CITROEN 2CV QUIZ Previous Ownership is Helpful

[tobytronicstereophonic]

An imaginary car you bought in 1987. A brand new Citroen 2CV6 with an on the road price of £3,600, initially, all goes well and being a budget car, you do your own maintenance.

It has powder blue paintwork, light blue cloth deckchair seats and you love it. That's your mum, that is.

Along the way, these problematic faults arise. They are very 2CV specific, so past ownership will help, but if you are a car-nut, you should get at least close to the correct diagnosis. By all means ask for clues if you like. The solutions are to my mind of interest to any true Piston-Head.
AND
Having come out of retirement aged 59, owing to a rubbish current life and so rented a workshop, my brain is full up of car stuff. Motorcycles too. You don't have to read it :-)

Obviously it is a 602cc aircooled twin-cylinder vehicle designed to be the paragon of engineering minimalism.

Question 1.
After 12,000mls, the twist-on airfilter top has popped off and is sitting loosely in the filter body. Repeated attempts of a cure are fruitless, which include trying a new filter top and finally a complete brand new airfilter assembly. Despite everything now being as new, the filter top keeps popping off. Why?

Question 2.
You have now sorted the last problem. Before going on holiday, you fit a new set of points and condensor. At the car accessory shop, you spot a NOS ignition coil. These are unique to Citroen cars with double-ended coils with a 'wasted-spark' design.
So you fit this part too.
127 miles en route to Torquay you are stranded at Charnock Richard services. The new points are blued and eroded away even though they were genuine Ducellier ones.
Fortunately you always pack a spare set and you are quickly on your way again. Then when you hit the M5, same problem. The new ignition coil, which is without construction fault, is without doubt the cause. Why?

BTW to remove a 2CV fan to access the ignition points just needs a long 1/2" extension bar waggled about in the centre hole and it will break free of the taper-fit. Every time.

Question 3.
Eight years and 47,000 miles into ownership, a tapping noise becomes apparent. Valve clearances are fine. Yet it sounds just like loose tappets. An engine overhaul shows a perfect camshaft, followers and rocker arms. The valves and seats also are in good order. Why?

Question 4.
Easter holidays 2011 and you set off on holiday. A record-breaking month seeing 27C in parts of England. This is the 2CV's first time out since the coldest November of the previous year. On the return journey, you experience a lack of power. The engine is using oil and losing compression. You now need new pistons/cylinders. Which standard piece of supplied equipment should you have removed before starting out?

Question 5.
When I was foreman at a Citroen dealership in 1988, I was at my car-fixing prime. I recall replacing a crankshaft on a Citroen AX 1.0, a chassis swap on a 2CV6, Visa diesel clutch, three BX diesel head gaskets, a BX 14 suitcase engine rebuild and another BX 14 gearbox overhall and several services. In the same week. 35 years later, I have a totally stuffed back. Yet I can only offer the two pieces of advice:

Don't use your teeth as makeshift tools.
Never lie down on a cold concrete floor: it'll ruin your kidneys.

Which two pieces of sage advice would be your mantra?
Why?

[595Heaven]

I can only answer Q4 - guessing you left the clip on grille cover errrr… clipped on?

[tobytronicstereophonic]

595Heaven said:

I can only answer Q4 - guessing you left the clip on grille cover errrr… clipped on?

Correct!
Owners in the UK would use them in our winters. Not really necessary and as soon as any warmer weather arrived, instant oil overheating and piston/bore failure. About £800 in the late eighties. I did start restoring them in the late nineties. Ace work, but no money to be made as they were still cheap cars...

[tobytronicstereophonic]

As a newcomer to PH I was unaware of the French Bread bit. I am now officially in heaven. My new workshop is a Citroen Peugeot specialist one. I'm unsure if in what is now my second day of my 60th year my body will withstand doin' what is a young person's game. We will see.
Don't worry, I'll supply the answers tomorrow night. They are very interesting, hard-won bits of 2CV knowledge btw :-)
Especially the air-filter one!

[tobytronicstereophonic]

tobytronicstereophonic said:

An imaginary car you bought in 1987. A brand new Citroen 2CV6 with an on the road price of £3,600, initially, all goes well and being a budget car, you do your own maintenance.

It has powder blue paintwork, light blue cloth deckchair seats and you love it. That's your mum, that is.

Along the way, these problematic faults arise. They are very 2CV specific, so past ownership will help, but if you are a car-nut, you should get at least close to the correct diagnosis. By all means ask for clues if you like. The solutions are to my mind of interest to any true Piston-Head.
AND
Having come out of retirement aged 59, owing to a rubbish current life and so rented a workshop, my brain is full up of car stuff. Motorcycles too. You don't have to read it :-)

Obviously it is a 602cc aircooled twin-cylinder vehicle designed to be the paragon of engineering minimalism.

