Le bus oignon - Xantia of many Autoshiters - GYPSY CURSE

[Inspector Morose]

You know, I like just the barcode without the zebra. Combined with the all white car it'd give it a kind of 80s futurist look.

[vulgalour]

Joe:  white*  I do love a white BX on white trims though, there's something very right about that.  The Xebras have no tails.  The tails on the stickers were missing the end-poofs and I couldn't do a good enough job of replacing them with the mouse so I just deleted the tails, looked tidied that way too.  Do you think they need visible tails?

 

Tontops:  The white on the trims is a bit brighter than the car in those pictures as they were fresh painted and the car was a bit dusty.  They have since mellowed a bit so look like a reasonable match.  I had a similar issue with the grille which was on the bright side when painted and mellowed after about a week to match the paint better.  If they don't mellow I'll give them a top coat of Polar White to get a better match.

 

FBP7:  I did try out just a plain barcode and it didn't look right unless I made it the entire length of the bit under the trim which was far more than I wanted to apply.  Make it smaller and it looks equally strange.  I dunno, I couldn't get just the barcode on its own to work, it didn't look special edition.  There was a Metro or a Mini that had this grid type graphic on the front door, I can't find an example of it, but that's sort of what I had in mind.

[KruJoe]

Do you think they need visible tails?

Up to you of course, but I just had a few mins with MS Paint:

 

 

I tweaked the left Xeb a bit - I gave him a prototype tail, and adjusted the trailing bit of the letter 'b'. Ignore what I did to his face, that's a fail.

He's doing something a bit camp with his back foot, but I'm not going near that. Zebras are notorious for administering powerful kicks to the nads, especially when interfered with.

[Matt]

I don't mind white wheels but they have to be EXACTLY the right shade, and I fear these are a bit too bright.

 

Y'know I thought there was something not quite right about them and I couldn't put my finger on it but that's exactly it. I'd pop down to Halfords with the cars paint code and have them mix up a few spray cans.

[vulgalour]

I'm getting annoyed with this rear arch that I repaired.  It's doing the paint lifting thing it was before I repaired it all around the repair I let in.  If I clean it back to good metal and repaint it takes just a few days for it to come back like this again.  I've done some asking about on this one and the general consensus is that the metal on the arch here has gone porous so no matter how many times I clean and paint it, this will always happen.  The two solutions are to let a whole new section of arch in or to clean it back and seal it from the inner arch side with fibreglass or seam sealer before painting anew.  For now, I just keep cleaning the rust stains off every time I wash the car and put up with it as it's all I can really do about it.  You can see the blisters where the paint is lifting too, these come off and reveal clean metal underneath which is really strange.  I've never known anything like this on bodywork before.

 

Oh well!  Today I was on an art supplies errand and something zebra print fell in my basket.  I had an idea I wanted to try out both on the car and on a picture frame.  Since getting the car, the chrome insert on the driver's front door rubbing strip has been in really poor condition and while I could source a fresh length I wanted to try something different out. I haven't a picture of the state it was in, but the chrome bit had gone powdery and was getting worse with each wash.  So, off with the rubbing strips and dismantle them like so.

 

Then you lay the tape on the insert wrapping it over the edge but not entirely over the back.  It's easy to trim to shape, you just put a small snip in the edge and tear.  The tape isn't quite thick enough to do two inserts out of one width.  End result is rather smart.  Only other niggle is if anything the white trims are getting brighter rather than mellowing so they'll definitely need a top coat of Polar White to finish them off.

 

 

 

I also noticed the Turbo D badge is removable.  Rather than using the large Xebra decal I was thinking of applying a smaller sticker here that reads 'Xebra' in the Xantia font as something decidedly more subtle.  I don't know whether or not I'm doing the bumper inserts to match the side trims, I think it's okay as it stands.  I'm also not sure how well the tape will wear so I'll keep an eye on that.  It's a bit of fun at least, and relevant to my interests.

[Lacquer Peel]

Xantia estates always go there, I think it's where Heuliez joined the estate bits on to the saloon base, and there's a lump of foam in there that soaks up moisture.

[vulgalour]

I've already been in and repaired it once, it was entirely foam-free.  So far, I've not found anyone doing a repair panel for this area either so that I can get it properly replaced, quite a complicated shape to make from scratch.

[Ghosty]

.There was a Metro or a Mini that had this grid type graphic on the front door, I can't find an example of it, but that's sort of what I had in mind.

