Exceeding BXpectations - Now With Added Renault 4

[Eddie Honda]

Has this gone already? http://www.bxclub.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21473

Shaw says: "Keep 'em peeled!"

Anyway, what happened to the Chinese ones? http://www.bxclub.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20838 Ah, http://www.bxclub.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21035 I see, probably didn't get past the first batch as suddenly de folding stuff had to be put where de mouth is.

Or the "Vanny option" of using a 306TD rad and re-arranging the sender wiring. http://www.bxclub.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16094

Really. Some folk need to go back to Google school.

[Cleon-Fonte]

The Chinese ones do appear to have been NLAed due to lack of demand. Although I don't find £170 too salty, given how much Rimmer Bros wanted to rim me just to refurbish my existing SD1 radiator.

[jonathan_dyane]

Was the 309 turbo d radiator not the alternative? I have a 306 turbo d radiator lying around and I'm sure that unlike the bx td radiator it has an integral filler.

[hpi_matrix]

Why is there nothing similar that will fit in the hole? Are the hose's in weird places or something? My little AX has a rad from a saxo VTS shoe horned in.

 

In fairness Junkman, you link to a 33mm thick rad with sidetank bottle.

Now I don't have my Citroen Service account anymore (booted off during one of their purges), but I think the 1.7 turbot [sic] dizzler has a big fat 45mm thick core. CITROEN 95635181

 

Is the cooling so critical on these that the extra 12mm makes a difference?

[dollywobbler]

Why is there nothing similar that will fit in the hole? Are the hose's in weird places or something? My little AX has a rad from a saxo VTS shoe horned in.

 

 

Is the cooling so critical on these that the extra 12mm makes a difference?

 

I'd say so. Forced induction does rather ramp up cooling requirements.

[themildbunch]

I'd say so. Forced induction does rather ramp up cooling requirements.

Yep - overheating an XUD is one of the few things that can kill it quickly - especially on the BX with no guage - just the orange and red lights of death!

 

I thought Kev could still arrange the TD rads and silicone hoses if necessary - he's on the BX Facebook page the last time I looked..

[Eddie Honda]

Was the 309 turbo d radiator not the alternative?

*cough* see two posts above yours *cough*

[Eddie Honda]

Is the cooling so critical on these that the extra 12mm makes a difference?

12mm in this case is 33% thicker. I'd guess it would make a difference otherwise why bother going to the trouble?

[hpi_matrix]

12mm in this case is 33% thicker. I'd guess it would make a difference otherwise why bother going to the trouble?

 

For extreme conditions, over engineered etc. My vitara's radiator can be half caked in mud and still be fine.

 

However as the car doesn't have a temp gauge it isn't worth the risk.

[Cleon-Fonte]

Potentially another batch of Chinese radiators is about to be made up, Kev from the BX forum is just awaiting confirmation from the factory.

[mat_the_cat]

There's also people in this country that will make one up using your old one as a pattern - I used these to make up a heater matrix (complete with integral tap) for the Stellar, and I imagine they're even more scarce than BX TD radiators!

http://www.eastendradiatorsglasgow.co.uk/

 

As for the oil filter - I feel your pain. The worst one I had was on a 106 when I had loaned out my filter wrench. Punctured it with a screwdriver and used a hammer to tap it round. It was dark, so struggled to see quite what I was doing but I could feel it getting easier after a while. Until both the screwdriver, and the severed top half of the filter both dropped to the ground. "Oh bother" I said, or words to that effect.

 

I managed to use the screwdriver as a chisel in the holes on the filter baseplate in the end, but it took a while longer than I had anticipated...

[Richard]

Unfortunately his old one is wrong, so couldn't really be used as a pattern.

[jonathan_dyane]

*cough* see two posts above yours *cough*

But you said 306...

[Eddie Honda]

I did indeed. Apologies.

 

And apologies to Cleon-Fonte if I made any personal suggestion of tight-waddishness. It was a general point where a vehicle crosses over from banger to cherished (when the cheap aftermarket parts dries up) that owners have to decide if they are to dip their hands in their pockets to pay for parts or not. Trying to get things remade is a non-started if people don't cough up and come out with various excuses. You know the scene: the ones hi-fiving and being very vocal with support of a idea mysteriously melt away when the folding stuff gets mentioned.

