Today Is The Day Of The Great 2CV Journey!

It’s finally here. The milestone day that I’ve had on the calendar for months. The deadline. The justification for all the time-saving, half-assed work I’ve done. Today is the day I drive this 1982 (I think) Citroën 2CV that once was rotting in a field and shot at by ne’er-do-wells on a three-hour trek to be a judge the 24 Hours of Lemons Race in Kershaw, South Carolina. I’m excited.

If you’ve been keeping up with the journey of this Francophonic wonder from formerly-rolling lawn art to the self-propelled umbrella on wheels that it was always meant to be, then I suspect you must understand how excited I am about all of this; if not, then I hope you’ll at least roll your eyes when your back is turned to me, like a class act.

It’s a three-hour drive of about 150 miles, all back roads, which is good, because while Citroën claims that the 602cc flat-twin that bangs exuberantly under that thin hood is good for 71.5 mph, this car really isn’t the highway cruiser type. But on back roads? I think it’ll be fantastic.

I drove it the other night on a small shakedown cruise of about an hour or so of total driving, and it did great. The only real issues I found were that I really could use some brighter headlights and my driver’s seat is a little uncomfortable in the butt, mostly thanks to my use of ratchet straps to replace the old, worn-out rubbber bands. But I think I fixed that by shoving some foam in there.

Oh, and the fuel gauge isn’t working, so I need to be smart and bring a can of emergency gas. I should be getting like 40 mpg+  in this thing, and I have a close-to-full fuel tank of about 6+ gallons, so that should give me plenty of leeway for this trip, but who knows?

What should I bring with me, tools- and spare-wise? I have an extra coil I can bring, I’ll bring two spare tires because why not, my socket set, some screwdrivers, zip ties, maybe brake fluid since the 2CV uses some weird, hard-to-find stuff … that should be plenty? I know it’s only three hours, but it’s the first real long drive I’ve done in this thing.

Oh and the big black box is an old manual typewriter I use for race penalty reasons. It’s fun!

Oh, and since I’ll be a judge at this Lemons Race, that means I’ll be the recipient of bribes, which is one of the exciting perks of the gig. I hope I get some good bourbon! That also means for the teams that do the bribing, they need to get their cars tagged with a stencil so everyone knows they’ve done the right thing and grafted a bribe. So I made a 2CV-special one:

I used my 3D printer to make it; I tried this last year, and it sort of worked, but the whole thing melted in the outdoor heat. This time I made it thicker as a way to help compensate, and used a filament that has some carbon fiber mixed into it; maybe that’ll help?

Oh damn, look at what I just found! Those fender nuts and washers I had to buy new ones of last weekend! Dammit!

So, this is also my way of saying I’ll be mostly out from bloginationary duties today, though I’ll try and record some reels and whatever from the road! So keep an eye out for those on our Instant-gramophone link!

I haven’t packed or anything yet. I travel a lot for this job, you’d think I’d be better about it all and not just shoving things into a bag at the last minute, but here we are. Off I go!