Dollywobbler's Blown BX

[dollywobbler]

Today started with disappointment. Rather than use her Freelander, my neighbour was going to give me a lift (which I really appreciate!) in her Subaru Forester WRX Turbo thing. At 10:08hrs, we departed.

 

The scary Subaru is bloomin' quick and has a ridiculous bonnet scoop.

 

We made good time. M6 Toll was nice and clear.

 

Nice L-reg Maestro (on the non-Toll bit!)

 

Three hours after departure, we were on the M69.

 

It was desolate.

 

It was nice to get off the motorway for something a bit more rural.

 

OMG! J-reg but Freight-Rover badged. Was it not Leyland DAF by then? Superb condition. I was almost enjoying this 'being a passenger' lark.

 

We arrived in sunny Narborough with an entire 15 minutes until my train.

 

Station facilities were somewhat basic. There wasn't even a ticket machine.

 

Get to Leicester. Nip out to cashpoint as I'd foolishly lost the money I was going to use for the train (later found - a heat-of-the-moment thing when the guard accosted me on the train. Sorry, I mean, sold me a ticket pleasantly). Get rambled at by some benefit scrounger who wants 80p for some lighter fluid and a bottle of White Lighting. Run away. Note that my train is leaving from Platform 2.

Result! Train shite!

 

Check the sign before boarding. Sod. That's not my train. Get transferred to Platform 1 and some modern Pendelino thing that was all fancy trim and no belching smoke. Boring. The seats were also even more uncomfortable than the rock-hard, unsupportive perches in the Subaru. Confuse passengers by taking photos of seats.

 

Confuse passengers by taking photos of the carpet. Reminds me of my childhood bedroom...

 

Now just over four hours in. It's a bloomin' long way!

 

However, my reward is Nottingham's beautiful railway station, with this additional beauty in the car park. That'll be my new motor then!

 

It's a BX17TXD Turbo, which means not-quite-top-of-the-range Turbo Diesel. 90bhp, some chrome trim, GTi-style seats and the usual mid-range toys such as eleccy front windows, eleccy sunroof, central locking and map-reading lights. Something we really needed last weekend. Oh well.

 

On the drive to the bloke's house, various clonks could be heard and the red light of doom briefly illimunated. It was boding well for the drive home. The engine was punchy and smooth though, so that's alright. It had clocked up 104,980 miles and important things like cambelt and clutch (sadly fitted by Mr Clutch) had recently been chanegd. £380 was handed over, paperwork was done and I was on my way. I didn't get any photos at this point and ended up pretty much straight on the motorway, so drove for two hours on the M1, A50, A38, A5, M54, A5 again and A458 with a few little bits in between. Most of that was at motorway speeds and what a revelation it was to get to those speeds so quickly! I was especially pleased on the A5 when I noticed a Peugeot 206 swerving to avoid the soot cloud I'd just generated. GR8 4 DEELIN WITH TAILGEYTERS.

 

It was all going swimmingly. The red light of doom occasionally flickered when cornering (a sure sign of low LHM and no, despite buying the car with a known LHM leak, I didn't take a bottle with me. That would have been no fun) and it was still clonking a bit but nothing fell off. Then it rained. DOH!

 

That's after I put the rear blade on the front and it is actually better! It rained a LOT, but stopped just before home, so I took these.

 

Oh yes.

 

It is clean, but the paintwork is pretty dreadful. Doesn't bother me!

 

Journey home took just over three hours. Sorted!

[Cavcraft]

EPIC. Take it you enjoyed the turbo version? Great fun when wellied.

Is that W.R Davies in Newtown by the way?

[mrcitroen]

Nice new wheelz Mr Wobbler. I do hope you will enjoy. Many happy motoring miles

Looked like a bit of a marathon to get there!

See, you just cant resist those BX's

[Guest]

That is a genuine autoshite watch, £7.99 Argos. I have the same disposable watch since Swatchs went to over £25 for a basic one! OH sweet BX, i'm a fan of 205 GTI wheels.

[HMC]

Living the dream! Casio digital watch (bet Marcello Gandini wore one in period) and yet another BX! What are the plans Mr Wobbler?

[willswitchengage]

Again, epic watch! Since my crumby Accurist seems to be on its last legs, one of those is looking like an attractive investment

[cort16]

Nice one dw I really like the wheels on that. It's a pity the dash on the later ones lost a bit of their bonkersness.