[mat_the_cat]

Unfortunately his old one is wrong, so couldn't really be used as a pattern.

 

Ah, I missed that bit! I'm glad more and more stuff is becoming available for the BX as although pricey compared to scrapyard parts (which I used for many years), it's not bad compared with dealer prices. Plus it saves me the bother of buying things I *may* need from eBay, just in case...probably spent more on things I've yet to use than bits I have used!

[3VOM]

Sorry for coming in late into this conversation but I take it this rad is a plastic/aluminium/Bakelite/cardboard modern composite thing and not something that can be repaired by soldering?

[Cleon-Fonte]

This thread is long overdue an update, and that is because a lot of work has gone into the BX recently but little has actually been achieved. I'll make a big post shortly about what's been happening, but currently work is being held up trying to find parts which are NLA and nobody seems to have going spare. But if anyone can help, Autoshite can. The parts in question are rear wheel bearing cups (Citroen part numbers 372614/95559360), which fit on the back of the wheel hub (around the rubber lip) to prevent water ingress and the resultant destruction of the bearings.

 

 

I've tried various Citroen specialists (only one or two of whom were any help), Citroen dealers (who proved that all the things said about Peugeot-Citroen dealerships are true), the BX Club Forum, French eBay and the various sellers who come up as having the relevant part on Google but who, it turns out, don't actually have them when you come to actually ordering the things. I've also tried having some made up based on a sketch taken from the BX Club forum to no avail. I've still to contact Dean Hunter, who tends to be the go-to for bits for Peugeot 305s (which share the same part), but they're not listed on his stock list.

 

So, would anybody happen to have any lying around? Or knows somewhere that does actually have them? Or know if I can bodge in something else more readily available.

[dollywobbler]

Chevronics not able to help? They're fast becoming a last resort in the hunt for rare BX bits.

[strangeangel]

Didn't Will_Cleland score a load of parts from a chap with a ton of old BXs not long ago? If second hand ones could be salvaged it might be worth dropping him a PM for the feller's details.

 

You've probably tried them already, but I've just checked my Der Franzose catalogue in case - no joy, sadly.

[bramz7]

Someone's potentially breaking a BX on Facebook club page. I've already (hopefully) shotgunned the driver's seat though, as mine is trashes.

I have a distinct feeling they want rid of the car as soon as though.

[Cleon-Fonte]

Thanks for the suggestions, chaps.

 

After all that it turns out the rear wheel bearing cup situation isn't as catastrophic as at first thought. Barry at Bourne Citroen (top chap, WUD YOUSE AGGEN) did a little bit of investigating for me last week and had originally drawn a blank, but today he called me to let me know that whilst the cups aren't included on non-ABS wheel hub kits they are on the ABS ones. So if any BXers do need to replace their wheel bearings and the cups can't be reused, make sure to buy hubs for an ABS-equipped car instead of the correct items.

 

So, on receipt of a second set of new hubs I can set about returning the BX to the road.

[explosive-cabbage]

Try Ron.

 

Awfully helpful, breaking 2x TXDs. Unfortunately I have snaffled the rare TD radiator and the wheel trims :D

 

Give him a bell on the landline first.

 

01239 eight five one 759

 

07402 four nine seven 488

 

Pen lan Las uchaf,

Rhydlewis,

Llandysul

Ceredigion

SA44 5SD

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/122308119367?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

Very helpful and friendly. Can compose readable text messages, which is unusual for eBayers. Seems to be an old bloke with a couple cars in the garden breaking them for a bit of cash on the side, not a trader or scrapyard.

 

The bloke in Cambridgeshire with the massive haul (15-20 BXs plus others) is a bit more of a hermit and won't sell parts through the post or to buyers online. Very friendly and chatty again, but I didn't get any parts I didn't need.

[dollywobbler]

Ah, I went to visit Ron once when I couldn't shift a rear sphere. Nice bloke.

