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...
The Citroen DS boot lid is almost ready to be mounted on the car. Before Xmas I was able to finally fit the badges properly. The next task was mounting all the other hardware and fitting a new boot lid seal. The latching hardware and handle goes on quite easily if you have a 36mm spanner. The only fiddly bit is getting the drainage...
Before the boot lid can be attached to the car, the Citroen DS badges need to be mounted. This is something I have unsuccessfully been trying to do for a few weeks. I found a solution last night that works for me, no idea if this is the ‘correct’ way as I couldn’t find any reference on the internet. My car, being a 1970...
My efforts in getting the wiring right at the front of the DS continue to disappoint. This time, I made a harness to test multiple wires at the same time. This helped somewhat, but I think there may be something not hooked up right at the headlights. As my car has been fitted with relays, the headlights should both come on at the same...
One of the first and easiest jobs after the repaint was to fit the Citroen DS Mirrors. Before the repaint I was continually having the mirrors adjust themselves at speeds above 80km/h. That is, they would slowly fold inwards until they were touching the car. I was also disappointed with the quality of the previous mirrors, so purchased new ones of a higher quality. ...
The windows in a Citroen DS are frame-less. This means they need careful adjustment so they seal properly and wind up and down to the correct height. When my car was painted, the panels were refitted much better than before – they now generally line up! A proper panel alignment meant my doors were in slightly different positions than before the paint. Not only...
The Citroen DS has easily removable front wings. They can be removed in a matter of minutes for various maintenance jobs. Instead of one big plug like you would find on other cars (e.g. a Mercedes-Benz), individual bullet terminals need to be connected up for all the wiring to things like indicators, headlights, horns etc. Turns out that when my car was painted, the...
The paintwork on the DS is now complete and the car is ready to be re-assembled. I have the car back in my warehouse. To re-assemble I need to: Re-fit the four door cards, rear seats and carpets Polish the boot hinges, fit the boot, C pillar trims etc Polish and re-assemble the rear bumper Re-fit the lights and rear number plate...
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