[Micrashed]

Top work there Ian , though those 205 alloys can be a right swine to balance (no centre knock outs) up properly they look very nice on the BX.

So where is the leak? Octopussy? Doc can help talk you through a change, or bite the bullet and fabricate a new one out of clear plastic pipe and 10mm copper pipe and move it to the bulkhead.

[dollywobbler]

Thanks folks.

 

Cavette - it is indeed WR Davies and I am indeed loving the turboness. Actual performance!

 

The wheels might go to be honest. They wobble a lot and I don't like alloys anyway. It'll soon be on winter tyres, probably on stock steelies.

 

The leak is from the pipework heading to the regulator. No idea what sort of job it'll be to sort but it'll get done. Plan is to try and keep this one solid, tidy and fully working. A better base than my rusty estate...

 

The paint is dreadful though, so I won't be getting too precious about it. I'll upload some OMG RATLUK pics tomorrow. If it stops raining...

[RobT]

Nice one Ian, got yourself a good solid motor there. Should make it easier to keep on top of things!

 

Like the picture of the 125. Don't like those train seats though, why do 'they' make them so uncomfortable

[Spiny Norman]

Another great shite-collecting tale, with some excellent pics to boot, top job Mr. Wobbler! I've got a real soft spot for the BX and that one looks ace with the 205 wheels, bargain-icious I'd say.

[trigger]

Excellent!, I bet those TD models are pretty good fun to drive, especially after running a non turbo for so long.

[Morgan84]

Some nice bits of Wales scenery there

[Richard]

When I saw the picture I thought "nice car, shame about the wheels" so I'm glad to hear they're going.

 

HSTs all lost their V12 Valenta engines and got V16 MTU units a couple of years ago, so you woldn't have got as much smoke as you were hoping for anyway.

[stuboy]

very nice

 

 

my mate had a 1.9d and box from a scrapped bx, luckly his bro in law blew up his gti bx so he combined the two.. gtd... i nearly bought it too

[wuvvum]

Nice purchase. I've always thought a Turbo D one of these would be a nice thing to tool around in - my old 19 TXD wasn't that slow, but overtaking did require some forward planning - a turbo would definitely have been an improvement.

 

Oh, and I too am the proud owner of an F91W, bought after I got fed up with more expensive watches breaking after a year or so.

[Shep Shepherd]

Elle est tres genial

[dollywobbler]

A bit of a crash down to earth today, reminding me why this was so cheap.

 

Ugh. Left hand strut return borked. This piece came away in my hand.

 

Out-of-focus right hand strut return. Also borked.

 

RH brake pad imbalance. Sliders I guess, though I think the handbrake cable might also be a bit sticky.

 

No rot here though! RH below washer bottle.

 

OMG I CAN HAZ CAMBER! Rear wheel bearings are well knackered.

 

Not the end of the world by any means, but plenty to be getting on with. At least it feels worth it given the overall condition...

[Lacquer Peel]

That looks a good buy despite the. Is the fuel economy any good? I've read contemporary reviews that were quite scathing about the fuel consumption.

Are the strut return pipes a common failure?

I quite like the 205 wheels, my hydropneumatic Citroen is rocking wheels of wrongness too, mainly because the original steel wheels are shod with spurious Chinese tyres that want to depart for the scenery in the wet.

[dollywobbler]

Not done enough miles in it to test the economy and annoyingly, the trip reset doesn't work. Suffice it to say I filled the tank in Nottingham and it doesn't seem to have moved much on the 140 mile trip home. (this has the extra tank though, so I might just have used all of that up). I've seen test MPG as low as 36mpg quoted, but that would include performance tests. My Pug 306 Dturbo averaged 45mpg, even with me hooning it, so I'm hoping to see at least that.

 

Return pipes are about £36 a pair, the inner track rod thingy is another £18 plus £60 for a pair of rear arm bearings. Not the end of the world, but bloody pricey if you got a garage to do the work. There's a fair bit of labour time there.

[Morgan84]

Always been scared of Citroen's with the hydro suspension system;are they as scary as people made them out to be,or are they pretty user friendly ? I know when I first saw under a Xantia and saw them tiny little 'Spaghetti' pipes I thought " They look like they could bite "

[maxustaxus]

God that watch was a sublime touch.

 

It was so proper period....

 

Made me hanker for the days when checking out the time was more a futuristic event than a quick glance.