[Cleon-Fonte]

I do believe it's time for an update on this old heap as it's been a while. The last time I posted anything of note here I'd just broken my radiator whilst doing an oil change (as you do), thankfully I managed to source this fine lump of Chinese aluminium with the help of KevR from the BX Club Forum.

 

 

Whilst waiting for the new radiator to arrive I thought I'd take a look at the rear radius arm bearings, which had been rapidly degrading over the previous few weeks before the Oil Change of Doom, in turn providing little in the way of wheel travel. The last straw came when, driving through a trendy semi-pedestrianised area with cobbled streets, my inherent coolness* was ruined by the sad creaking and groaning of my rear suspension. 

 

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

 

 

With the wheels off the first sign that things weren't so healthy back here were the brakes, which were pretty well jammed on. The backplates were also rusted through and full of holes. Worse, when I went to remove the nearside brake hose it crumbled into dust.

 

 

 

The final moments of the nearside brake hose.

 

 

Whoever previously maintained this car obviously had never heard of grease, as it took a breaker bar to move the caliper bolts, three of which snapped.

 

 

 

After this point all pictures of the work I did seem to have disappeared, which would make a detailed description of what happened next about 78% less interesting, so I'll give you a quick rundown of some of the problems I faced:

 

 

-The long through bolts that hold on the suspension arms were well and truly seized solid and no matter what I tried I failed to remove them. Eventually I had to pay a man with some machinery to come out and do it.

 

 

-The old bearings were then found to be rusted solid into the arm and, again, my attempts at removal were futile, so my regular mechanic was called upon to extract them. The method of removal eventually decided upon involved big hammer, a welder and some steel bar after all other attempts had failed.

 

 

-At the same time both rear hubs were condemned, which started the whole fiasco of the bearing cups mentioned in my post above. I spent around three months searching for these bloody things to no avail, during which time my MoT had expired so I had a car illegally sat on the street on axle stands and no way of putting it back together. Typically, just after I’d sourced a pair of ABS hubs with the bearing cups included someone announced they were having a set of 100 3D printed.

 

 

-Whilst the new nearside hub went on without issue, when I tried tightening the offside hubnut I found that the stub axle thread was knackered. I ordered a 30mm x 1.5mm rethreading die which was advertised as taking 2-3 days to arrive from Basingstoke, which in fact took three weeks to arrive from Guangzhou. Not that it mattered, as when I went to rethread the stub axle it turns out there wasn’t enough metal left into which to cut a new thread.

 

 

-When the new stub axle eventually arrived from Barry at Bourne Citroen (after a prolonged delay as his wife lost it in the boot of their car) it refused to stay in place when I tried mounting the hub onto it. You can see details of the calculated precision engineering* developed by Strangeangel and I to overcome this problem on his BX thread here.

 

 

-When it came to the brakes I bought a pair of new calipers as the old ones were pretty shagged. Despite the ones I bought being identical to all the others I saw for sale online and the ones in the Haynes manual, they were completely different to the calipers that came off this car and when fitted fouled on the disc. Eventually I ended up restoring the old ones once I’d finally unseized the pistons and had the absolute joy of removing the old bleed nipples.

 

 

 

 

One of the brake calipers before refurbishment but after an hour of wire brushing. Absolutely every component you see here was completely fucked.

 

I’ll cut it short there to avoid writing War & Peace, suffice to say that at every stage I found a set of new problems, and once I fixed one thing another broke or in some way caused me an extra interminable wait for parts or a load of extra work.

 

 

Anyway, after nearly eight months finally I had everything put together and ready to go, with everything properly assembled if I need to work on anything back here again it should now be fairly straightforward. The new suspension arm bearings have been well and truly packed with heavy duty water-resistant lithium grease designed for marine applications, so shouldn't need doing again (they only fail due to inadequate amounts of grease applied at the factory being washed away due to water ingress, rather than wear).

 

Here's how things looked once finished, the LHM slick below being my fault rather than the car's. It's amazing what a lick of paint can do.

 

 

And a record shot of the auspicious moment the BX finally returned to four wheels.

 

 

So next up it was time for the radiator change. After this it can't be too hard, can it? Should only take a day at best.

