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Talbot's selection of historic chod. Mainly French, in no particular order.


Talbot

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Another few CX's to go.

 

This one wasn't mine, but I did a fair amount of work on it, and drove it a fair bit, so I'm going to include it here.

 

It's a GTi Turbo 2, with black leather and functional airconditioning. Rare.

 

post-3568-0-08677100-1521028156_thumb.jpg

 

And also slightly wonky. This was changing the steering-rack end balljoints. The CX has a rubber bushing buit into the steering rack inner joints (which are thankfully accessable without removing the rack gaiters). This rubber deteriorates, and leaves you with very wobbly steering. Replacement parts are generally just as bad as worn ones.

 

 

This one is filling the gearbox with oil. One lovely feature of the CX gearbox is that it has a teeny-tiny dipstick, meaning you can get the level spot on. It also doubles as a rather easy place to fill with oil, although the access, like most things in the CX, is a nob.

 

post-3568-0-44862100-1521028336_thumb.jpg

 

 

This airflow meter was the reason I had anything to do with the car in the first place. A local garage to the owner had made a complete balls-up of doing some work to the car, and had maliciously played eeny-meeny-miney-mo with the connections to make the car not run properly. Took me the longest time to work out what was wrong with the car, which eventually involved me stripping the dashboard out so that I could trace the wiring from the ECU to the AFM and get it hooked back up again correctly.

 

post-3568-0-52251800-1521028477_thumb.jpg

 

It never was set up quite correctly, and I suspect it could have done with a new AFM, as it was more economic at 90MPH than it was at 60MPH. (ahem, officer) Noticeably so too.. 90MPH saw high-30's MPG, whereas cruising at 50-60MPH yielded high 20's MPG. No amount of adjusting and tuning would sort it.

 

Annoyingly, not long after these pictures, the owner sold the car for peanuts, and shortly thereafter the new owner was involved in a crash. The car was blatantly repairable, but was written off CAT B, so lost forever. I should have bought it when I had the opportunity.

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Another few CX's to go.

 

....GTi Turbo 2, with black leather and functional airconditioning. Rare.

Mine was functional, but one of the six previous owners felt he could live without it, so took off the drive belt. It's been like that ever since.

 

 

This one is filling the gearbox with oil. One lovely feature of the CX gearbox is that it has a teeny-tiny dipstick, meaning you can get the level spot on. It also doubles as a rather easy place to fill with oil,

Engine oil dipstick has dashboard repeater gauge as well. Never had that on any previous car. Quite clever.

 

Can't remember where the automatic gearbox oil filler is.

 

although the access, like most things in the CX, is a nob.....

*hollow laughter*

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Last CX. This was bought on a complete whim. I knew full well about the issues of OMGHGF on DTR Turbo 2 models, but still bought it. Seen here hiding the massive dents in the driver's door with a handy BX.

 

post-3568-0-27830300-1521030411_thumb.jpg

 

That fairly large mess on the front wing is *after* I beat merry shit out of it with a clubhammer so that it didn't foul the wheel on the lowest suspension setting, and it actually looked vaguely car-shaped, rather than whatever-the-fuck-it-hit-shaped. Bodywork was not this vehicle's strong point.

 

And nor was it's engine. Within no time at all, it was beginning to loose coolant, and sure enough, when left with a long pipe up from one of the cylinder-head high spots, there were many many bubbles in the pipe.

 

post-3568-0-01053000-1521030523_thumb.jpg

 

Like almost all of my cars, rather than actually fix the damn thing, it got left in my barn area, then moved to my parents' barn when I left that house, and only recently got sold. By the time I got shot of it, the offside was rotten, the engine completely siezed due to corrosion, (presumably from water in the combustion chambers) and the interior looked like a skip. Someone very kindly came and took it away for scrap money.

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That will be one of the former cars to have worn XAN71A as is currently on my Activa. Think this poor thing has had something like five plate changes over the years!

 

Still have much want for a CX, not likely to happen given what they change hands for these days and how much of a commitment that running one is...

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Just don't do it.

 

Look at them in museums. Look at them on here. Marvel at the specification for a 1974 vehicle. Have a ride as a passeger in one. Maybe even have a drive of one if you can find a willing* owner.

 

Just whatever you do, for the love of all that is precious, do not buy one. A good one is hard work. A rough one is a complete money pit.

 

You'd be better off doing this:

 

burning-money.jpg

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That will be one of the former cars to have worn XAN71A as is currently on my Activa. Think this poor thing has had something like five plate changes over the years!

 

Still have much want for a CX, not likely to happen given what they change hands for these days and how much of a commitment that running one is...

 

That plate is what will keep the value of your Xantia stable, long after all the others have devalued.