[Micrashed]

Dont forget to lube the struts via the pipes whilst they are off (glass of LHM for Mr Wobbler please)

[dollywobbler]

I've never tried that Micrashed. Perhaps now is the time. Anything to save having to track down recon struts!

 

Morgan - the hydraulics aren't anything to fear, but you really do have to learn your way around them. If you don't understand it, you'll panic if the STOP light comes on or if there's a slight green puddle under the car. Often, failures are incredibly minor. As follows:

 

First BX, owned 6 months, 6000 miles: One return pipe failed after 2000 miles. Was bodged up with a bit of copper pipe. Sorted.

Second BX, owned 8 weeks, 4000 miles (no, really!): No hydraulic problems.

Third BX, owned for 3-ish years, 48,000 miles: One minor leak when I got it, one flush session to cure a steering issue, one rear suspension cylinder failure (that was pretty bad, but it was while I didn't own it), one minor leak when I got it back.

First CX, owned for 6 months, cant' remember the mileage: No hydraulic issues at all.

 

For me, the benefits massively outweigh any scariness. The ride is really comfortable and if it isn't, just change the suspension spheres. All you need is a wrench (though you MUST depressurise the system first. That involves turning a 12mm bolt quarter of a turn). The spheres are the spring AND damper unit in one. The rear brakes get their pressure via the rear suspension units. That means that if you've got a heavy load in the car, the rear brakes automatically work harder as well as self-levelling keeping it all on a even keel.

 

This BX currently has two broken strut return pipes, but the loss of fluid is minimal enough to allow me to drive from Nottingham to West Wales without issue. I'm no mechanic, but I love 'em.

 

The numbers can be a bit scary. The engine driven pump can generate as much as 2000psi. That means that if a major pipe goes, you lose a lot of fluid very quickly. This happens incredibly rarely.

[Morgan84]

The older the BX gets,the more I admire the styling;is my memory correct that the bonnet is not a metal panel ? A model which sticks in my mind was the Meteor

[catsinthewelder]

Nice motor DW, the inevitable BX to do list seems pretty reasonable

 

I'm firmly of the belief that getting hold of a good one and keeping it that way is the way forward with these. We can't save them all so getting the better ones into the right hands makes sense. Must be about time that Micrashed got himself another

 

M84, The roofs and bootlids are plastic on all BX's, some have metal bonnets but most seem to have plastic ones.

[Caffiend]

Is the fuel economy any good?

 

I've never measured accurately because, effort. However, my BX with the same doin's under the bonnet gets 450-500 miles between fill-ups, mix of town/country/m-way driving. I rarely let it run until the red light goes on because I'm chicken (early - days before mobile phones - driving experience of tyre blowout on M6, in the dark, in the rain as a lone woman has kinda put me off risking breaking down) - so usually somewhere around the 60 quid mark for that number of miles. I don't hang about either, the fuel consumption drops off noticeably at 3000+ revs, but sometimes, you just gotta put your foot down Like I will be doing for the short spin up the A1(M) today to the MOT (Italian tune-up time!)

 

I think you got a right bargain there DW - I paid nearly double that for mine, which needed strut returns (not so bad), new driveshafts (OW), the inevitable bit of patching in the n/s/r boot and other bits and pieces.

[Micrashed]

The older the BX gets,the more I admire the styling;is my memory correct that the bonnet is not a metal panel ? A model which sticks in my mind was the Meteor

It rather depends on the model of the car. Some got a steel bonnet (the 1.9N/A D did) some got a GRP.

From sketchy memory GRP panels were:

Bonnet

Rear quarters,

Rear panels,

Boot lid,

Rear roof extension on the estate.

[ProgRocker]

Looks like a great BX. I wouldn't mind one myself.

 

Those Casio F-91W watches, like the BX, are a design classic. Bought mine 9 years ago and it's still on the original battery. No wonder the Taleban like them too.

[dollywobbler]

I do live dangerously. Casio watch and a long beard. Justifiable reasons to be regarded as a terrorist by the US!

 

This BX has a plastic bonnet. You can tell because the French were shite at making metallic paint stick to plastic. The bonnet is in a right state and so is the rear spoiler. They've gone very, very Renault Espace. The roof is steel though - and very thin! I gave it a polish today and it 'pinged' very easily! The estate has plastic roof side sections but the main part is steel.

 

More pictures when the ordered parts arrive and have been fitted. It's in the garage on stands at the moment.