[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.

[Paul Burridge]

very enterprising! We just went and bought a modern digital Roberts radio. Looks pretty similar to the lovely old ones.

I put this photo in a post earlier in this same thread, but if you have the later style of dash, this space under the cubby hole is a pretty easy way to add a simple/ cheap Bluetooth player and can look quite in keeping with the dash.

[Paul Burridge]

As Peter has previously said, a dismantled D takes up an alarming amount of space. as mine comes back together, i’m looking forward to liberating some of that space (for a lathe?). My wife has been quick off the mark though and has booked space for an overspill freezer.

I have a spare 8mm socket and 1/4″ ratchet because they are NEVER where you need them to be or the ratchet has a different socket on it already.

[Paul Burridge]

Chris Reynolds wrote:

Thanks for making me feel better about mine!

And you – for me about mine. Some jobs just feel like a battle. Mind you surveying the ‘battlefield’ when the job’s completed, does give a heightened (i.e. unrealistic!) sense of achievement.

Yesterday was “rear-bumper-dismantling-day” in the burridge household (garden). Only tool needed/ of any use is an angle grinder. Three bumpers = three angle grinder discs.

[Paul Burridge]

Peter Bremner wrote:

At least you can see your floor.

I’m assuming yours is under a 2″ thick layer of ‘U-Pol’ dust?

[Paul Burridge]

Don’t get carried away and fill-in the washer jet holes 🙂

[Paul Burridge]

Nice repair. As a ‘plan b’ i think i might have a spare bonnet going free.

[Paul Burridge]

I’m hoping/ expecting to be driving the D this summer – but not in time for the D rally and possibly/ probably not the national Festival in July. if i was driving through August and September i’d be happy. I’m deferring a few tasks until winter and would rather get a couple of months testing in than wait another year.

Following a thread on Aussiefrogs where someone is restoring a very old decal, they added Bluetooth to their radio. i’m using a couple of the components they used.

the BT module is a ‘behind the scenes’ thing whereby it’s turned on and off from a trigger switch/ signal rather than a button on it. In my testing the BT unit has dropped out a couple of times – even when next to my phone. i’ll have to see how i get on with it. This seems to be the current model. Looks a bit different but has the same functionality.

The amp is a separate unit. It’s just a small cheap amp from eBay. I deemed it cheap enough to make a mistake with if things didn’t work out. I didn’t really look into it again other than choosing something that was small enough to sit behind the dashboard and that can be switched on with a trigger signal. The original plan had been to trigger the BT and then for that – when waking up – to trigger the amp. In the end i decided to use the amp for the radio as well, so it’s the radio that triggers both BT and the amp.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/389402071924

The amp also has a USB charger outlet. I tried to put an extension lead on that but i couldn’t get it to work. if I’m using Bluetooth through my phone, i will want a charger in the car.I will add something somewhere else.

I also added a ‘LOC’ to convert the radio speaker outputs to RCA inputs to g into the amp alongside the BT signal.

The relay is a module thing. It has a permanent/ hard-wired power supply and (surprise surprise) is switched by an additional trigger signal. in this case the trigger provides a ‘negative earth’ route.

I’m using a manual starter button from a 60s DS as the momentary switch as it’s in keeping with the rest of my dashboard.

I also bought a couple of RCA splitter/ combiner leads to take the BT stereo output down to mono for the amp, and something to take the dual output from the radio LOC to single RCA channel.

I should add that the fader (which is what this thread is meant to be about!) i already had. it’s the one that comes with the old radio and i probably put up details of it in an earlier post here.

[Paul Burridge]

Well I’ve only gone and bloody done it!

With advice and suggestions from Steve Kendall and Geoffrey over on Aussiefrogs I’ve successfully added Bluetooth alongside my vintage radio (that’s ‘alongside’ rather than replaced) and both are controlled through my fader/ mixer control. It’s all controlled by the radio on/ off knob and I’ve not had to gut the radio and the changes I’ve made are reversible. I’ve basically soldered two wires inside the radio. Everything else is external and ‘plug and play’.

The radio is mono and so had just one channel into the fader, which was then divided between a front and rear speaker (twin mono if you will). I added a Bluetooth receiver and a stereo amp. The radio output goes into the amp as one channel, and the Bluetooth signal goes in as the other. Both channels come out of the amp and go into a DPDT (double pole-double throw) relay module. The relay allows one or other channel to pass through – so either the signal from the radio, or the signal from the Bluetooth. The selected channel then goes to my fader control and out to my front and rear speakers.

The radio power comes from the accessory terminal so there is no need to turn on the ignition – which risks damaging the coil. The power for the Bluetooth amp and relay are also wired to the accessory terminal, but the ‘wake-up’ signals they depend on come from switching the radio on. When the radio is off, there is no power drain.

At the moment I’m using a momentary switch on the side of my dash to trigger the relay to switch, but i have plans to install a ‘secret’ button on the radio for selecting/ deselecting bluetooth.

[Paul Burridge]

Is the Warminster car the dSuper5 from Car & Classics?

If so, i notice on the photos of that car that the boot badge says ‘DSuper’ on one plate and ‘5’ on a separate plate. That’s the same as the blue car photo i posted above – albeit a different blue car. My assumption in that case, and it was no more than an assumption, was that the car was a 1985cc D Super but with the optional 5th gear. I could be wrong. Perhaps those are early boot badges and both that car and your Warminster car are 2175cc ‘DSuper5s’?

And like the South African car, the Warminster ad says it’s 2100cc. Well that’s neither 1985cc or 2175cc. It looks like that is just be a lazy assumption on the site’s part because they’ve been told it’s a ’21’. On the DVLA site the car is listed as 2175cc. Mind you, it also says it was first registered in August 1972. the 2175cc ‘DSuper5’ went on sale in Autumn 72 for the 1973 model year, so a registration date of august 1972 is a bit early? i suspect though that this may be a quirk from when the car was imported to the UK and that the August date is a bit wobbly.

All of this is a long winded way to say that when you go to see the Warminster car, make a point of looking at the engine tag down by the starter motor. If it’s a proper 2175cc DSuper5, the engine tag will say ‘DX2’ on it. If it says ‘DY’ or ‘DV’ on it then at its heart it’s a 1985cc engine/ car but could have been upgraded to be 2175cc. That’s not necessarily a reason not to buy it, but go in to any purchase ‘eyes open’.

[Author]

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