 

Asking prices and what CXs actually change hands for is a matter of some debate. The halo model is the GTi Turbo 2, followed by the T1 (preferably a Series 1), the Prestige Turbos, then probably the early S1 GTi 2400. The rest (including, unfortunately, my S2 GTi Auto) are nowhere, though it hasn't stopped someone asking £9500 for an S2 TRS 22, or a dealer asking £13,400 for an S2 GTi Auto (LHD, because Japan)

 

Just don't do it.

 

Look at them in museums. Look at them on here. Marvel at the specification for a 1974 vehicle. Have a ride as a passeger in one. Maybe even have a drive of one if you can find a willing* owner.

 

Just whatever you do, for the love of all that is precious, do not buy one. A good one is hard work. A rough one is a complete money pit.

 

You'd be better off doing this:

 

burning-money.jpg

 

Too late for me.  :mrgreen:

 

Already deep in the world of discovery - the independent starter (it starts when it wants to), the horn that will unaccountably stop working for no apparent reason, the comedy ventilation.

 

C'est si bon.

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ventilation.

What, yours has some???

 

Oh, the window fell off it's runner. That doesn't count.

 

horn that will unaccountably stop working for no apparent reason,

One year at little Horwood CX meeting, (before it became the CXM meeting) I donned my 1992-era Citroen overalls and was wandering around fixing *everyones* horn. Of the 50-ish CX's there, I repaired about 12 of them and got them working properly. Broken compressors, cracked pipes, knackered relays etc.etc.

 

At one point, the number of people testing them at the same time became deafening.

 

IIRC I only admitted defeat on one car, where the compressor was so utterly buggered that it was barely even fit for the scrap pile.

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What, yours has some???

It's more like a form of fog rather than ventilation....

 

.....wandering around fixing *everyones* horn. Of the 50-ish CX's there, I repaired about 12 of them and got them working properly. Broken compressors, cracked pipes, knackered relays etc.etc....

Previous owner didn't bother with trying to fix the compressor, and plumbed in an electric horn in parallel. It is this electric horn which takes frequent flyer holidays.

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What, yours has some???

 

Bugger, you beat me to it!

 

It was always hot in mine and I could never figure out if the heating was stuck on, or if it was heat coming through the transmission tunnel from the gearbox.  I suspect the latter...

 

That will be one of the former cars to have worn XAN71A as is currently on my Activa. Think this poor thing has had something like five plate changes over the years!

 

I *knew* that plate was yours!  It's been papped in my chod thread, while on a previous car.

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....Still have much want for a CX, not likely to happen given what they change hands for these days and how much of a commitment that running one is...

Sent you a link to one that's just after popping up on eBay. It might need a bit of work, but it is a (more desirable) Series 1.....

 

Do you dare?

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At £350, I would. At what it will sell for I would not.

 

Seller was on Arsebook this morning commenting that he's only just bought it, but has had a fairly major change in family circumstances (totally understandable) and needs it gone quick. A cheeky offer might see that bought for a lot less than you might think IF you can give the guy a fast hassle-free sale.

 

Not for me at the moment.

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There's still a fair few knocking about in France, I'd be sourcing one over there and getting some HOT COLUMN SHIFT ACTION!

Appears you are very much correct there. Certainly if leboncoin is anything to go by, then there are many of these still kicking about and in sensible daily use.

 

This one:

 

post-3568-0-56923500-1521458312_thumb.jpg

 

Appears to be a carbon copy of my C25, just with the steering wheel on the other side, the sliding door on the other side and some HOT COLUMN SHIFT ACTION! :)

 

Also, if my fairly rudimentary French is anything to go by, it's quite low miles and is fairly rot-free. At €2400 with current exchange rates it's over £2k though. (would have been £1600 about 2 years ago...) Seems the French do actually value older vehicles. Getting it back to the UK would be easy-peasy, but I just don't have the £2.5k I'd need to throw at this to have it on the road over here.

 

Edit: Having had a look at some more C25s on LemonCoin, it seems the prices for them vary massively. I've seen them down at €700 or so, and up as high as €7500 for a very very tidy low mileage 2.5 turbo 4x4 model. (which I really rrrrreeeeeeeaaaallly want, but could never justify). The campers seem to make similar-ish money as in the uk, anything from €2000 for a tattyish converted van to €10k for a really nice LWB version.

 

The €2400 asking price for this one seems a bit steep actually, as it's got a fairly massive dent in the front wing, and similarly battered-but-useable C25/J5s seem to be between €1000 and €1500. Even if I could beat the seller down to something like €1500 (which would be a big ask) that's still £1300 to spend on the vehicle, plus travel, insurance etc.etc. and the thick end of £2k to spend to get it on the road in the UK. I know that's not a massive amount to import a vehicle and make it road legal, but it's at least £1500 more than I can justify on a vehicle at the moment and a similar amount more than I spent putting my C25 on the road. Albeit over a decade ago now.

