[Paul Burridge]

I haven’t cut my shin since…..yesterday.

We lived in an Edwardian semi with on-street parking, which is why my car sat forgotten in a barn just outside Little Horwood. My wife is ALWAYS house hunting. As our kids started to grow it was felt we needed a bigger garden and separate bathroom. She wasn’t wrong. I told my wife that if she could find a bigger house with suitably large garage, i had no objections to moving. A couple were rejected on the grounds of the garage size before she called my bluff and found something that ticked all the boxes. And like you – I recognise that i’m lucky.

The floor of mine was bare concrete and so broke up into dust. Very bad for hydraulics. I took the opportunity to paint the whole floor with two part epoxy. it still gets dust and leaves on it but is much easier to clean. I also painted the walls white to brighten it up a bit. There is also a car port outside the garage high enough to fully raise a D bonnet.

My grump is that i wish i’d made the door through to the workshop next to the door through to the garden (behind the red tool chest in my photo). That way I could park the D in the corner of the garage and wouldn’t have to squeeze behind it to get to the workshop – cutting my shins as i do.

[Paul Burridge]

As a 68, my car is from the first year that had the third front and – but for a few months – it would have been second nose.

I vaguely remember Darrin telling me that the two L and R ‘tusks’ that form the sides of the engine bay are either a bit longer or shorter on second nose cars, so it’s not a straight swap. obviously it;s more than possible as Darrin did it. and there is that company in Germany that makes fantasy Ds: other than a wavey dash and Jaeger dials seemingly being obligatory, you can have anything you want on a donor chassis, so that would include the nose shape.

[Paul Burridge]

Garage envy again…..

It looks remarkably like mine – but bigger 🙁 With the nose of my car at the garage door, i have about 2 feet behind (if that) to squeeze around. Yours is also possibly wider? i have racking down that RHS and stuff stored along the LHS (welder, compressor, engine crane…… etc) but am not left with as much room around the car. It’s a double garage though so maybe the same width? I do benefit from a door through to a ‘workshop’ in the far RHS corner but the first photo in this thread shows how full that gets!

The photo here was taken back in 2017! I’m hoping that once i’ve assembled my car i can have a clear out and make space.

[Paul Burridge]

John Montgomery wrote:

Not sure I got the last post right, try this one:

Ahh yes. I thought you might mean those.

The ones on my car (1968) are plain BRUSHED steel (some are plain shiny steel). They were quite badly dented and quite reluctantly I decided to buy new. I had to search quite hard. Darrin at Citroen Classics doesn’t normally stock them but got them in as a special order for me – probably from one of there European suppliers.

[Paul Burridge]

Subject to affordability, I agree with Julian that the Banbury car sounds like it ticks your particular boxes.

For comparison, on Facebook Neal Humphreys has today announced he is selling his (1966?) DS21 pallas. It’s frogeye with the extra pair of bulbous lamps, old style wavey dash like mine, radio like mine. Good panels, mechanically sound apparently, but would benefit from a full respray. he’s only asking for £10K. He’s taking it to the D rally this weekend (saturday evening and Sunday). I think he’ll find a buyer quickly, despite the fact it’s not an LHM car (he runs it on a different fluid as recommended by Adie Pease).

[Paul Burridge]

I used some CT-1 to help secure them in place and always planned to repaint them once i’d realised the paint had come off. i just forgot….

i should go outside right now (after i’ve finished this tea) and slap some paint on.

On the ‘b’ post bottoms, the seals slide into the holders. I can’t remember if i tried to crimp them in place.

[Paul Burridge]

I should add: If you wanted to ask about SA cars, I expect there will be a couple at the D rally at the weekend (Sunday being the busiest day).

[Paul Burridge]

Hi Chris
I’m not sure what bit you are calling the ‘sill embellishers’. We also use different terminology:) Do you mean the bits right down below the sill – visible even when the doors are closed, or do you mean the square-patterned bits on the sills inside the doors?

I suspect it was a requirement that some parts of cars sold by Citroen in SA were made locally. I don’t know the history well enough. I know tat SA cars had different hub caps and (i think?) different door handles for example.

[Paul Burridge]

Yes, the curved edge of the rubber is the ‘outer’ and the nice square angle buts up against your c post – but the rubber parts are hollow, and the arms of the metal bracket in the bottom of the post grip the INNER side of the wall that butts up against the post…

Not only is the rubber part hollow, but it’s ‘walls’are fattened (rounded) on the lip of theiir inner, unseen faces to give that clip something to hang on to. The radius in the curve of the ‘claw’ only needs to be sufficient to navigate the width of the wall of the rubber piece and go around the lip – not the whole piece.

As you can see from this photo when you realise you need to bend those arms up and round – all your paint flakes off! That is probably why on so many cars those delicate little claws rust and the rubbers fall off.

[Paul Burridge]

C posts: if you just fold those tabs up, you are left with a ‘V’ shape and no space at the bottom for the seal to sit. that’s why they need to curl out (slightly) and then up.

The bottom of the B post is angled slightly and when I welded on my seal holders, I angled them up slightly towards the rear to follow the line of the post. I’ve seen other cars like this, but in hindsight I think the seal holder should sit horizontal/ flat – despite the angle of the B post bottom.

[Paul Burridge]

Those holders are supplied in a misleading shape. the claws stick out at 90 degrees. the inner faces of the rubbers have a fattened lip – a rounded profile. For the rubbers to fit on and ‘behind’, the claws/ fingers need to be curled out, upwards and over in a rounded shape.

[Paul Burridge]

Nice welding. And those also make for very good reference photos as well.

I’m also suffering ‘outer sill envy’. Annoyingly my outer sills only had rust on the bottom horizontal lip, but i many places (around the pallas trim screw holes). rather than attempt many, snamll, fiddly repairs, I cut the whole things out and replaced them. I’m not unhappy that i did that, but i’d have preferred to retain the original parts.

My c post bottoms were in pretty good shape and – based on that – i agree that the bottom sides should be parallel. i think the issue is with those after-market end caps. i found mine too BIG to fit in the ends. From what i remember, it was the measurement across just one pair of sides that was the issue – meaning the other pair could have been too narrow to make contact with the insides of the post.

Door seal holder. It’s a very particular shape and expensive stuff to buy. Are you at the D rally this weekend? If so i have a couple of offcuts you can have. I could bring them along.

[Paul Burridge]

Good progress. It’s definitely looking car-like.

[Paul Burridge]

As mine’s a BVH car, I already have a centrifugal regulator on that bracket. And my battery is on that side of the engine bay. The ‘John Titus solution’ – fixing the compressor on top of the alternator seems to work.

I would fit air con if i could make it discreet. Air con wasn’t anticipated for my my dash though it hasn’t stopped a company in Germany that specialises in fantasy Ds retro-fitting the 70s system to some. (I think jaeger dials must be obligatory on a fantasy D then after that everything else is optional).

I just think air con looks odd with a dash like mine, but I can see that it would be very practical. The first Citroen zircon was a very different affair (easier to replicate?) and I’d almost prefer that with my dash to the later set-up. At least it looks 60s.

[Paul Burridge]

Want Bluetooth? First install an AC evaporator 🙂 Mind you, I might end up having to do that….

In the meantime, today I will be finishing fitting my rear HEATER – for those long, cold summer days we increasingly have.

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