My Citroën 2CV Runs! Mon Dieu!

Remember yesterday when I was telling you about the ease of removing the body parts from my Citroën 2CV? Sure you do, it was a magical time for all of us. As you may recall, the reason I was pulling those parts off willard-nillard was to prepare the car for the arrival of a local Citroën expert named Til. Til lives in my town and I’ve known him for about a decade now, first meeting him back in 2015 when he let me review his 1972 Citroën DS Break for The Old Site. His house is surrounded by Citroëns – DSes, 2CVs, an SM, and now even a Mehari. This was the man to reach out to.

Til has been working with 2CVs since he was 18, so getting one going again is pretty much muscle memory for him at this point. And that’s just what I needed, someone who knew exactly what to look for and what to do to get this old boy going again after its many years languishing in a damp backyard. And, really, nothing we did was really all that specific to 2CVs, generally, but the details certainly were, and I really appreciated Til’s calm confidence that we should be able to get the car running.

And, spoiler alert, we did! And holy crap was it thrilling. There’s something just conceptually different about working on a car that you hope you can get going one day, and one that you’ve actually seen and heard running. It changes the game in some important fundamental way: you aren’t wondering if all your efforts will be futile anymore, you know it’s just a matter of time. I was so excited my one video I thought to take of the car starting and running is quite crappy, but you can hear that little flat-twin purring away, and that’s what matters:

Oh man, listen to that thing! It sounds pretty good! This is like a symphony to me, this glorious grumbling, and I’m genuinely elated that it, at least briefly, ran. It’ll run again.

Here’s what we did to get to this point, which I’m going to tell you not just in the interests of full disclosure, but also because I need to use this post as a record of what I still need to do, and I feel like putting it on the site is the best way for me to not forget anything, because, as you may recall, I’m a bit of an idiot.

First, we took off a valve cover – which, by the way, looks like it would make a fantastic pan for baking a bunt cake in – to check how the valves looked and moved and all that. The good news it was very clean under there, and the oil didn’t even look all that dirty! We cranked the engine with the starter, and the valves seemed to be valving just fine, too.

As you all likely know, all a functioning engine really needs is fuel, air, and spark. Air we had, which I knew because I hadn’t suffocated. Fuel we needed to look at, but first we worked on spark.

The 2CV doesn’t exactly have a distributor, but it doesn’t exactly not have one, either. If you pull off the fan, behind it you’ll find, hidden behind a rubber sort of curtain that directs air to the oil cooler, a little box. Inside this box are the points, which are triggered by a little cam that closes the points and fires the plugs. You’ll notice there’s only one set of points on this two-cylinder car, which is because 2CVs use a wasted spark system: both plugs fire together, whether it matters for that cylinder or not. Wasting sparks is cheaper than adding a whole other set of points, after all!

I cleaned the points with some fine sandpaper, and we rotated the engine and confirmed the timing was all good, which it was. Whew. The wires to the coil were, as you may guess, pretty crappy, but we got them working well enough to see the timing light go on and off. I should replace those points and condenser with new ones, though, just to be safe.

After that we looked into why the fuel pump didn’t seem to be fuel pumping. We pulled it off, checked that the little metal rod that drove the pump from the camshaft was okay, which it was – it’s literally a metal stick, so hard to have that go wrong – and re-installed the pump. Well, after we did a manual test check off the engine, pushing the rod in and out by hand to confirm it would pump, which it did. To get it reinstalled, I had to borrow a nut from one of the exhaust manifold fittings, since there’s not enough of those correct metric nuts to go around (the ones I thought would work from the hardware store didn’t, which I blame on arrogance) but once we put it back on and ran a line into the gas can, it seemed to be pumping. I need to re-connect the actual fuel lines, too. Our own SWG cleaned the tank out, so that’s sorted, at least.

So, with clean points and fuel getting to the carb, I really shouldn’t have been surprised the little 602cc engine returned to life. But I was thrilled regardless.

So, now that I know it can run, I need to fix all the things to get it to run reliably. And there’s still plenty to do there, which I’ll list here so I can find it all and not forget!

First, I should get a new CV boot for this axle, because that’s a big tear, and if any crap gets in there, I’m going to regret it:

I also need to fix this choke cable bracket, because it’s not bracketing at all right now, and I don’t need that cable slipping around:

Then there’s the fact that I’m missing this little shroud that covers the alternator pulley. I wouldn’t have thought it was a big deal, as I assumed it was just for protective reasons, you know, so you don’t get your long luxuriant hair caught in there or something.

But it’s not for that! It’s for directing air from the fan into the alternator, which has no fan. So you want it to keep that alternator cool! I’m wondering if I may be able to 3D print one? It’s not under any real physical stresses, so that may be worth a try.

I need some springs for my headlight adjustment bar; they’re missing now, which makes the lights tilt downwards, like the car is bashfully avoiding anyone’s gaze. I don’t want that.

Here’s Til’s car, with the springs in place:

Til drove over in his 2CV, which is a 1981 Charleston, a real Charleston model and not an imposter like mine.

He has some interesting details on his, like this clever bracket that allows the spare tire to be carried in the engine bay, freeing up trunk room:

Til’s car also has something that’s astounding when you think about it:

Yes, that’s a trailer hitch. Til has a special camping trailer specifically designed for the 2CV that he actually tows with this featherweight, 29 horsepower car. Think of all the people who buy an F-250 to tow a dirtbike or jet ski or something, and then think about this little thing pulling a camper. I love it.

Of course, the biggest elephant under the hood is the wiring, which is an absolute mess. It may make more sense for me to just buy a new wiring harness and start fresh, though currently getting one may be an issue, with all the tariff bullshit and how many European countries aren’t even shipping things to the US right now. Ugh. However I do it, this mess needs to be addressed, since the lights and instruments and who knows what else doesn’t work. Plus, I really need to just get all those tidy and contained, because they’re going to rub or melt on things and who needs that hassle?

Look how weirdly cool this looks with the completely open sides! Maybe I should just cut mesh panels and have some lights in there!

I’m just thrilled that this thing ran. A great wet scarf of uncertainty has finally been unwrapped from around my neck and flung into a ditch with aplomb and possibly some actual plumbs. Now I know it’s possible, and this little 2CV getting back on the road is inevitable. I still have so much to do, but I’m so excited. This is gonna be fun.