Citroenmads Citroen blog.

[daviemck2006]

That's a car for all occasions. C1 daily, hdi cruiser, activa fun and ami potterer. Not a bad position to be in.

[CitroJim]

...have you seen what the Aygo looks like?

Gosh yes, it's horrible

[RichardW]

We had an Ami that colour - probably bought around 1987, but even then it was in nothing like that condition IIRC Dad paid £150 for it as it smoked a bit, so really needed a new set of pistons and barrels - which it never got of course, and it soldiered on for a good 30k miles after that. By the end there was a good crop of mushrooms growing the passenger foot well, you couldn't open the passenger door, the heater was put on (from under the bonnet!) in about Oct, and left on till April - if it was too hot you opened the window or the dash vent, the alternator reg was knackered, so there was a switch on the dash to turn it off when the wipers started to go a bit fast. All good fun

[bxzx16v]

A nice addition to your family fleet Chris.

Mark

[Citroenmad]

Just a quick update here

The Ami is resisting a return to the road, its ready for its MOT now but carb problems have persisted so at the moment we have the carb and manifold off. We have all the parts to sort it now, its just having the time to get on with it! We're still hoping to have it on the road soon and definitely in time for the Raid Tan Hill run with the 2cvGB.

My Xantias continue as usual, they've had services, height corrector lubrications and have both recently passed their MOTs without advisories. I've been using the HDi for long distances as I always have but now the salt is appearing it'll get very infrequent use and the Activa is already in winter hibernation. I was surprised at how many miles my HDi Xantia has done within the last year, just under 4,500, giving it a total of 87,000.

My C1 does most of the daily duties and I'm very pleased with it, its coming up to 3000 miles now so thats slightly above what I had intended for it but my annual mileage is still quite high so it helps to spread my use with other cars.

I've recently bought another Rover 75, this one is identical to my first one in age, spec and engine but its in red this time. Its a pre-facelift (the one with the chrome!) 2004 Classic SE 1.8 manual saloon with 66K miles and in great shape with full history. I didn't really need another car, as you might imagine, but a late night looking on ebay got me this! For the moment I'm using this quite a bit, running to work in it and doing longer runs for it to prove itself, so far so good. It drives well, everything works and it requires very little doing. Im not sure what the long term plan is but I'll certainly keep it through winter to run alongside the C1 while the Xantias are away from the salt.

In other news I'm as busy as usual, working long days with not a huge amount of time to do a lot else, or so it often feels! I can't complain though and in general things are going well, I'm not in the career I thought I might be after finishing my degree but I'm working on it.

[CitroJim]

Excellent Chris and good to hear from you

You do have a weak spot for a Rover 75 don't you

I'm pleased you've resolved the Activa Alloy on the HDi question posed in another thread!

[Citroenmad]

Our C5 estate has been in the wars, almost two weeks ago someone pulled into the front side of it at a junction and did quite a bit of damage. Fortunately my dad was fine and was able to drive the car the half mile home, albeit in intermediate suspension height to stop the bumper digging into the wheel.



Looks fairly cosmetic before you start digging in to it. The bumper is obviously smashed, the wing and headlight too. However, the inner wing is very badly bent too, as is the metal crash bar which sits behind the bumper. The windscreen washer bottle is smashed, the aircon pipes are damaged and have leaked and the metal which holds the inner wing is bent and that is welded to the chassis rail and the wheel has been hit too. It's also not happy with the alarm being set but no air bags went off, which is quite surprising.

Given the age and value of the car I'd be very susprised if it gets repaired through the insurance, as the parts alone must outweigh the value of the car. However the insurance are dragging their feet as the coliding vehicle has now decided they were not at fault, given that they have driven into the side of the C5, I'm not sure how that stands. So its being a long process and the insurance won't provide a courtesy car either, unless we pay for it and claim half of the costs back. So for the time being my dad is running around in the 75. Hopefully the assessor will be out this Saturday and we will know if the car is being repaired or if we have to look for another car. Though it'll have to be as quick as possible as my dad uses the C5s load lugging abilities for his business.

The 75 is proving to be a very good buy, its done just short of 2000 miles in the month since buying it and its great. Apart from the CAT which seems to have came loose in the exhaust and is making a right racket, so I'll need to replace that before long. Its a well looked after car, 68K miles with full service history, a matching set of Michelins and a recent headgasket and timing belt replacement.

Here it is anyway, in its very fetching Copperleaf red:



The rest of the fleet are all behaving, the C15 and Xantias are in winter hibernation now and my new C1 is proving a fun commuter car for me. The Ami is still in the bad books and is in more bits than ever, however I think we're on the right track now ... still hoping to have it road going for Tan Hill with the 2cvGB club, but we'll see.

[Northern_Mike]

Glad to hear your dad is ok Chris, that's the most important thing. It's the season for it, with Davie, myself and now your dad having altercations with other vehicles or objects. What's wrong with the Ami? I'm curious about those things, it's one car I never got to own.

[Citroenmad]

What's wrong with the Ami? I'm curious about those things, it's one car I never got to own.

The Ami won't run properly, the carb has been rebuilt, new coil, condensor, points, plugs, leads, wiring checked, timing done, tappets done, etc. Since buying it it would idle but not rev, it backfires or cuts out. The compression is fine and when running the engine appears good and it will rev and handle load if the choke is out, but not in.

The spark at the plugs appears very weak and so thats what we're looking at now, though even renewing the power feed and negative wiring its still the same. Maybe we've fitted an equally faulty coil or condensor or something else but that seems unlikely.

Apart from that, its MOT ready

[addo]

Dying or backfiring when revved, is leaning out - first thing I'd check is the accelerator pump's squirt.

[Citroenmad]

Checked that, it's fine

[DickieG]

I take you set the points gap using a dwell meter rather than feeler gauges? If that doesn't cure it fit another condensor as they are so cheap but can cause loads of grief if they are duff, then look for wear in the distributor by swapping the timing light pick up from the first HT lead to the second to see if the timing mark moves away from the set position, if it does replace the dizzy.

The fact that richening the mixture by pulling out the choke allows the engine to rev doesn't necessarily mean the fault is simply a carb error as a rich mixture can overcome ignition failures.

[RichardW]

They'll be a long time looking for the dizzy on an A series......

[chopper602]

The spark at the plugs appears very weak and so thats what we're looking at now, though even renewing the power feed and negative wiring its still the same. Maybe we've fitted an equally faulty coil or condensor or something else but that seems unlikely.

It'll be the condensor, there seems to have been some bad batches of the things that are faulty to begin with.
Coil wouldn't normally cause a problem unless it gets hot (then you have a problem starting).

[Citroenmad]

Well after some more fiddling, borrowing some other carbs to try on and perseverance, the Ami runs!

In fact it's now very good indeed, so good that it sailed through its MOT yesterday

It's now taxed, tested and insured and ready for some light use to sort out any teething problems of being off the road for the past 28 years. I had it out last night and covered around 20 miles, got a few little things to sort but it's road going

More later ...