Citroen bx 17rd, now a fun dfaily commuter, repair updates.

[dean36014]

Hubcaps are going. It has two correct ones on the other side so need to find a matching pair

[Jim Bell]

Nice shootin, Tex!

[Dick Longbridge]

Looks tidy and white really suits them. Carpets are overrated, obvs.

[dean36014]

Been playing with it a bit today. Jet washed the engine so thats nice and clean. Then started on all the moss growing around the buklhead and inner wings. This revealed that the nearside bulkhead wasn't out and had filled up. Groping round in the goop and I couldn't feel a drainage hole. Drained it out using a bottle and sponge and found that a welded plate straight over where the hole should be. A grovel under the glove box area and I could see that the repair was straight over the rust and not been cut out. A faint trickle of water was coming in through the repair. So drilled a drainage hole, and tomorrow i need to clean up under the dash and seal the repair up properly. No other water came in through the bulkhead even though I drowned the area with the pressure washer so all good. will get the hose round the doors and windscreen and hopefully will be able to clean up the carpets and replace them soon. 

[somewhatfoolish]

Bodgetastic; that might explain the lack of carpet.

[carlo]

Love BXs but those earlier style seats seemed to give me acute backache after about five minutes.  Think it had something to do with the backrests being concave.

[dean36014]

Been looking at the history on this and made a discovery. Odometer reading is 173k approx, but the car drives fantastically tight. Had a look underneath and its all good with signs of being cared for at some point in its life. So had a closer delve into the mot history and found a discrepancy. In 2006 the mileage leapt by 73k, bit strange as its only been doing around 3k a year on average. The car is apparently called Bleriot, searching on the bx facebook group found mention of it being brought with a mileage of 93k and a suitcase full of history files. Got in contact with a previous owner who confirmed a speedo change back in 2006 so in reality its low mileage at around 100k, bonus! Managed to sort out one water leak on the passenger side, a welded over drain hole in the bulkhead. Still got a small leak on the offside to find at some point. Pressured washed the carpets so they are slightly less minging now. Now i know its reasonably solid I'm selling the ZX and hopefully got someone interested in it viewing this weekend. In over news my lodger has decided he's leaving, so finances had took a major hit now. Undecided wether to have another lodger or try and muddle through to next summer. 

[dean36014]

Just a little update on this, its now in use as my daily and has been proving a reliable and fun way to commute. Repairs have been mainly rust related. The drivers A post was rotten and had to be rebuilt. The screen surround was also holed in various places and had to be welded up and plates let in. So it went from this,

Screen out, welding all done and drove round with patches of primer all around the screen covering the repairs. now after a weekend using halfords finest paint products i finally got round to filling, priming and painting the screen sides and front of the roof. I'm pretty pleased with how its turned out. Whole car needs going over with the polishing mop next and a new screen rubber trim to be purchased as the 30 year old original has gone hard and brittle.

Other jobs done were to find out why the bonnet hit the scuttle panel when opening it resulting in a knackered bonnet and scuttle panel. This was found to be a bent drivers side bonnet hinge caused by a previous accident. Other jobs have been to try and sort out the noisy air intake. The correct air filter made no difference, binning the metal replacement pipe reduced it by a tiny amount. The problem is the original air intake pipe was made of a cardboard like material with a fopam inner to reduce the noise and holes in the pipe to reduce the noise effect too. A long search ended up with me with no original pipes to be found so i had a go at making something. A plastic intake pipe was wrapped in acoustic foam with a foil outer, holes drilled through and fitted. This reduced the noise to acceptable levels but does make the bonnet fit slightly high on the passenger side due to the thickness of the new pipe and it rubbing the bonnet! A small price to pay in my book. Sorted out the soft seat bases and crumbling foam by stripping them down and adding 25mm of dense foam underneath, drivers seat is now superbly comfortable again. The four wheels were fitted off the ex barret estate which is sitting patiently in the queue to be attended too. Its averaging around 40mpg knocking backwards and forwards to work and the lack of power steering and slightly wider tyres is doing wonders for my arm muscles. Mot runs out end of January and I'm hoping it will go through with a few repairs.