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


Talbot

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Speaking of "doing the Citroens".. Next BX.

 

I didn't want or need this BX, but that odd thing happens that when people discover you have a particular model of older car, they mention "ooh, I know where there's another one of them available". Well, good-oh... I already have one, why would I need ano... oh, go on then. Lets have a look.

 

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A 1988 19DTR. Wasn't in bad condition, but I had no need for it, not a great deal of a clue what I was doing with BXs yet, and only grabbed it as it was free and otherwise destined for scrap.

 

 

Here it is with the Digit:

 

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And here it is a fair while later on, beginning to be pilfered for bits:

 

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Definitely having bits ripped off it now:

 

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It eventually ended up rather in the way, so I scrapped most of it, but kept this bit:

 

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Which actually turned out to be well worthwhile, as I had the alternator, starter, HP pump and cylinder head off at various points, all of which were very useful to repair other cars. Saved a fortune on parts, and had the benefit of being available at 10pm / sunday afternoon / whenever I needed them.

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I'm not entirely sure which BX came next. I think it was this one...

 

Found in a newspaper advert (remember when people used to do that!!) for the massive sum of £80. A TZD TURBO... OOoo! A faster one. Have to have a look at that. Just about that time my Sister decided that she actually did need to learn to drive, and so needed a car in which to do so. BX should do fine for that, so we went off to look at said BX.

 

Turns out it was a tidy, clean car. Ran well, felt ok. Minimal history and about 3 minutes MOT left, but what do you want for £80. Still beat the guy down to £50 as one side rear arm bearing was utterly buggered:

 

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You can even see where one of the rolling elements had jammed at about 70° to where it should have been and was merrily mashing it's way through the casting:

 

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I had also done a timing belt on it as soon as it was home:

 

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But it wasn't until getting it back I suddenly noticed the additional pipes under the bonnet, and the fact that it had an alloy sump. Inside, anyone who knows MK2 BXs will recognise that I had been very very blind:

 

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Yep. Only an A/C model! and it even worked a bit. Clearly not working properly, as a good BX A/C system is comparable only to the arctic in how cold it is, but nevertheless, it's there.

 

After that, my sister used it to learn in, and even passed her test in it.

 

At some point, some utter twat reversed into it and damaged the rear door, so I managed to source another red one from a BXforum member.. fitted perfectly:#

 

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It also ended up needing some repair work for it's MOT... BXs don't half hold some mud behind the back bumper:

 

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The rear exhaust hanger has corroded out on a BX? NEVER!!!

 

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After my Sister ran it for a while, she decided to buy something more modern, so I ended up with it and didn't really know what to do with it. So I sold it on the BX forum. I believe it ended up being parts-raided for the A/C system, but lost touch as to what happened eventually.

 

To take it to it's new owner, It went on the back of another BX on my braked A-Frame:

 

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I wasn't overly keen on this, as the back of a BX (the towcar) is quite lightweight, and I was worried about the rear car pushing the back of the towcar about somewhat.

 

I'll just shove this in here.. That'll help.

 

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This engine was actually off to mat_the_cat's place, as he was then using it to fix a friend's ZX estate. It was actually the wrong specification engine, as the ZX should have had an oval-port XUD9A, but this was a square-port XUD9 from a Peugeot309, so the ZX managed to lose 5hp in the process. Still, a working engine is a working engine.

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Another BX that I got for very little money, although I really can't remember how much. This was a MK1 17RD (the slowest of the slow BXs) and it was never destined for anything other than being a parts donor for the DIGIT. This came back to Talbot Towers on my braked A-frame, which meant the engine had to be running for the brakes to work.

 

Absolutely everything on this car was biggered. The interior had dissolved, the body was rotten, the LHM was like mud and the engine smoked like a laboratory Beagle. I towed it all the way back from somewhere near Grimsby very late one night, while feeling like crap, wondering just what the hell I was doing.

 

Here it is next to the Digit. I think it may be the only picture I have of it other than hiding in the background of other pictures.

 

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I kept the front wings off it for the DIGIT, but binned the rest of it. It was shit.

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This engine was actually off to mat_the_cat's place, as he was then using it to fix a friend's ZX estate.

I remember that night well. It rained.

 

But the engine outlasted the rest of the car...not quick but sweet running and reliable. More so than the original on which I had done a HG change, only for the problem to reoccur after 3 days. Either a major cock up on my part or something more seriously wrong with the engine. Either way it left my mate without transport, so a real godsend to get a replacement engine at short notice :-)

 

2008/9 was it?

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25th Feb 2008. Just over a decade ago now. How is that even possible?

 

It rained an awful lot that evening! I remember bits of the journey well, as I came over the "scenic route" to get to you, which was more terrifying than scenic given the weather conditions.

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  • 2 months later...

Next BX, and one that I kept for a fair while:

 

A 1989 DTR Turbo. This is the car shown above gaining an additional engine in it's boot, and was also the BX that I held on to for the longest. It was also proof that cars are cheap when you don't need one: I had a car on the road at the time, but this was advertised on BXclub as needing a water pump, but had a full tank of diesel, several months of Tax, nearly a year MOT, a brand new octopus (which anx BX owner will know is an arse of a job) and a taped up sunroof, all for the huge sum of £60.

 

I was off like a thingy up a wotsit to go and buy it!

 

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It got given a cambelt and water pump, and was ready for service. Except I had no need for another car at the moment.

