Holy Crap The 2CV Is Alive And Driving!

Who likes uplifting stories of rebirth and second chances that don’t involve supernatural elements or thinly-veiled religious overtones? You do! I mean, I hope you do, because I’m about to deliver such a story to you, about a funny little French car that I’m smitten with that was left for dead back in 2014 and, as of yesterday, returned to the roads, under its own power – if I can use that word for a 29-horsepower engine – for the first time in over a decade. It feels miraculous, but it’s no miracle. It’s the combination of a lot of work from a number of people and a little machine that someone at that factory in the Northwest part of Paris forgot to teach the meaning of the word quitter.

Yes, I’m talking about the Citroën 2CV that our Stephen Walter Gossin found in a field in Garland, NC, in a really sad state of neglect and disrepair. The car had once been the pride and joy of an owner named Willie, but a number of circumstances, including that jerk age, caused him to have to park the car on his property back in 2014, and there it sat.

Rust isn’t as huge an issue out here in North Carolina as in many places, but the Earth still longs to reclaim everything, and here that comes in the form of wet, rot, mold, mummification via pine needles, and more. Oh, and it was also shot up, the bullet kind of shot up, as it sat there, defenseless. It wasn’t in great shape.

It was pretty sad. But SWG did a ton of work on it, replacing (among many things) the top and the shot-out windows and generally getting it to a point where it looked like resurrection would at least be possible. Then he sold it to me, letting me realize a lifelong dream to own one of these charming weirdos.

It wasn’t running at all when I got it, and there were plenty of things to sort out before it got there, not the least of which was the wiring, which looked sort of like the results of a dog vomiting about three pounds of spaghetti. So I’ve been hacking away at all these issues, and making some progress here and there, and even got it running – but just like for a minute or so at a time.

I just couldn’t get it to idle long enough to actually drive, and that was driving me nuts. I took off the carb and cleaned it – not a full disassembly clean, but an off-car full dunk into carb cleaner, but that didn’t really help. I was getting frustrated, and the weather was crappy, limiting the days I could be out there to work with it, all of which led me to an important decision:

Get some help.

I needed to trade some money for time and skill, two commodities that are sadly rare in my life. I’m desperately trying to not repeat big mistakes I’ve made before, in this case a mistake I made with my ’73 Beetle, where I took the carbs off to clean them but then got distracted by other crap (including co-founding this very website) and let the car sit carb-less in the elements too long, leading to the engine getting siezed up. Ugh. Never again.

So, I found the only shop in town that still actually rebuilt carbs, a place called Garcia Auto Repair, and Mr.Juan Garcia actually had some experience with 2CVs, decades ago. So I towed the whole 2CV out to him, so he could tune the carb on the engine after rebuilding.

I’m so glad I did this, because he figured out why I could never get it to idle for any length of time: the carb was broken on the inside:

It looked like the bits that held/hinged the float in place were broken. Luckily, Willie’s 2CV came with boxes of parts, and one of those parts was another carb! Which worked!

Juan got that other carb cleaned and rebuilt, plopped it onto the engine, and holy crap, that thing ran. He sounded thrilled himself as he told me how great it was running, and it was pretty clear that he was having a good time with this thing. There were still other issues – the fuel tank, which SWG had dropped and cleaned out, was having an issue with the sealing of the fuel gauge sender which was causing air to be pulled into the fuel line, which wasn’t good.

Also, the fuel line from the tank wasn’t great, so that rubber line was replaced with a long snazzy copper line, too. Still, those are solvable problems, and I was so excited to get this thing back and drive it and work on it, so we rigged up a five-gallon fuel can in the passenger footwell to drive on. Really, it’s only like a gallon and a half smaller than the actual tank in the car!

But it runs and drives now. Which means I was able to drive it back from Juan’s shop, a distance of about 10 miles and on a state highway, where I hit speeds of a dizzying 100 kph! That’s 62 mph! Over a mile-a-minute! On a car that had been sitting in a field for about 12 years (the lifespan of some grudges, I’m told) and without front fenders and with a gas can on the floor and a license plate I found in an Argentinian junkyard!

That’s riding pretty dirty. But I don’t care, at least not at this moment.

But look up there! The brake lights even work!

Speaking of brakes, the brake warning light came on, too, and the brakes do feel a bit mushy, so I think I need to find some of that LHM brake fluid to top it off. Normal brake fluid in these cars would be a disaster.

Oh, also, I think my alternator isn’t alternating; it was only reading about 11.1V at best, and dropped to 10.4V at times. This car doesn’t exactly have a lot of electrical demand, but I’d like to be able to at least be over 12V.

There’s still plenty to do, clean up, get in order, sorted, fluids changed, and so on. But now that it’s driving, it’s a totally different game. There’s a huge difference in sorting out a driving car than one that sits, immobile and forlorn.

Here’s a little video of me being delighted and driving the 2CV around:

 

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I’m so excited. This toute petite voiture is back from the dead; it could have just decayed into nothing in that field, but fate had other plans. Much more fun plans, and I’m just excited to be a part of them.