[jonathan_dyane]

23 out of 10 for perseverence! I've been there before and it's one of the most awful soul destroying and frustrating jobs known to humanity; well done for getting it back together!

[bramz7]

I made a point of checking the rear arms on my incoming BX and they look decent. However, it's poverty spec compared to this.

 

I was reading back on the earlier posts, and was unsurprised to see you had a specialist give out some pretty useless advice. I've found it more or less the same, my new local place seems to quite like older cars but they detest changing the glow plugs in Turbo'd XUDs.

 

Despite that, they actually told me to carry on with the rust laden ZX.

[Cleon-Fonte]

Before changing the radiator the first job was to change the heater blower motor. The old one had initially become rather loud, eventually drowning out the noise of the engine outside the car (quite a feat considering how loud XUDs are), until I'd applied some lube to it, after which it didn't work at all.

 

Fair play to Citroen here, I often moan about access to things when it comes to the BX but the blower motor is in fact pretty easy to get to, being situated just under the windscreen wiper.

 

 

Simply remove the following bits...

 

 

...loosen a trio of 10mm bolts and lift the motor out.

 

With a new working, silent blower motor installed it was time to put the BX on ramps and drain the Floppy Radiator of Leakage by removing the bottom hose.

 

 

 

I'd known the coolant in there wasn't exactly clean, but what came out was pretty horrible. The smell was indescribable, a mixture of metallic odour and festering, rotting piss. More worrying was the film of oil in the top, at this point I nearly gave up as thoughts of having to install another head gasket after only a year began to cross my mind. Then I came to my senses, realised I had precisely zero other symptoms of OMGHGF and that it was far more likely - given the state of the cooling system's internals - that Stockport's finest* (i.e. only) Citroen specialist hadn't really bothered to flush the system through properly after changing the HG.

 

 

The old radiator came out easily enough, and with good reason: while I'd assumed it flopped around the engine bay because it was only mounted at the bottom, it turned out it wasn't mounted to anything at all, being merely suspended in the engine bay by the coolant hoses. Despite this somebody had still seen fit to change the bottom radiator mounts (more on this later).

 

As you can see, the old and new radiators are virtually identical, aside from the new one being twice as thick, narrower and taller.

 

 

Removing the coolant hoses was a less easy experience. To gain access to the crankcase end of the bottom hose for removal I ended up having to take off the offside wheel and wheelarch liner, and even then the driveshaft and crankshaft pulley were in the way, leaving me loosening a jubilee clip I couldn't see in a place I could barely fit a screwdriver. The middle hoses were held on with the most ridiculously beefy clips ever (certainly made out of better metal than anything else on the car), but there was no access for any cutting tool capable of cutting them off so I spent an hour and a half jabbing at them with various flathead screwdrivers until they fell apart.

 

Once they were off the hoses were a bit depressing to behold. Most of them were cracked but had been sleeved, but even the sleeving was now beginning to perish. Old vs. new shot:

 

 

With the new hoses on it was time to install the new radiator. Or it would have been if the radiator didn't just rest on the obviously incorrect mounting bushes. Why somebody bothered to change these, then didn't actually use them to mount the radiator I don't know, but there must be some logic behind it. As expected, Citroen used a size and shape of mounting bush that nobody else has ever used, so I ordered some original ones from Bourne Citroen. Which then inexplicably took three weeks to arrive, ruining my until then super-speedy progress.

 

So, obviously with all the correct parts installed the radiator went in without issue, didn't it?

 

No.

 

 

It turns out that the first batch of these radiators had been machined incorrectly, whilst the offside mounting stud should have been no more than 12mm in diameter it was actually closer to 22mm. The manufacturers had promised to correct their mistake on further batches then obviously hadn't bothered, but with a quick blast of cutting disc action I managed to sort it easily.

 

Whilst the radiator was off I decided to take advantage of the easier access to change my fuel filter and in the process the primer bulb split, which caused a further delay as I waited for a new one. Then once the new primer was fitted my glowplug relay failed (thankfully just rusty contacts that a quick session with a wire brush and a needle file sorted), but eventually I got the engine started to allow me to flush the system through.

