A JRS project thread - 1968 Citroën ID19

[JRS]

Was hoping to get the headlamp wiring done this weekend, but rain has thrown many spanners into the works. Going to see about clearing enough room in the garage to get the nose in - the garage is a few poxy inches too short to get the whole car in, and even with those inches I wouldn't have the room to work. Ideally it needs to be about 4ft longer!

Also looking at replacing some of the wiring from the alternator while I'm in that frame of mind, because I keep looking at how old it looks and thinking how much of a ballache it'd be if it let go while the car was out-and-about.

 

[JRS]

This was right after I made the previous post, when I realised I hadn't actually ran the car since the other night and probably ought to take it out to warm through. Started unexpectedly well.

Note the ratty state of the dashboard - soon as I start pulling it apart to get at things like the wiper switch wiring I'll get it all cleaned up and any painting attended to!

 

[JRS]

No photos yet but wired the new headlight loom in this morning. Soldered H4 male connectors onto the Cibie-specific bulb holders, and a H4 female (bulb holder) connection on the car loom from the switch. Then plugged everything into the new loom. No more dim, flickering headlights.

Hashtag 'winning'

 

[JRS]

Anti-climax

I'll hook y'all up in the week. I was a bit busy juggling a soldering iron, flux, solder, wires, components and a cat that wanted attention.

In the meantime, lights wot work:

Link as large-ish photo, will fix in a bit.

Marvellous concept Will be even better when I've got vaguely decent bulbs in there, just need to find something that properly works alongside the QI lamps (the swiveling inboard ones).

 

[JRS]

Took the car out for fuel earlier. Briefly lost the fuel gauge, which was concerning. Lost the cabin fans and indicators with it, which was rather more concerning. Fortunately it fixed itself, which leads me to suspect that I've got an intermittent short or a bad earth in dashboard country. Though it left the temperature gauge working, along with the warning light for high beam when I tested the headlights.

Gotta love old cars with hacked-up electrics!

I've got to go behind the dash anyway to sort out the wiring from the wiper switch, so I'll roll the job up in one. And I'll snap some photos of my headlight wiring job while I'm at it.

 

[JRS]

Quick update.

The car is running quite well. I haven't gotten around to the rewiring job yet, mainly because of being busy elsewhere and the weather not exactly helping me out. Soon as I get a break and a couple of dry days I'll get after everything. Going to make up some loom sections off the car to stab into place, seems like it'd be easier that way than making everything in situ.

 

[JRS]

Ah, old cars...

So, one for the "stupid problem to come up" column - the front passenger door shut itself solid the other day and refused all entreaties via the exterior and interior door handles to consider opening again. Now, I have form for sorting these sorts of issues out. From the old Project Bentley thread:

I missed my calling in life....I could'a been a thief.

So, Gary and I were attempting to sort out the bootlid lock today. It locks just fine on the remote, but unlocks basically when it feels like it. Which is pretty much never. Mindful of what we had to do to the drivers door lock, we figured that adjusting the rods would do the trick. I then found a loose plastic bracket up in there as well, so tried some tape on the ends to build it up and keep it where it needed to be. Then it wouldn't unlock, either on the remote or the key.

****.

Not a problem, I'll just get the tools out....most of which are in the boot of the car.

****.

Right, new plan. With a torch, a completely inappropriately sized screwdriver, a scrap vernier calliper (only thing I could find to wedge in the gap I created) and some swearing....

• took the moulding off that holds the number plate lights on and surrounds the boot handle.
• took the handle itself off
• stuck the calliper into one of the holes behind where the moulding was and pushed down on the lever arm inside the lock-and-handle mechanism
• shoved the key in the lock barrel and turned it to the unlock position
• prayed
• pushed down even harder on the calliper
• and yanked my hand from the key to the plate where the handle would be and hauled up on it

Result? One open bootlid.

You either got it or you ain't got it. And me? I got it in spades

Once again armed with an entirely inappropriate tool - a screwdriver with the blade wrapped in kitchen paper so I wouldn't mark the bodywork - I opened the rear door on that side which gave me a narrow gap to work in. Back to the car, left hand operating the door handle button, right hand pushing the screwdriver down on the pinion wheel in the door shutline. Slowly got it to rotate, then pop! One open door. Cue one sigh of relief that I'd managed to do the job without damaging the paint or having to dismantle anything, followed by taking the opportunity to go around all four doors to clean and re-grease the pinion wheels...

 

[JRS]

I bet the sense of relief was palpable.

Yep, palpable enough that you could have picked it up and carried it off...

 

[JRS]

So when do we get the pleasure of a photo update? I'm getting the shakes it's been so long.

The weekend

 

[JRS]

So, here's the gap that I had to work with for getting the front passenger door open:



And yes, that window rubber is shot to hell. It's name is also on ze list...

Here we find my fat frame bending to a very odd angle to photograph the cavity behind the nearside headlamp, and my added H4 connector:



Relays tucked out of the way of anything that could hurt them*:




* - about that. So, after we fitted a similar loom section to the Landy everything was fine. Until pa was driving the old girl one day, and lost the headlights. Turned out that one of the relays got snagged by part of the steering and got minced. Oops

***edit***

I'll fix any photo embed oddness when I'm back on a desktop computer. Imgur mobile sucks all the ass...

***edit 2***

They may or may not be better now.

