2CV Progress Update: Holy Crap, It’s All Together (Ish)

I love it when a plan comes together. Or a car. Or, for that matter, even a sandwich. I guess I like when anything comes together. But, I’m particularly fond of when my Citroën 2CV comes together, and it looks like that finally is happening. As you may recall, this is the 2CV that our own Stephen Walter Gossin rescued from sitting in a field for a decade, forlorn and bullet-ridden. It seemed like it was well on its way to being reclaimed by Mère Nature, but Momma Nature can get her own damn 2CV. This one is mine.

My plan is to try and make it my daily driver, all 29 horsepower of it. To most people, 29 horsepower doesn’t seem like a lot of horsepower. But they’re forgetting one crucial thing: 29 horsepower is almost 30 horsepower. Now we’re talking!

But before that happens, I have a sort of driving goal/milestone in mind for the car, to give myself a sort of deadline. I’m judging the upcoming 24 Hours of Lemons race at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, South Carolina this coming weekend, and I want to drive the 2CV there. It’s a three-ish hour drive on mostly backroads, so I think it’s an ideal big maiden voyage for the 2CV.

In this final burst of preparation, there were a number of things I needed to get done: replace the voltage regulator, get the battery mounting right, get the headlight adjuster bar put together properly this time (I did it all wonky before), change the transmission oil, replace at least the driver’s side CV boot which is torn and barfing grease, and finally put the fenders and those triangular side-filler valance panels back on the car. It’s not a colossal amount of stuff, but it’s plenty for me.

Some of it was pretty painless; I ordered a new solid-state voltage regulator, which manages to keep those volts down to a reasonable 14.8V or so instead of the 18V(!) I was seeing with the dying old electromechanical one. Oh, and I had the battery mounting clamp upside-down before. Oops.

Okay, let’s get to the transmission oil change! I had no idea how long this thing had gone since having the transmission oil changed, and I’ve learned my lesson about that the hard way. I’m not going to make the same mistake here!

The tricky part about this is that the 2CV’s transmission requires – like many older cars – an oil that’s rated API GL-4, not GL-5, which is far more common. This is because GL-5 oils are very bad for “yellow metals” – you know, like brass transmission synchronizers and that sort of thing. I had the damndest time trying to get GL-4 oil locally, and while I could order it, there’s something about ordering oil that feels, I don’t know, wrong.

I finally found one that would work. It’s a single-weight oil, not a multi-grade oil, but that should be fine, I’d think, at least for now. Maybe I’ll change it to a multi-grade come winter, but for the moment, I’m on a deadline.

Draining the oil isn’t bad, and Citroën thoughtfully provides a little hole in the chassis/skidplate to access the drain:

I feel like I’m so used to more modern cars making everything a pain in the ass where you have to remove panels and plastic shields and crap, this little hole felt like such a thoughtful gesture. I even made a reel about it:

 

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The drain plug is magnetized, and had some metal shavings on it as would be expected, but it didn’t seem especially alarming:

Filling is a little less easy, though. For whatever reason, transmissions seem loath to provide a fill hole on the top, where you can just leverage your old pal gravity. My F-150 has a transmission filler hole that requires the use of a pump, and while the 2CV isn’t that bad, it is a vertical filler:

Couldn’t they have put it in the top? There must be a reason for this I’m just not getting. Anyway, it’s not that bad to fill, you just need to get a hose and funnel and stand like the Statue of Liberty to do it:

This was a very clear-looking oil, so I just watched the bubbles slowly glide down to know it was all being drank in. The transmission wants 0.9 liters of oil, and that funnel held 200ml, so I gave it five funnelfuls of delicious oil.

Next came the CV boot replacement, and I’ll fess up to something right away: I did it the lazy way. I know the right way would be to take the whole axle out and slide on the factory-correct CV boot, but I didn’t have the time for that. So I got one of those universal split CV boot kits.

And I know they’re only a temporary fix, and I should do it right eventually, and I know people roll their eyes at these things, but sometimes good enough is, you know, good enough. And it’s way better than what was there before!

You can’t really tell in this pic where I slid it up and away, but this boot had a big tear and was pooping so much grease onto that control arm below:

As you can see, that CV joint could use some more grease, too. So I cut off the old torn boot and packed in as much of that asphalt-mousse-looking grease as I could:

The way these boots work is that they’re split into two halves, and they lock together and are then glued. I did hit a snag when I found the Loctite glue provided with my kit was bone dry, and solidified as hard as a diamond:

Well, crap. Luckily, I bought two, so I used the glue from that one, and it actually turned out better, because I had inadvertently bought two different-sized boot kits, and, shockingly, the 2CV needed the larger one? Who would have thought?

Anyway, with a bit of wrestling and gluing fingers together and other excitement, I got the boot on, and it seems to look pretty good! I mean, this isn’t rocket science – it’s a rubber accordion designed to keep grease in and crap out. This seems fine.

I packed a bit of grease into the other boot, which was in better shape, and I’ll liberally apply hope to that one and replace it next time.

By the way, for those of us without garages, a truck tailgate makes an excellent ersatz workbench. I used it to hold my tools, my sparkling array of PB Blaster elixirs and unguents, and as a surface to trim rubber boots and cut up Diet Coke cans, which I’ll explain in a moment.

Putting the fenders and side valence panels back on was the next and most visually dramatic task, as I’ve been driving this thing around sans fenders for months. Without those fenders and fill panels, there really isn’t much body on the front of a 2CV, just a hood covering the engine like a gazebo; the sides are all exposed.

Getting the fenders on really helps define the 2CV’s face. While it looks like a strange Madmaxican hot rod without fenders, the 2CV’s chubby-cheeked look really needs the fenders:

Also, the fenders house the front indicators, which are very useful. Ethical, even. Happily, the wiring for those, with a bit of minor splicing/repairing, worked.

I’ve never actually seen the side valence panels actually on the car since I’ve had it, and I sort of realized why: a lot of the mounting hardware was missing. Luckily, these four little clips were there, and they would be the hardest to find, but none of the bolts or anything like that.

I did a hardware store run and got bolts that fit (and some missing fender nuts), but soon realized that the bolts I had were too small for the little clips. This is where the Diet Coke can comes in.

I’d actually used Diet Coke aluminum on one other part: I found that sometimes when I flooded the carb trying to start the car (that was before the choke was working properly; it hasn’t happened for a while now), it would drip some gasoline onto the exhaust manifold below, which I found alarming. So I made a little heat shield/drip tray to keep any errant gasoline droplets off the hot exhaust manifold:

You know, safety first!

Anyway, I realized that I needed to do something to make these bolts and clips work in glorious harmony, so I started cutting some can aluminum:

…and made some little folded-aluminum washer-like things for the clips:

Look at that! It’s like it just came from the factory! Except that should be a Perrier can or something, I suppose.

Say what you will, but it worked! And that’s enough for me.

Look at that! It’s so together! I’m positively delighted. I love this car, and I can’t wait to drive it more, lots more. I took my kid out on a little test drive around the block, but as I was driving, I heard a troubling-sounding rattling noise that was getting worse and worse. And I could feel something banging around! Crap! What’s happening?

Then I remembered I couldn’t find my socket wrench.

Somehow, I had dropped the wrench and it ended up in the chassis pan, by the muffler and one of the inboard disc brakes. The handle was peeking out below the car. Whew!

Anyway, I’m so excited. I think one night this week I’ll do some sort of extended test drive of like an hour, and then, fingers crossed, I’ll be making my first real journey in this thing come the weekend!

Wooooooo!

All photos: Jason Torchinsky