My Old Citroën 2CV That Spent Over A Decade Abandoned In A Yard Successfully Finished Its First Big Post-Resurrection Trip!

I’m writing this now from the relative comfort of my own home, safely strapped into my work-pod, nutrient and waste tubes properly affixed, and the reason that is happening instead of me furtively texting this from the shoulder of some forgotten rural Carolina road is because the little ramshackle French car I’ve been tinkering on for months has officially proven itself. My Citroën 2CV successfully made the trip from Chapel Hill, NC to the Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, SC, and back.

I call that a victory.

I’m not saying there weren’t some issues, because of course there were, but nothing that actually stopped me. The car feels like it wants to drive, it feels willing and eager and alive. Yes, it’s loud as hell, and I need to work on the driver’s seat a bit more because it made my butt hurt (literally, not the internet way), but it met the goal I set out for it when I started to try and get it running all those months ago. This was the milestone voyage, and I’m thrilled to say it made it.

Starting out, I had the roof rolled back, and the weather was perfect, and the whole experience in this car was delightful, just textbook, happy cliché delightful. It’s quirky and noisy and happy, and everyone who sees it smiles and either knows what it is and wants to tell you every experience they had with a 2CV, or they’re curious and ask questions. Or, they mistakenly think it’s a Volkswagen. All those responses are fine, because everyone who comes up to peer at it seems like their day has been improved, even ever so slightly, by the encounter.

One of the issues I still need to address is the lack of a working fuel gauge; I brought a five-gallon gas can with me, which is almost the size of the 6.6-gallon built-in tank, so that at least keeps me from getting stuck anywhere. As it was, I ran out of gas one time, but it was right, and I do mean right, as I rolled into the parking lot where all the Lemons officials were parking for the big street festival/car inspection that we do in the town of Camden, SC, before each race at the track there. So I got pretty lucky!

As far as the actual experience of driving goes, I’m really pretty thrilled. I think my idle is still too fast by a bit, and if I lower it too much it will stall, but when it’s actually driving, that plucky flat-twin is more than happy to run and rev, and, on slight downhill grades, I even managed to get it up to a sustained speed of around 65-68 mph (110 kph) or so! Look up there, there’s proof, at least if we believe that tiny speedometer, which I think I do, based on tests with those speed limit signs that display your speed in flashing numbers.

I should probably mention the noise level when driving, because it is, as they say, non-trivial. I’m used to air-cooled clatter from my many years of Beetle-driving, but in a Beetle, that air-cooled engine is behind you, happily blaring its cacophony out the back of the car. In the 2CV, it’s in front of you, just past your feet, and it’s more than happy to make its presence known.

My sound insulation under the hood is in pretty poor shape, which is likely part of the issue, and looks a bit like the fur of a murdered Muppet just after being exhumed from a shallow grave. You can see some of it here, as I was taking a picture of the fuse that kept popping:

That was one of the other issues: for some reason, this fuse would seemingly randomly blow, which was a pain, because that’s the one that controls a lot of ancillary functions like turn indicators and windshield wipers – which was a very annoying issue one rainy morning on the way to the track as they quit partway – and, perhaps most significantly, also affected whether or not the alternator would charge.

I “solved” this by buying more fuses on the trip back, but I need to see what is grounding out or whatever. I suspect it’s one of the turn signal wires from the fenders, but I’m not sure yet.

Oh, but back to the noise; with the windows open, the under-windshield vent flap open, and the engine at full tilt, it’s a whole symphony of white noise. It made listening to the Bluetooth speaker in my dash shelf difficult, so I put in some noise-cancelling earbuds, which definitely helped, but then when those cut off, the full audio reality would return, and you’d think the world was exploding, only to remember, no, that’s just normal.

I bet I can mitigate the noise a bit, and around town it’s fine, but I suppose worth pointing out so you get the idea of the full experience.

Oh, here’s an odd issue I noticed the morning when I drove from the hotel to the track: my alternator wasn’t alternating for the whole ride over, and this was before the fuse started popping, so I looked at it when I parked at the track. I don’t really understand how, but the bolt that holds the fan and alternator pulley to the crankshaft pulley somehow worked itself loose.

That means I drove about a half hour with not just no alternator, but no fan! Luckily, it was cool, and I was in motion essentially the whole time, so there was plenty of airflow. Still, I need to keep an eye on this so that doesn’t happen again.

I think I probably need new shocks, as there isn’t so much dampening going on, at least outside of my pants. On road, it’s pretty much fine, but on rougher terrain, it can get a little bouncy, even with the soft suspension these are known for. The only real repercussion of this was that one bounce popped off the little clip that holds the window open, so I’ll have to find a good way to re-affix that.

That did allow me to use the alternate window-opening method I had yet to try, this little wire doohickey that holds the window partially open for airflow without flipping it up entirely. That means these windows have an incredible three openness settings!

I did lose my Autopian Member grille badge somewhere along the way, too. Look, here it is at the beginning of the trip, down on the lower center area of the grille:

…and here it isn’t near the end:

Maybe someone will find it. If so, enjoy, and consider becoming an actual Autopian member!

Some other minor things I noticed: if you look above, you’ll see some water dripping down the instrument cluster. In heavy rain, there seems to be a leak from the vent flap that helpfully keeps my buttons clean there, so that’s handy. Besides, I hear electrical things love water!

Oh, and during the trip, the odometer hit 98,000 kilometers! That’s about 60,900 miles! I wonder if it’s already rolled over before? Who knows?

Oh, and I need to fix my trunk latch/lock/handle. It works itself open and then the trunk lid flaps open when you pull away from a stop, which I bet looks funny. Thankfully, nothing fell out!

I know I keep saying it, but I can’t believe this is the same car that was mouldering in that field not so long ago. I can’t believe I actually own a 2CV! I can’t believe how well it’s actually driving! What I can easily believe is how much I love driving this thing, how happy it makes me feel to loudly rattle around in this two-tone tin baguette.

Sure, it still needs some refinement and tweaking and dialing in, but it works, it runs, it drives, it gets me from place to place, it does what it was designed to do, and it seems as thrilled as I am to be doing it.

This’ll be the first of many happily loud road trips in the 2CV. I can’t wait.

Oh, and I’ll have a post about all the stuff at the race later today!

All photos: Jason Torchinsky