 

[JRS]

This cover had been missing since we got the car. I figured it was long gone, but the other day I was topping up the LHM tank (suspension and brake fluid) and dropped the cap down into the front of the engine bay. Jammed my arm in to recover it, came back up with both the tank cap and the cover. You can see the wire that holds it loosely on the car, that and the way the front valance folds under the car saved it from being lost for good.

#winning

First time I've been glad to have dropped something in a while! I'd never have found that if I hadn't let the LHM tank cap go skittering out of my fingers.

 

[JRS]

Tum tee tum tee tum...



...tum tee tum tee tee...



...tum tee tum tee tum...



...tum tee tiddly tee





Yes, I did remove the carburettor. It did need a faintly serious clean and service as you'll see in the next couple of photos. First though, the air cleaner:

Taken off and taken apart







Pa has since taken a bunch of the old paint and the remains of the maintenance instruction sticker off it so we can get a fresh coat of black on and get it looking nice. Then he washed out the air filter element itself and got that back to reasonable. Then he set about cleaning out the carb...and boy was it a mess inside:

Lovely...



Yep, that gasket is indeed hot trash



This dish is maybe half of what he washed out of the carb




Other minor weirdness:

• No gasket between carb and manifold. No evidence of there ever having been one. Hooray for vacuum leaks!
  
• The base of the carb was also rough as ****. So we've faced it back flat with some fine paper and a flat surface.
  
• Carb looked for all the world like it had been backfired through a few times.

Weather permitting I'll refit the carb this weekend. Think we'll shove mum's car out of the garage and paint the air cleaner housing in there if we can get the garage warm enough. Otherwise we'll be covering the spare bedroom in old sheets and doing the painting in there!

 

[JRS]

Pa's started throwing paint around

 

[JRS]

Stabbed the carburettor back on (pics to follow when I'm not on mobile). Haven't plumbed the fuel line back on yet, because I want to add an extra (read: better) fuel filter to the line into the carb and I haven't got any hose clamps that are even vaguely the right size

 

[JRS]

Nuts

Got appropriate hose clips now. Put the fuel filter in (fancy washable one that we've had for ages, was bought for the Landy). Tightened everything up, felt okay. Then thought "hmm, been here before, juuuust gonna crank it over without the ignition on first".

Wheeeeeee, fuel leak!

Not so much an inline filter as a sort-of sieve that spills clean, filtered petrol straight onto the exhaust fannymold then, the casing must not be sealing right 'cause the barbs are fine. Okay, scrap that. And is anywhere with stock of a correctly sized and functional inline filter that doesn't cost eleventy million pounds open in Burton today? Are they buggery. Will have to pick one up from the Euro Car Parts branch on my way into work on Monday.

Rain has stopped play now anyway. Bloody uncooperative climate.

 

[JRS]

Got a filter on that actually manages not to pour fuel out of every seam it has. And the car runs well on the rebuilt carb. But we haven't quite hit 'good enough' IMO yet, not enough to be at the point where I'd be perfectly happy for pa to use the car as a daily driver.

No-one (not even Powerspark) appears to make a conversion kit to electronic ignition for the Ducellier diistributor in the car (earlier ones for the 1911cc engine yes, ones with vacuum advance yes, this one no). And a 123 complete EI unit is faintly serious money. So we're going to make the current setup as good as can be, with a view to going to a 123 dizzy for pa's birthday in a few months. To that end, other other day I stuck in an order for a new cap, rotor arm, points, extensions for the spark plugs (old ones were pretty crusty). Also ordered replacement rubber isolators for the air cleaner mount (they were long gone and it vibrates a bunch) and a replacement sticker for the top of the air cleaner housing to finish it off.

New cap, rotor, plug extensions, isolators and sticker are all on the car now (I had a break in the weather during the rugby half-time so I got after some stuff ). When pa gets back off his hols we'll do the points. I suspect I might need to go the whole hog and verify static timing from scratch as well, which I just know will be a ball-ache...

 

[JRS]

Quarantine-induced boredom, eh?

Dashboard off



All manner of wires, some of which are buggered









Main job was to sort out the wiring for the cabin fans, which was trash (someone in the past had done a number on them) and try to get the wipers working even halfway well. Then paint all the major dash panels while they were removed.

Meanwhile in the engine bay...

The energiser's bypassed like a Christmas tree, so don't give me too many bumps.

Then some off-camera work (I know, I'm lousy at documenting stuff). Leading to...

Bit better



Still need to do some detail painting around the speedometer, but the rest of it is much better than it was

 

[JRS]

It's funny how old cars end up with random wires going all over the place in the engine bay. You see it a lot in old American stuff in particular

I've been guilty of a lot of random wiring-around to get stuff working over the years

 

[JRS]

Did some more spiral wrapping today. Also changed the points in the distributor. So at least when all this lockdown crapola is done with we'll have a car that can be relied upon to drive vaguely serious distances.

Electronic ignition is still on the cards. But at least this way we'll have a ready-to-run conventional distributor to either keep for emergency use or sell.

 

[JRS]

Got another job sorted during lockdown. The DS/ID dashboard vents are supplied by fan units on either side of the engine bay, which have hoses that duct air from front of car to fans and fans to cabin. The ducting from fans to cabin had deteriorated to being beyond saving.

Now, we could have bought replacement Citroën parts. But where's the fun in that?



Neoprene sheet cut to size, and shoe repair glue to stab it together. Dirt cheap and works beautifully.