 

Mini Advantage, a tennis-themed edition: 

 

 

(The Metro Advantage was a GTa(?) in BRG or dark red with white stripes down the side).

[vulgalour]

THANK YOU! That's the one I was thinking of exactly, now I can stop going mad trying to remember.  S'funny that I had that in mind when what I've conjured up is nothing like it.

[beko1987]

Never mind the car, how's your dc01 doing?

 

Fwiw, I love the Xebra idea too!

[vulgalour]

DC01 is being thwarted by a lack of suitable screwdriver to get in the holes.  I'll get it sorted, I'm putting up with the Electrocrap Vitesse at the moment.

[vulgalour]

Yesterday, I finally got the right tool to sort out the seat base on the driver's seat in the Xantia.  On the Peugeot seats there are only 4 long bolts holding the cradle to the frame so I started with that rather than removing the seat from the Xantia, just in case.  Fortunately, there are 8 holes in the seat frame where you need them to accept the shorter Xantia bolts.  You can see the seat bolts here on the Peugeot seat in gold.

 

 

 

Getting in at the 8 black-ish bolts on the Xantia seat is much more difficult.  I contrived this medley of tools to get in at them and only skinned my knuckles several times.

 

After not too long I had both seats stripped and the relevant bits swapped over.  Happily, once refitted the airbag system now works as it should with the light illuminating when ignition is on and extinguishing when the engine starts.

 

You can't fit the Peugeot trims over the Xantia frame where the pretensioner bolts are, so you have to put the Xantia one on.

 

Same with the seat height adjuster.  Happily the seat isn't too different a shape to prohibit fitting.  Interestingly, with the Peugeot seats I don't have to have the height adjuster all the way to the top to be comfortable like I did with the Xantia seat which makes getting my knees under the dash that much easier.

 

Today gave the car its weekly wash and inspection.  I can't decide if the bubbles and spiders around the roof bars is getting worse or I'm obsessing about it more.  I can decide it needs sorting out soon and now I have these better torx keys I got for the seats I stand a chance of being able to remove the roof rails.  Not looking forward to what I might find underneath them, though with the weather improving it's a more sensible time to crack on with it.

 

 

 

The back driver's side is the worst, the paint has actually split here recently letting the rust out.

 

Continued looking for trouble and found some stonechip damage on the rear arch.

 

Fresh ones on the bonnet and grille too.

 

Then this.  I hate this sort of damage the most because it's not related to age or driving, it's someone else's carelessness.  Looks like someone's jabbed a key in or something similar and it's gone right down to the metal.  Quite recently done by the looks of it too.

 

Finally, the primary reason I bought that zebra tape paid off and I really like how this frame has turned out.  This is a tiny watercolour miniature I did of a zebra which has pride of place in the front hall.  It's also a terrible photograph.

 

 

I guess my next spend on the Xantia is going to be some more white paint and some brave pills to get the roof sorted out.  It'll be worth doing.

[ruffgeezer]

We've a couple of knackered estates in the field at work, one is my old one which probably doesn't have a straight panel on it, and another earlier one with a completely buggered engine.

[vulgalour]

Have either of them got a good rear passenger arch section I could swap for some money?

[ruffgeezer]

I can check for you, I think both arches on mine were bent though.

[vulgalour]

Bent is okay, it's rusty that'll cause the problem as that's the problem I have now.  Straightening a bent repair section is going to be far easier than trying to make one from scratch.  The Hammerite neatly shows the section I need as that's where the problem is.

 

[vulgalour]

Decided to crack on with the roof paint bubbles today since the weather was glorious. Getting the roof bars off was fairly easy apart from one bolt that needed a bit more grunt to remove. Underneath the bars is a big old dirt and water trap.

 

 

It dried fairly quickly and was easy to clean out, it was also far too easy to lift large sheets of paint from around the fixing points where water had got between metal and paint.

 

 

Nothing for it, I had to get that cleaned up and couldn't very well put it together now I'd found what I had. Happily, the rust wasn't serious enough to require more than a blitz with the wire wheel, it was almost exclusively orange surface staining rather than anything to really worry about. Perhaps it would have been more worrying had I left it alone. I was given some Jenolite to try, don't really like it as it's not as easy to use as the thinner products like Kurust are. Does the trick, nonetheless.

