Also, be careful when ordering Citroen paint by paint code, in the mid 1990s they changed paint supplier and many of the colours changed slightly, but they kept using the same paint codes. For example Meteor grey (early) and Silex (storm) grey (later) are different colours but both have the code ETW.
There may not be a later formulation of GDY, but be aware.
Thanks for that, should be exactly what I need.
From the feel of it I reckon someone has reassembled the mechanism for the accelerator pump incorrectly or there's a spring missing. Feels like the plunger is stuck at the far end of its travel.
Current fleet:
07 Volvo V70 SE D5, 88 Renault 25 Monaco, 85 Sinclair C5, 84 Trabant 601S, 75 Rover 3500, 73 AC Model 70.
You should be able to rev it up without the Accel pump, as long as you go slowly. The acc pump mostly just stops it leaning out and stumbling if you snap the throttle open. I'm sure on the Visa the nozzle on the pump was blocked with petrol gum.
The squirt of fuel when suddenly opening the throttle is an ancient Solex-etc fixed-jet feature.
Be careful NOT to peer down the carb ports* with engine running, to inspect/test! A weak mix backfire can easily remove eyebrows . How do I know??
white exec wrote: 21 Feb 2021, 16:40
The squirt of fuel when suddenly opening the throttle is an ancient Solex-etc fixed-jet feature.
Be careful NOT to peer down the carb ports with engine running, to inspect/test! A weak mix backfire can easily remove eyebrows . How do I know??
Would that be similar to trying to light a cigarette on the gas hob
Oh don't worry, I've been playing with carbs long enough to have lost eyebrows and facial hair more than once!
A decent wash can make quite a difference.
Bit of moss on the bumpers...
Didn't go crazy under here, just knocked the worst of the gunk off, not least the aluminium oxide dust that was absolutely everywhere.
One of the main water ingress points I reckon was the passenger front window as it had come out of the runners and wasn't closed quite all the way. The gutters being totally choked so the water was just running straight off the roof into the door seals won't have helped either.
A really nice touch is how much on this car is colour coded...gear lever and handbrake both are which is a nice touch.
After another load of treatments the dash is starting to look a lot better.
If I can coerce the carb to behave enough to let her run for more than a minute at a time tomorrow (I should just take the blasted needle valve out and see if it's full of gunk) it'll probably be the point at which I get the oil changed. Will probably be the last time for a bit though as a few jobs need done which will affect running ability.
[] Carb needs to come off so I can try to get the accelerator pump working.
[] Rear spheres *desperately* need changing.
[] Dash needs to come to bits to sort out the plethora of dead lamps...the fact that neither the low coolant or overheat lights work makes me nervous. Though I did determine the cooling fan works yesterday.
[] Stealing the fuel pump back now I've proven the one on the car is an issue - which will immobilise the car until the new one arrives.
Edit: forgot to add, here's the VIN, curious to see what data that makes available. Redacted now it's served its purpose - hopefully I've copied that down correctly.
Last edited by Zelandeth on 22 Feb 2021, 12:47, edited 1 time in total.
Current fleet:
07 Volvo V70 SE D5, 88 Renault 25 Monaco, 85 Sinclair C5, 84 Trabant 601S, 75 Rover 3500, 73 AC Model 70.
The VIN isn't being recognised, Zel. Can you check it?
Have tried VF7**************[VIN obfuscated, can be read by forum staff].......etc, but that not recognised either.
The VIN is a common issue with older cars - and the BX is no exception here, so can't be used on the main Citroen database for parts information now. It may because the vehicle is quite an early one or that they are retiring older data now. It will be the same if you go to the dealer - they also can't pull up spares data for these early models.
But there are parts on the Classic Heritage site Zel. including carb repair kits.
Chris, the Vin is clearly visible in the first picture of the engine bay - highlighted in yellow!
As far as I can see, the only mistake that Zel made was as you've noted - '7' in position 3. I just logged in to Service Box and got the same result as you. Perhaps the database doesn't go back that far?
As an alternative, I tried just selecting 'BX', expecting to be asked for some details. To my surprise all BXes seem to be lumped together - under Engine Block there are 11 separate items - presumably all unique!
Last edited by Armidillo on 22 Feb 2021, 12:46, edited 1 time in total.
The VIN is correct - no '7' in it as you would expect. I've seen similar BXs with the same VIN format. It's just age-related and a time when they didn't really have the electronic systems in place - it was all on microfiche or paper. So a lot of the info was never transferred over to the main database used now on a model by model basis for these early vehicles.
Shame it doesn't provide a direct lookup of all the vehicle details, but that's how it is sometimes. Also have a typo in the VIN on the V5 document to deal with!
It is an early car, someone on another forum was able to pull the build date from the RP number apparently and it came back as November 83, so only four months into the BX's run in the UK if I'm right in saying it was launched here in August.
Thanks for the link to the classic parts site, may be useful. The carb has had a repair kit installed in the last couple of years so I'm hoping I'm just seeing an assembly error where the accelerator pump is concerned. The misbehaving float needle valve should hopefully be easier to sort... there's not much that can really *be* wrong with that!
Current fleet:
07 Volvo V70 SE D5, 88 Renault 25 Monaco, 85 Sinclair C5, 84 Trabant 601S, 75 Rover 3500, 73 AC Model 70.
Armidillo wrote: 22 Feb 2021, 12:01
As an alternative, I tried just selecting 'BX', expecting to be asked for some details. To my surprise all BXes seem to be lumped together - under Engine Block there are 11 separate items - presumably all unique!
