[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.

[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.

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