 

 

Unable to do anything further on the roof I got the corrosion and what I assume is bubbling powder coating removed from the end of the roof bars before giving them a fresh coat of satin black. This really made a difference to them, I was surprised how faded they'd become. Here's a side-by-side. I need to do a little more work to them to make them look as good as they can, shouldn't take me too long.

 

Went away for some well earned nosh and came back to get the primer and top coat on. Primer went well, and the top coat looks reasonable here...

 

Unfortunately, part way through the job the wind picked up and was unpredictable which meant the paint became a bit of a mess. Getting it waterproof was more important than pretty so I perservered until it was as done as it could be. I'll go back and do this hopefully later this week when I can get some inside space to work in.

 

 

All I'd intended to do today was make use of the touch-up pen I bought and give the car a wax which it's never had in my ownership. I suppose the above was somewhat more important as it cures what could have become a more serious problem. A couple more afternoons and I can prettify this so it's up to the standard it needs to be. My wondering next is whether or not to apply some sort of sealant when I put the trims and rails back on to keep the water out or to put it back together as standard so I don't make a bad design worse.

[FakeConcern]

Great thread! I've just read all through it. A friend of mine had a (new) BX in white with wheel trims also white very like yours. Love the look, the zebra tape along the sides particularly.

[purplebargeken]

Loving the zebra look by the way, ace.

 

I would keep it very standard as that will enable you to take off the rails now and again to clean the recesses and maintain it all in reduced rust status. 

[vulgalour]

I get the feeling removing and cleaning out the rails should be one of those post-winter cleaning jobs.

[junkyarddog]

Brush some waxoyl or similar into the recess before refitting the trims,

will help keep the rust at bay.

[beko1987]

Apply wax under the bars and don't buff it off... That's what I do to painted hidden bits on cars!

[Grundig]

I saw a 2CV in Zebra stripes the other day - near Somercotes, Alfreton 

[Noel Tidybeard]

maybe you could find out what Xebra actually looks like if written in bar code

 

edit i just found somewhere

http://www.barcodesinc.com/generator/image.php?code=Xebra&style=197&type=C128B&width=115&height=50&xres=1&font=3

[beko1987]

Get a QR code made up, that when scanned just pops a message up saying "Fuck You, I am a Xebra" then stick it somewhere scannable

[vulgalour]

What's a QR code?

[Noel Tidybeard]

http://www.qrstuff.com/images/sample.png

[dollywobbler]

I saw a 2CV in Zebra stripes the other day - near Somercotes, Alfreton 

 

A well known car in the club.

[vulgalour]

oh, those things.  Xantia predates them so not an option in this instance.

 

Spent some of my lunch break colouring in stone chips and scratches all over the car, the bulk of them being on the front end which was beginning to look unsightly.  Looks far better now.

 

I really want to get the machine polisher to work on this I'm just holding off until all the niggles I can find are dealt with.  I did notice a tiny new bubble appearing where the rear quarter meets the bumper on the passenger side which is ideally a bumper off job to fix so is getting left alone for now as I have been told removing the bumpers is a hateful job on these.  There's some tar spots to take off on the drivers door again and the front bumper has many, many stonechips to remedy, and a big scrape on one corner when a weirdly cambered junction resulted in my bottoming out the front corner on the road surface.  Boot carpet has been shampooed and is drying, looks immensely better for it but won't be able to go back in for a couple of days as it takes forever to dry out once it's got wet thanks to the thick foam backing on it.

[vulgalour]

A few days ago my brother drove the Xantia and his Gypsy Curse struck again, rendering something broken for no good reason.  We suspected glow plug relay as it had been making funny noises and the glow plug light wasn't coming on.  I could have got a reader and found out for definite but decided to gamble on purchase a second hand relay for a tenner against the £18 or so for a reader and that gamble paid off.

 

The part I got wasn't from a Xantia but a Xsara Picasso, just happens that it's the same thing.  The original was a Valeo relay, this one is stamped Cartier.  The only other difference is that this has four teeth for the plug where the original has five, but given than the plug that attaches only has four sockets in the right places I thought it a gamble worth taking.  A brand new relay was going to set me back £40-60 depending where I bought it from and I was loathe to pay that much if I could solve this for a tenner.

 

 

Plugged it in, put the battery back on and the car fired up without hesitation.  Not taken it for a test drive yet but I'm quietly confident all shall be well.