Regular readers may recall that I started installing the missing rear interior lights for my DS21. These interior lights are only found in the DS Comfort – they do not exist in the Pallas model, nor the ID models such as D Special, D Super etc. After a few questions on the Aussiefrogs forum, and a lot of adjusting in the car I finally got...
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