Citroën BX "Muffy" - M'colification

[twosmoke300]

Does this mean that my dad is finally cool?

[Lord Sterling]

Looking good! For some reason I thought it was the dark Green job on the Wanted/Offered thread. It's a BX anyway and it looks good. Hopefully you'll have no pedal problems as Dugong had.

[M'coli]

"What's that you say, Pipkin? Someone's already welded up this pedal box, badly?"

 

"And you say it's been done while still attached to the car too? What makes you say that? Oh, I see!"

 

 

Also:

Not so good.

[vulgalour]

TADTS

[dollywobbler]

Oh crap. That has a nasty look of front-to-rear pipe about it, though it might be a leaky return pipe from the rear sphere...

[M'coli]

It's probably front-to-rear pipe, seeing as I had it set to wheel changing mode to give me enough height to get my heid in the footwell. Any info on a rough cost for replacement, please, and can such things be made from copper or cupronickel pipe of the correct bore?

 

Cheap BX is cheap for a reason...

[dollywobbler]

The pipes aren't too bad I don't think, but they're a fiddly fecker to fit. I ended up with a bill of £400 all-in on my red estate I think. I opted to let a specialist do it. The rear subframe needs dropping (at least partly) for access. A job much easier with a two-post lift. That's bad luck though. In all my years of hydro-Cit ownership, I've only had one catastrophic failure like that - and that was on a BX with 300,000 miles on it!

[twosmoke300]

arent the front to rear pipes on the o/s?

[M'coli]

They may well be, I haven't looked, but that pool of green blood was under the n/s rear wheel.

[dollywobbler]

Nope. When the pipe went on my estate, it was misting out of the nearside rear wheelarch. Which tells you something about the pressures involved! Fuel pipes run down the offside. 

[twosmoke300]

I stand corrected , to be fair im still trying to blot out the memory of the last set I changed.

 

You can get copper pipes made up , a garage close to us used to do them but we found that it was easier and more professional to get the genuine ones . Probably not available now tho.

[dollywobbler]

That's what I'm now trying to remember. I have a feeling the pipes on mine came from Chevronics, who to be fair is doing a LOT of parts remanufacture for BXs. 

[sdelasal]

I’ve changed the set of front to rear pipes on a BX.   The car needs to be up off the ground on four axle stands as you’ll need plenty of elbow room underneath.   You can either make repairs to the pipes or replace them. Depends on whether you think the car is a keeper or not.   It’s easy to round the fittings on the end of the pipes as you remove them – not a problem if the pipe is being replaced as new pipes come complete with new nuts.  I got mine from Pleides.     To give access, the subframe needs to be dropped on the near side, but simply loosened on the off side. Take your time, label everything as it’s quite easy to forget which pipe goes where. Steve

[dollywobbler]

That company has a very silly name. I can never remember how to spell it. That might have been the source of the pipes thinking about it...

 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pleiades-Car-Services/154368294714268

[mat_the_cat]

When is it leaking - i.e. with the engine running or when sinking? And is it a mist/high pressure spurt, flow or a drip?

 

You can *just* change the operational return (high volume low pressure, flow back when the car sinks) from the rear height corrector, without dropping the subframe if using Kunifer pipes. Well, you can thread them all through in this way, but it's only the OR which you can correctly fit in the clip on top of the subframe, as that's the pipe on the outside.

 

Could also be the cylinder, but estates are more prone to this due to the thinner walls.

[M'coli]

Thanks - I'd forgotten their name too. I don't know where it's leaking from - I wasn't going to investigate that today, I ran out of energy because I has a cold, and time before going to bed (I'm on nights). The major consideration at the moment is sorting the throttle out, I'll be giving it a bit of a weld in-situ and adding a bracing piece to help stiffen it up. More shenanigans when I've been to work and that tomorrow.

[M'coli]

After a rather shitty night at work, I looked at welding the pedal box up on this. First job, as it happened, was to tighten the grub screw holding the ignition barrel in. Next came making a bracing piece for the box, for which I chose a lump from an empty disposable welding gas bottle

 

After a bit of a clean up, it looked like this:

 

Then I filled the watering can and thoroughly soaked tge engine side of the bulkhead, disconnected the battery, sprayed water over the carpets and foam backing in the footwell and broke out the welder.

 

Initial results were, shonky, the welds cold, so putting this down to poor conductivity, I moved the earth clamp from the door latch to the repair brace itself, and turned the juice up. Success! I now have a throttle pedal that does what it's supposed to, all that's left to do tomorrow is to put the trim back.

 

As a bonus, I put the car on "high" rather than wheelchange, and there was no pool of LHM under the rear wheel when I had finished.

[UltraWomble]

G reg BX's are teh TITS.

