[John Montgomery]

Possibly a translation/transposition error in the earlier manuals. Glad it’s been resolved 👍

[John Montgomery]

If you were able to achieve a 2mm gap with the shape of DS doors being as it is, you wouldn’t be able to open the doors..! Parallel within 2mm sounds more realistic.

[John Montgomery]

The pin punch comment was in reference to the technique of filling the centre of the pin with thick grease after warming the housing then tapping the punch to ‘hydraulic’ the pin out. It was the last option due to the risk of cracking the housing.

[John Montgomery]

Thanks, I had wondered whether the pin was hardened but evidently not. I’ll give that a go and keep the oven & pin punches in reserve.

[John Montgomery]

Just a thought – if the brazing is going to crack anyway, you might save yourself some effort by slitting it before you bend the door?

[John Montgomery]

It’s disappointing to find that expensive new doors don’t fit properly. I was considering these for one or more of my doors so will watch with interest.

[John Montgomery]

Good luck finding a definitive guide on how much material can be removed, if Paul can’t find it! I can only advise from experience from my younger years with CX and XM engines and various British engines belonging to work colleagues. Engines of this era are low-compression (8.7:1-ish I think) by modern standards (10-12:1, more in some cases) and will tolerate a small loss of face material. If you have problems with pinking or hot running then retard the ignition timing very slightly. A rule of thumb for skimming used to be 0.010″/0.25mm and this could be done twice, after that it was inadvisable. The valve seats are far enough up in the combustion chamber that they’re unaffected by skimming (some engines drop their valve seats when skimmed too much). The effect on valve timing/valve clearances is negligible. If it’s a first skim then you should be fine with a standard gasket. The pitting is a concern due to where it is, but not as much as you might think. Clean the area up as much as possible before fitting the gasket. The idea is to fill the pits with a suitable material which will then act as a thicker part of the gasket. That part of the gasket is metal so you could fill the pits with high temperature metal/epoxy paste (e.g. Quiksteel or JB Weld extreme heat) to achieve a smoother surface than the pitting. It’s only got to last until the gasket has bedded in (I’d recommend checking the torque of the head bolts again once the engine’s had a few hours running fully warmed up). It might sound like a bodge but things were different 50 years ago and most of the DS was thrown together at the factory (hydraulics aside). The engine design is very, very old and is low-stressed. It’s why they keep on going if the oil is changed regularly and the cooling system maintained.
All of the above is opinion only but hopefully some of it will help.

[John Montgomery]

The camchain tensioner won’t be affected by a lower head height as it’s a pushrod engine. These aren’t ‘interference’ engines so the slight difference in cam timing won’t matter from a mechanical point of view, and they’re relatively tolerant of valve clearance variation compared to OHC engines. A small skim is usually OK, when it starts getting excessive there can be issues with cam timing and ‘pinking’ due to the smaller compressed volume in the head raising the compression ratio, which in turn can increase the likelihood of head gasket failure / excessive blow-by past worn piston rings. As Paul says, 0.1mm is a standard figure but back in the day 0.010″ was common (0.25mm). If you’re concerned then use a thicker head gasket?

[John Montgomery]

What Paul said. You’re delaying the inevitable. Sorry!

[John Montgomery]

As usual with Citroen, there’s a reason why things are different. The trailing arm design allows a degree of anti-dive during forward travel, helping keep the car level. Conversely, when reversing, the same geometry would lift the rear of the car, which is undesirable. As the leading shoe is the one which provides most of the braking force, the rear one has a smaller friction surface (and lower down) to make the brakes less effective when reversing.
The GS and CX would lift their back ends when braking hard during fast reversing because they had disc brakes (which were prone to corrosion due to lack of use) – one example where progress isn’t progress.

[John Montgomery]

It’s a difficult one to call sometimes; do you go for the NOS item (which has been stored in unknown conditions and may already be fifty years old) or get a new item?
The additional complication here is when you want originality so your choice is limited. It’s a problem for most makes of classic car but the DS is especially complicated.

[John Montgomery]

How strange – a photo of door sealing strips / channel, and someone with a cut on their hand. Almost like the two things are connected 🤔

[John Montgomery]

Thanks Paul. If I can ask a favour, if you hear of someone selling a copy when you’re out and about, please could you let me know?

Cheers, John.

[John Montgomery]

Thanks Paul, glad it got to you. Both A-posts will be coming off anyway, I have another spare LH A-post I bought from Darrin a while back and this has a sound section of inner panel so I will be able to make a good panel on the bench.
The front structure will be a spider’s web of bracing, axle stands and multiple scissor jacks before I take anything off the front end, I will take multiple measurements too. In the worst case I will throw it all in the bin and find a better candidate, by many people’s standards it’s beyond economic repair anyway!
That’s all many years in the future, I’m just doing as much off-car preparation as I can for now, so no worries 👍

[John Montgomery]

Paul; sorry I didn’t see you there today, I left your switch with Matt Concannon at the CC stand.

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