 

Nutz.

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Appears you are very much correct there. Certainly if leboncoin is anything to go by, then there are many of these still kicking about and in sensible daily use.

 

This one:

 

attachicon.gif9f490be927539749a0dd64549f12dfc9adc5c660.jpg

 

Appears to be a carbon copy of my C25, just with the steering wheel on the other side, the sliding door on the other side and some HOT COLUMN SHIFT ACTION! :)

 

Also, if my fairly rudimentary French is anything to go by, it's quite low miles and is fairly rot-free. Over £2k though. Seems the French do actually value older vehicles. Getting it back to the UK would be easy-peasy, but I just don't have the £2.5k I'd need to throw at this to have it on the road over here.

My experience of older vans in France is that they hold their values when the still have useful life in them when old rather than for sentimental value or anything. C15's still make quite a lot particularly as long as they are diesel. I have a J5 in France - 10% of the values HY's make as they are not seen as particularly useful or collectible. C25's still make a fair amount over there as they are useable - they end up used by people who don't need to go far or are not in a hurry but still need a van. Here are some vans being used last summer by autojumblers.  Tidier than most by far. Still loads of old vans for sale in France unlike the UK.

post-20142-0-90471700-1521473386_thumb.jpg

post-20142-0-90796700-1521473505_thumb.jpg

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oooohhh... A C35. Completely overshadowed by the J5 range, but still very funky. LHM brakes IIRC.

 

Just poked Citroen C35 into Leboncoin, and blimey... over a dozen for sale! And don't old vans hold their value over there. The cheapest one I found quickly was €500, and is fucked:

 

to repair or for parts, split engine block, following absence antifreeze, wooden floor, new starter, immobilized for ten years, 190 000 km.

Wow.

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Very few pre-2000 vans on the market in the UK that aren't completely and utterly fucked and deserve to be in the "fuck me what were they thinking, just scrap it" thread.

FTFY. Most vans beyond about 15 years in the UK are ronnied. Utterly completely and 100% bollocksed. A very very rare few are not, and they even more rarely come up for sale. I am looking on Leboncoin quite a bit now.

 

Does anyone know what websites tend to be used to sell vehicles in Germany or Belgium? I recon there's a fair market in either of those countries too, and from my point of view most of Germany and France is closer than Scotland..

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Italy (and more so in the South) is another country where they literally squeeze as much workable life out of their vans and commercial vehicles as possible. It's not unusual to see 35-40 year old Lorries still playing a trade, and early Ducatos are still numerous in Sicily.

 

Having just come back from France, despite a lot of them being coated in graffiti or dents or both, old vans are widespread.

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... fixing *everyones* horn. Of the 50-ish CX's there, I repaired about 12 of them and got them working properly. Broken compressors, cracked pipes, knackered relays etc.etc....

 

It has just occurred to me that the horn is the one part that doesn't get a mention in the Haynes Book Of Lies.

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Time for the next vehicle type: BX.

 

When the old Andyspares forum became FrenchCarForum, I joined up. Quite quickly, it was clear on there that there was quite a lot of following for the BX. I quite fancied one too, so went looking for one.

 

After looking at a few, and an abortive journey to try to pick up a MK1 Diesel, I found what can only be described as the holy grail of MK1 BXs, a DIGIT. It was offered for sale at very little money, and was in London. Having been caught out before with trying to get the train and drive a car back, I decided the solution was a trailer.

 

I have no picture of the trailer on it's own, but I think I can safely say it was the shittest trailer I have ever had the misfortune of using. It was rotten, bald tyres, brakes that don't work, and I think about three filaments in the tail lamps worked. I cannot believe I actually paid money to hire it.

 

Still, dragged it up to London and found the sellers address. Nice older couple. Bloke has had the car for quite a few years, but now it needs work, so he wants shot of it. I can't remember how much I offered for it, but it wasn't a lot, but it was based on the fact that I was not going to break it up for spares. He was happy with that. About this time their son turns up, and what a complete wanker he is. Starts getting shirty with me for "ripping his parents off" and "The car's got to be worth at least £300 mate" etc.etc. I try to be reasonable with him, but he's being a twat. His mother tells him to shut up and back off, but he's still being arsy about it. Comments like "Nice trailer out there, shame if it goes back empty" etc.