 

After a day of repeated flushing (initially with dishwasher tablets) I managed to get rid of that bloody smell and the rusty gunk that never seemed to stop coming out. Eventually the oily film disappeared too. The system even bled easily once the fresh new coolant was in, which was a surprise given the XUD's less than stellar reputation in this regard.

 

And here's how things look now, with all my good work obscured by bits of air intake plastic.

 

 

Yes, I realise I need a new radiator crossmember.

 

And so we reach the end of the BX's big jobs. I now have a lovely, freshly refurbished rear axle and a properly functioning cooling system with a radiator fixed securely in place. All those months of work and misery are beginning to seem worth it...

 

Stay tuned to see how the BX fared when put through the MoT.

[Cleon-Fonte]

23 out of 10 for perseverence! I've been there before and it's one of the most awful soul destroying and frustrating jobs known to humanity; well done for getting it back together!

 

It's weird, I actually quite enjoyed putting the new arm bearings in as it's a fairly easy job if the old ones come out easily. It was everything else (particularly the hubs and the new brake pipe) that were the real low points, especially as everything seemed to refuse to be fixed.

 

I made a point of checking the rear arms on my incoming BX and they look decent. However, it's poverty spec compared to this.

 

I was reading back on the earlier posts, and was unsurprised to see you had a specialist give out some pretty useless advice. I've found it more or less the same, my new local place seems to quite like older cars but they detest changing the glow plugs in Turbo'd XUDs.

 

Despite that, they actually told me to carry on with the rust laden ZX.

 

It's definitely worth buying one where the arm bearings have been done, if they've been done properly they shouldn't need doing again as they'll be adequately greased. Having said that I don't regret doing them myself, they're not all that bad and I've learned plenty of valuable new skills.

 

Most of the Citroen specialists I've dealt with so far have been slightly eccentric, but that can be a positive and a negative, in the case of Paris Autos it's the latter. I've proved him wrong though, his view was I'd never be able to bring the BX up to scratch and arguably I have.

 

Find a good specialist, though, and you're set.

[Cleon-Fonte]

And so to the final instalment in this triumvirate of long, rambling and possibly quite tedious posts. On Friday the BX made its first journey of the year to the MoT station. I didn't really know whether it would pass or fail but I had my fingers crossed that it wouldn't fail too badly, and my prayers were answered.

 

 

The only major point of note there is the rear suspension cylinders, which are worn and leaking. I'd only expected them to fail on the basis of split rubber gaiters, a job I'd decided to leave for the MoT garage as by the time I'd done everything else on the rear axle I really couldn't be arsed. As it's the cylinders themselves at fault the garage refuses to do the job, the owner appearing to have erroneously assumed I'm some kind of hydropneumatics expert who can do it better. 

 

It's a pain that the one component I didn't either rebuild or replace is fucked, but that's life.

 

The strut return pipe just needs re-attaching and the garage have agreed to do the CV boot and the fuel pipe so I don't have to worry about those.

 

The speedo can be discounted as it's always illuminated, something the tester didn't realise.

 

The windscreen washer fails every year, the washer pump worked when it went into the test station but didn't work by the time it came out. I guess I'll just replace it and see what happens.

 

I'm not sure what's happening with the rear lights, when the indicators flash the tail lights dim. I'm a complete electrical novice so don't have a clue where to look or what to look for.

 

As for the advisories, I was forewarned that they were going to throw everything they could find in there, so I expected plenty of petty free-typed items. There's nothing I didn't know about (coolant hose aside, something I'll have to inspect), the corrosion they mention is a couple of 50p sized holes, one in the NSR wheelarch and one on the boot floor.

 

Which brings me to the best news of the whole occasion. It appears the rear subframe mounts - the killer of many a BX - have already been welded, to a high standard too. I'd already noticed that most of the regular BX grot spots had been attended to, so literally the only rust underneath the car is that mentioned on the MoT. I'm most pleased by this, who cares if a car's mechanically a dog so long as it has a solid shell?

[Captain Furious]

Epic write-up, I am looking forward to getting into work tomorrow and going through the other 9 pages

 

Rear lights will be a shoddy earth connection somewhere