 

As luck* would have it, my landlord at the time had just sold one of his cars and hadn't replaced it, so needed a runabout for a few months while they get another car.. so in the interests of Landlord-tennant harmony, I lent it to him. I had no intention of charging him for it.. he was very tolerant of my vehicular shenannigans at his home, especially as he lived not 30' away from me. Nevertheless, when I got the car back, he'd put another 6 months tax on it, which was nice.

 

Shortly after I got it back, a friend asked if I had a spare car available, as a friend of hers was in a similar predicament. Yes, actually, no problem. We agreed on a "rent" of £1 a day and she was thrilled. Loved the car too. I got it back after another 3-4 months of service, just as the MOT was due to expire.

 

Shoved it in, and it passes first time. Unbefuckinglievable!

 

Not long thereafter, I decide I'm going to use it, so that's when it starts throwing a wobbly, obviously. First the alternator brushes wore down to nothing, with no warning, as the no-charge warning lamp won't work without the brushes connection present, meaning no warning lamp and no charge!:

 

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Which meant stealing the alternator from the chopped-off front of a BX shown earlier.

 

Then the battery clamps fell to bits. Useless PSA lead battery clamp shite:

 

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Then the exhaust became rather ventilated:

 

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So I cheated. As I had use of a vehicle lift, I took the exhaust off and welded it up. Completely. Not only the leaky bits, but also all the clamps and joints too:

 

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So it was a one-piece exhaust. The only join was at the manifold. Good luck to anyone trying to get that off again!

 

Then I had a real issue.. the front brake flexible hoses. A little backstory on Citroen hydraulics:

 

The pipework to the brakes (and the rest of the hydraulic system) is 3.5mm OD pipework, with about a 2mm bore as that was clearly sufficient. The joiners were clearly designed to be as standard as possible, as the tube bolts that hold the joins together are M8 thread. All good so far. Unfortunately, when the system was adapted to include ABS, the 2mm bore of the pipes was really not sufficient to cope with fluid hammering back and forth, so everything was enlarged by 1mm. Bore was 3mm (a 125% increase of fluid area.. plenty!) the tube OD was 4.5mm, and the tube-bolts were increased to M9. Er, what now? M9. Yes, it's a standard metric size, but what? OK, then.. I can see how this came about.

 

What this means for the front flexis is that a BX with normal braking has an M8 female thread in the car end, and a BX +ABS has an M9 female thread. However, it appears that there was a industry-wide error in the listings for BX +ABS brake flexi specifications, as everywhere I tried said that they were the same. No, they're not. Even places that had a different listing for them showed the +ABS ones as also being M8 thread. Which they clearly aren't.

 

So I tried getting some flexis that are M9 at the vehicle end. And are LHM compatible. Not a hope in hell. Time to break out the ENGINEERING (cue A-team theme tune)

 

These are alledgedly BX +ABS front brake hoses. They do not fit.

 

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So, we modify:

 

Drill the inner bore for the end of the tube from 3.5mm to 4.5mm. With my highly accurate* depth stop:

 

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Now drill the threaded area out to 7.8mm, which is the closest drill bit I had to the root-diameter of an M9 thread. Also just barely touched the end of the threaded area to remove the burr from the 4.5mm drill bit, so the rubber seal doesn't get shredded.

 

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Now cut an M9 thread with my very handy* M9 thread tap. (I had to hunt A-Ha style to find a first-middle-bottoming M9 thread tap kit. I still have it now!)

 

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Blow out the swarf:

 

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And hey presto, it fits!:

 

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Lather, Rinse and Repeat for the other side, and the car is ready for MOT again!

 

Which it failed on a buggered front wishbone bush. I didn't have time to fix it properly, but this stopped the knocking, and (stunningly) passed:

 

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One of my better bodges.

 

The DTR was a great car. I drove it tens of thousands of miles.

 

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In the end, I was offered a swap for a CX.. the 2.0 petrol one featured a few posts ago. This is the BX that ended it's days crushed under the side of a 40' articulated lorry at the junction between the M32 and the M4. I was rather sad it ended it's days that way (not by my hand I might add).

 

During my ownership it also had complete failure of the dashboard backlighting, meaning it was impossible to drive at night, ignition barrel failure (fun job) and one of the control cables popped off the heater box, necessitating removal of the entire dashboard to get to the bastard thing. Oh, and the fuel gauge stopped working when the level sensor jammed at maximum.

 

Brilliant car.

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They are.

 

If a decent BX estate came up I'd swap the Saab for it in a heartbeat.

 

Did you ever wash that one, by the way? Mrs T and I borrowed it off you once and we thought it would be hilarious to give it back to you sparkling white but it was winter and we couldn't find a car wash that hadn't frozen up.

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Did you ever wash that one, by the way?

Irregularly.

 

When it ended up looking like this:

 

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I would sometimes do something about it. Usually the first thing to do was put it in high and pressure-wash all the mud that would collect in the rear arches out:

 

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It was staggering how much mud a BX can hold in the rear arches and rear bumper, so I generally pressure washed it much more regularly than washing it. Although when I did wash it, it came up quite well, especially for one of my cars...

 

And I nearly forgot.

 

TAILBLAZER!

 

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Because all 80's cars look better with tail lamps that stretch the entire width of the car.

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  • 3 months later...

I'd been mucking about with a 1970s film SLR at the time and bought black and white film by mistake, they are blue though I promise.

 

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Ah, that's better.  Former cars of mine and mnde's here as well.

 

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Oh, and as I was looking for these pictures I came across something that I think belonged to Zelandeth?

 

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'Dickie G' from the FCF owned that Xant and sold it about 5-6 yrs ago.

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