 

So, after his mother has shooed the son away, I finish the transaction and we go out to go and deal with the car. Start getting ramps out and moving the car etc, and son turns up again being quite threatening again, telling me to fuck off, as he's called a scrapper to take it away as I'm ripping his parents off, and he doesn't want me to have it. Both Father and Mother are now telling son to back off and go away. He's having none of it, so having driven the car on to the trailer, I decide that the handbrake being on and the ramps up at the back is plenty to keep the car on, get into the towcar and fuck off sharpish. As I'm winding my way out of the estate, sure enough a transit flatbed with a hiab on it is coming the other way. He clearly doesn't know what's going on and allows me to go past, but then has a good look at the trailer, realises it's the car he's been called to collect and starts shouting out of his window.

 

Fuckity fuck. Boot it. Get the fuck away from this insanity ASAFP. Transit is trying to turn around, but he hasn't got the space and is now blocked by other traffic. Last I see in my mirror he's decided not to turn around and is presumably off to the address to find out what's going on. I get out onto a main road and now have the dilemma that I have no desire to stop, but the BX is still not strapped down. Well, the trailer has a big fold-up ramp at the back, so it's not going to fall off, and if I have to do a big stop, the BX will just hit the front of the trailer. OK, stuff it, keep going. About 3 miles later I found a nice big petrol station with CCTV, so pulled in there to put a couple of straps on the car. Still didn't hang about, and got on the motorway as quickly as I could. Never heard another peep out of the seller or his twat of a son.

 

So, what had I bought?

 

This:

 

post-3568-0-87591600-1521569173_thumb.jpg

 

With this dashboard:

 

post-3568-0-47009200-1521569217_thumb.jpg

 

And, for anyone who's never seen them before.. these controls:

 

post-3568-0-15954500-1521569243_thumb.jpg

 

post-3568-0-78491000-1521569254_thumb.jpg

 

And a reasonable amount of damage:

 

post-3568-0-97020600-1521569281_thumb.jpg

 

post-3568-0-24684600-1521569311_thumb.jpg

 

and here's what I wrote about it, some 13 years ago now...

 

What a funky car! From the looks of the car, it wasn't actually marketed as a "BX DIGIT", but as a 1985 BX GT with a DIGIT dashboard. It's badged BX GT (shame, no digit badge) but appears to have all the digit stuff present.

The main dash works, but the smaller display underneath, linked to the fuel computer doesn't. A couple of the legoland PRN buttons are a bit dodgey (mainly headlamp flash and horn) but most of it appears to be fine. The digit dash doesn't appear to dim with the headlamps, or have any backlighting, so I'm guessing that there may be a fault there, but I'm not sure.

Other problems with the car: Front suspension is rather creaky, and obviously rather stiff. I think the cylinders are past their best. Gearbag linkage is loose as you like... it's vague to say the least, and it's a BE1/5 box, which have slightly different linkages to the BE3/5. Thankfully I have a spare from a very early 405.

Front wiper motor is loose. Rear doesn't work. Aux drivebelt squeals like pigs on honeymoon, so I think that's a little loose! The pressure regulator re-cycles about every 20-30 seconds, so accumulator a bit low maybe? There's a fair bit of minor damage to the bodywork here and there, including one of the rear pillarlights coming un-bonded.

Good bits though: Interior is in good shape. Engine runs well. Suspension goes up and down, and does take several hours to drop, so it can't be all bad. Rear is very smooth in it's operation.

All in all it's not bad for 20 years old. I shall have to see if there's anything that can be done to get the whole of the DIGIT dash working, as it's fantastic, in a mid-80's vacuum-flourescent kind of way!

I'm now on the prowl for any information about the dashboard and fuel computer, as althouth the car came with a book of service history about an inch thick, it doesn't have the owners handbook with it, so I don't know what it's supposed to do!

Like so many things, I managed to do the square-root of fuck-all with this car while I owned it. It was always a "do it later" car, and later never came. It sat around in various places on my drive for many many years, slowly deteriorating:

 

post-3568-0-69462400-1521569559_thumb.jpg

 

post-3568-0-35351100-1521569580_thumb.jpg

 

post-3568-0-27060500-1521569650_thumb.jpg

 

I had the skillz and equipment to fix this, just never did. Unfortunately, when I got shooed out of that address in 2011, I still had the car there and it ended up being taken away for free, on the basis that I was to get first refusal when the buyer wanted shot. To the annoyance of me and many others on the BXclub forum, it ended up disappearing for a few years, had a rather crap restoration and then disappeared again.

 

Oddly, it's popped back up as part of the JLR private collection sell-off. I still feel like I have a claim to this car, as it wasn't really supposed to go away for free, and the fact that it did meant that I should have been contacted when it was due to be moved on again. The fairly traumatic collection caper for it alone means I feel I've got "invested emotion" in it!

 

More BX to come.

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Brightwells reckon it's the only one left now

Brightwells are wrong. There are at least two others known about in the UK, although they are well hidden away in private collections.

 

I still have a spare DIGIT speedo head from where I was going to build one good working one out of two. I wonder if it even works properly now.

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