Question 1.
After 12,000mls, the twist-on airfilter top has popped off and is sitting loosely in the filter body. Repeated attempts of a cure are fruitless, which include trying a new filter top and finally a complete brand new airfilter assembly. Despite everything now being as new, the filter top keeps popping off. Why?

Question 2.
You have now sorted the last problem. Before going on holiday, you fit a new set of points and condensor. At the car accessory shop, you spot a NOS ignition coil. These are unique to Citroen cars with double-ended coils with a 'wasted-spark' design.
So you fit this part too.
127 miles en route to Torquay you are stranded at Charnock Richard services. The new points are blued and eroded away even though they were genuine Ducellier ones.
Fortunately you always pack a spare set and you are quickly on your way again. Then when you hit the M5, same problem. The new ignition coil, which is without construction fault, is without doubt the cause. Why?

BTW to remove a 2CV fan to access the ignition points just needs a long 1/2" extension bar waggled about in the centre hole and it will break free of the taper-fit. Every time.

Question 3.
Eight years and 47,000 miles into ownership, a tapping noise becomes apparent. Valve clearances are fine. Yet it sounds just like loose tappets. An engine overhaul shows a perfect camshaft, followers and rocker arms. The valves and seats also are in good order. Why?

Question 4.
Easter holidays 2011 and you set off on holiday. A record-breaking month seeing 27C in parts of England. This is the 2CV's first time out since the coldest November of the previous year. On the return journey, you experience a lack of power. The engine is using oil and losing compression. You now need new pistons/cylinders. Which standard piece of supplied equipment should you have removed before starting out?

Question 5.
When I was foreman at a Citroen dealership in 1988, I was at my car-fixing prime. I recall replacing a crankshaft on a Citroen AX 1.0, a chassis swap on a 2CV6, Visa diesel clutch, three BX diesel head gaskets, a BX 14 suitcase engine rebuild and another BX 14 gearbox overhall and several services. In the same week. 35 years later, I have a totally stuffed back. Yet I can only offer the two pieces of advice:

Don't use your teeth as makeshift tools.
Never lie down on a cold concrete floor: it'll ruin your kidneys.

Which two pieces of sage advice would be your mantra?
Why?

As this drunken post was an abject failure, here are the drunken answers:

Q1.
As the engine had by now done quite a few miles, the valve clearances had closed up to zero. This would affect every single 2CV running in this era, given enough time. Citroen had by this time removed the 6,000 valve-clearance check from their service schedule. The engine's hot, expanding gas or the power stroke sent a pulse of energy into the air filter housing, blowing the top off the air filter. The cure is obvious.

Q2.
The ignition coil was seemingly identical to the original one. Being such a distinctive piece of kit, you (as I stupidly once did believe too) made the swap without second's thought.

But the iconic 2CV engine was also - rather oddly - enlarged to 652cc and had a few more mods when it powered their new Visa Special. This engine featured a newly designed electronic ignition with a 'computerised' advance/retard and dwell-angle control.

The coil on this vehicle has a far lower impedance (effectively resistance) and so allowed an on-average too-high current to flow through the contact breaker points. A new set, and all is well. Yet only for a short time. But this time, the coil itself is also suffering. The overheated windings of what is really a transformer, have boiled the coil's cooling oil.

So the rubber gasket of the coil is now bulging and seeping oil. So you can see how one can go around & around, fitting new points, buying yet another coil and further sets of contact breaker sets. I've also seen this mistaken swapping of bits on Vauxhall Novas and early Escorts with their new CVH engines...

Question 3.
I'm even boring myself now, as I am incapable of brevity in my tales. I will try:
On the gear-driven camshaft, the larger gearwheel is two parts, sandwiched together. Three springs tension these halves in opposition, to eliminate backlash and silence any gear drive clatter. By around 50k mls, these springs lose their springiness and this is what the engine would sound like with a one-piece gearwheel. A fibre gearwheel would also work, but this is a Citroen, not a Ford. New springs were sold at 18p each. Labour charge was about £350 in 1986 for the work.
A fibre gearwheel would also be on the way out after this long in service, but a stripped camshaft drive would probably bend a few valves and certainly have also failed to proceed.

Question 4.
Already answered. See above. Now that was a brief, succinct example of...
And as I'm taking my newly rescued cat to the vets in a few hours, for her chip scan (catscan?) and health check, which will now be via the bus as I've had too much to drink following the worst few days of my life, I will say Night, Night to all PHers :-)