Well done

[dollywobbler]

Good news! If you set it on low and it then spurts out, Mat's prediction of a return pipe issue is more likely.

[mat_the_cat]

As a bonus, I put the car on "high" rather than wheelchange, and there was no pool of LHM under the rear wheel when I had finished.

 

Ah, if you get leakage (and a lot of it) on maximum height but next to none at other times then it may be another cause. The cylinder seals are designed to leak a small amount of LHM past them for lubrication, which returns via a drilling in the cylinder into a low pressure low volume return circuit. What can happen is that the cylinder rod can break, allowing the piston to travel further out of the cylinder than normal.

 

 

On all positions other than maximum this is no problem, but on maximum the piston travels almost all the way out of the cylinder, exposing the return drilling to full system pressure which blows off the push-fitted return pipe. It makes a lot more sense when you look at the cylinder, so I'll try and dig out a spare for a photo if I haven't made much sense!

[mat_the_cat]

Found one to take a photo of...

 

 

The inner black seal holds main system pressure, but some leaks past this and returns to the reservoir via the hole in the groove, before the green outer seal. If the piston pops out too far then suddenly the groove gets exposed and off pops the return pipe!

[M'coli]

So there's no real danger in running around like this? Sounds good to me.

 

Another question: is there a way to reduce play in the wiper arm pivot point, by, for example, re-bushing it with something cheap?

[mat_the_cat]

*If* that's the problem, then it should be OK. The broken end of the rod tends to embed itself in the arm in my experience, effectively locating it and preventing the piston from popping all the way out.

 

Wiper spindles can be rebushed, but not a job I've had to do yet - I replaced mine with a low mileage part a couple of years ago. I've heard of split copper pipe being used if that's helpful.

[M'coli]

This is in fairly regular use now, and a few more wee jobs have been done, like sorting the tyre pressures, finding out whether it has a spare tyre or not - it's the original Michelin MXT from 1989 - and bodging the windae washers with a new piece of hose, a wee bit of brakepipe that's flattened at the end, and some cable ties.


I'm not sure it's growing on me. Still, perhaps it's because it's not full of my shit? So I dragged the sack of stuff from the 205 out of the garage and tipped it into the boot, and retrieved the carrier bag of cassettes from therein. Better!! Time to set up the stereo properly, as follows:

Tunes->Manual->Rummage.

[dollywobbler]

Hydo-Cits either completely win you over or leave you cold it seems. That said, the settling-in period can be quite large while you adjust to the odd brake pedal. 

[M'coli]

The brake pedal's not been a problem, I quite like it to be honest, one of the best things about the car. I don't like the position of the stereo, the suspension is good but I keep testing it on shonky roads - not difficult in West Yorkshire - but most of all, if you've seen a certain episode of Friends , it's not "Rachael"...or more to the point, she's not Poppy the 1300 Cavalier

[dollywobbler]

The opposite of what I had with my Renault 21. It was a lovely car, but just not quirky enough. We all have different tastes though, and we all get used to certain things. I've never spent much time with a Mk2 Cav (worryingly, I think the only one I've driven was a 1.8i automatic floppytop!) but having driven RobT's Mk3, I'd really like to. I bet I'd like it more than I expect.

[M'coli]

I think it may be because they just "fit" me - I don't have to take my eyes off the road to access any of the controls, and the steering wheel-door-seat distance is just right for me. Sadly, I don't think Muffy will be staying long chez M'coli.

 

Oddly enough, that's what I said about Poppy...one's head may be turned by 50mpg at 70p/litre!

[M'coli]

Popped out to get some beer from the boot, so I took the opportunity to take a couple more photos.

 

The bodged screenwash first:

 

...and the emptying of my shit into the boot...

 

I feel comfortable with an untidy car.

 

Yes, that is a Williams' Brothers Joker IPA poking out of that bag to the left.

[forddeliveryboy]

Hydo-Cits either completely win you over or leave you cold it seems. That said, the settling-in period can be quite large while you adjust to the odd brake pedal. 

 

I've had several diesel BXs and they were all very different creatures - a white 19RD estate was a miserable affair, unpleasant to drive in a way which you couldn't quite put your finger on, I decided it was a whole load of things which just weren't sweet, which added up made the car a mingebag. A DTR estate had brilliant mechanical bits but it felt as if it had been put together by people who hated the job, I never quite trusted it  Best was a TXD saloon, sweet oily bits and the whole thing felt very together and solid. Perhaps the galv bodyshell helped - it was one of the last ones on a K plate. It used to whisk three of us to Retromobile and back really nicely, sitting at an indicated 95 (probably nearer 85 knowing those speedos) in relative silence. More compliant rear spheres transformed the ride into something else and even improved the roadholding and handling on anything other than a racetrack.