Run into that issue earlier (when checking out BX radiators), to find those for all engines/models lumped together in a long list.
Common problem with earlier model versions, eg XM I - long lists; XM II - well differentiated by model and engine type.
Am surprised to find 17-digit VINs coming up as "unknown", even if parts not covered.
Considering that the first Intel 286 PC came out at the same time as the early BX(1982), I know the dealers were working on microfiche for parts look up at the time. My indy garage still had the complete system when working on my XM back in the early 90s. So not surprising that by the time widespread computerisation came in that they were unlikely to retrospectively computerise the data for these early models. I think the BX estates lasted until about 1994 with the hatchbacks fizzling out a year before.
There were two separate issues I'd been having. One was that initially I struggled to get things primed at all - this was quickly traced to the fuel pump being very weak - which it definitely is. However even with a known good electric fuel pump fitted I was still having a huge hassle actually getting fuel into the float bowl.
Today I decided to dig into things to find out what on earth was going on there. With the top off the carb the mystery was solved the moment I removed the float bowl needle valve (the needle and seat are an integral assembly in this carb) and I found this.
The thing which interested me the most if it's not clear from that photo is this...
I assume that this little ball is meant to be part of a check valve, probably to assist in stopping the fuel draining back to the tank. However for it to work as intended it would need to have a spring under it, without a spring it would simply sit quite happily against the fuel inlet port under gravity...only sealing more tightly as fuel pressure was applied. Essentially working nicely as a check valve...just in the wrong direction! Clearly the reason that I was really struggling to get any fuel into the carb. For the time being, I've removed the ball, bagged, labelled and stored it with the rest of the spares in the car.
I'll see if I can find a suitably tiny spring shortly and use that to refit it. Though it's not shown on either of the diagrams I have for the carb...which leads me to think there are two possibilities. 1. It actually belongs somewhere totally different in the carb (I know something is amiss with the accelerator pump). Or 2, that it's a later addition to the design (no idea if this carb is original to the car, given the mileage it's entirely likely it was replaced years ago) so not on my old diagrams.
For now though this has resulted in a car which starts first touch and *stays* running properly.
With a view to getting it run properly up to temperature for a while (not least to try to dry off some of the moisture I'd introduced to the engine bay yesterday when I attacked it with the pressure washer), I went to stick a couple of gallons of fresh fuel in. This went fine right up to about a third of the way through the second can when this happened.
Which took me a second to realise was because the tank actually appears to be full.
Despite the claims of the gauge!
The gauge never even twitches from the stop. I'm hoping that this is a grounding issue at the tank or a faulty sender rather than a fault with the gauge itself as finding a replacement for that I would expect to be quite a challenge.
With fuel delivery behaving itself and the engine properly up to temperature I was able to tweak the idle down to a slightly more sensible level, think it was sitting at about 1800rpm before.
With the carb behaving itself better I did another little experiment...Spot the difference?
Yep, she's running on the original fuel pump. I know from testing that it's weak though so it'll be changed as soon as the replacement arrives. I wanted the Invacar's pump back though as I'd like to be able to drive that again.
Trying to decide which job to tackle next on the BX. Fuel pump is scheduled to be here Thursday, so probably pull the carb and see if I can sort the accelerator pump. Oil change is waiting on the correct filter arriving - nowhere locally could source one so I had to resort to eBay.
Hoping once the fuel pump is changed, if I can also get the carb fully behaving that will get the car *running* reasonably well. Then I'll feel more free to tackle the less fundamental but more involved jobs like sorting out the instruments, trying to get the heater blower working etc.
Do have one obvious suspension job to do - the strut gaiter on the nearside has totally disintegrated.
Not particularly surprising to be honest, and simple enough to sort - albeit a bit of a faff because of the amount of stuff you need to dismantle to get to it as I recall. I've done this job on a Xantia a couple of times albeit a number of years ago - I'm assuming the process is pretty similar.
One real good thing from today as well is that I think I've tracked down one of the main spots where water is getting into the cabin.
This is the only place I've actually seen water dripping in, and the passenger footwell is by far the wettest bit of the car. This seems to be coming from the intake grill for the fresh air vent, guessing the gasket has just failed due to old age. Re-sealing that should be pretty simple hopefully.
There's a bit of damp in there though - not helped by the heater blower currently being dead. The rear window heater kind of almost works...
While having a rummage around in the boot I found the bits of trim that are currently missing from the front wings, just need to get some really good strong double sided foam tape so I can reattach those as it will tidy the car up no end.
Also discovered that the low coolant warning light does work (on test at least), just the test button has some seriously scratchy contact issues going on.
Feels like a pretty productive day though. Figured out why the carb has been playing up, got it running far better, found what looks to be a major contributor to the water ingress, found a couple of bits of trim I was missing and am just waiting on a couple of parts now to move forward really.
Question for those of you who know these cars better than me...How do you get into these switches to change the lamps?
The one in the hazard light switch is dead...Rear window heater one works nicely though. Likewise and tips on getting the instrument panel out? Given how much of a reputation these cars have for brittle plastics I'm guessing "carefully" is high on the list.
Current fleet:
07 Volvo V70 SE D5, 88 Renault 25 Monaco, 85 Sinclair C5, 84 Trabant 601S, 75 Rover 3500, 73 AC Model 70.
. How do I know??
Been there, done that 
