Schaefft's Bargain Barge Extravaganza - Citroen C6 goes for MOT, saving THOUSANDS on the Maserati

[Schaefft]

Finally some progress on the Maserati then. As alluded to above, the powersteering cooler on the Coupe/Spyder is a bit of a weakpoint. Maserati knows this and is happy to charge you £1500 + labor to replace it, something that clearly indicates that they are either desperate for cash (very much true) or completely out of their mind (probably also true). The specialist knows that most people will just fork out whatever they charge them since its still only a third of the price. Since powersteering coolers have absolutely no business being this expensive I went the DIY route (as has proven itself to be the right way before) and bought a used BMW 335i cooler instead:

As you can tell it's dimensions are similar although its inlet/outlet pipes are much longer:

Fortunately there's little stopping you from just chopping the ends right off (forgot to take a photo but it all cleaned up nicely). I wanted to go all the way and flare the ends of the pipes but my flare tool couldn't get a good grip on them unfortunately. You can tell that the BMW pipes didn't really have anything other than a clamp holding the hose on either, with no pressure in the system after the rack it'll be perfectly fine.

Mounted in place with a tactical ziptie:

Considering I just saved myself the equivalent of 3 cheap Citroen C6s I'm perfect happy with a ziptie instead of a bracket holding it in place. The radiator cowl was reinstalled with new hardware since the old bolts were all rotten (still have to straighten it all bit):

I've ordered some Dexron IId (apprently the only thing recommended by anybody owning these, not sure if that means much) which should be here next week. I'm hoping that the car will behave for a little after all the work that has gone into it over the winter. Definitely looking forward to driving it now that the weather is getting better again!

[hairnet]

ungrateful piece of shit etc

[Schaefft]

The other news are that the Vel Satis has now gone to new pastures, I'm hoping that it'll receive the TLC it deserves. I couldn't miss the chance to do a quick photoshoot with its direct Gallic rival before it left though. It's incredible how different two cars designed for the same segment during the same time by makers from the same country could be.

Unsurprisingly most people will think that the C6 has been the more successful styling exercise and I would agree. However, the Vel Satis isn't ugly in my opinion, it's just a different approach to creating a premium car where versatility and room were in the foreground. I also love the little squares for reasons that would be hard to explain here.

Speaking of the C6: It's MOT expires in just over 2 weeks. Considering I knew that the parking brake would be an issue and that a sub £600 C6 would most likely hide about a million issue I felt like throwing it in for a test early this time around:

Well, believe it or not but a bunch of bulbs I genuinely didn't notice before and the parking brake (in fact just the driver rear caliper which has a seized lever) are the only things currently keeping this car from another year of wafting. I've had a quick look and I might be able to get a used caliper for 25 quid. The bulbs I have tackled today, and surprisingly they were easily reachable with the parking lamp bulbs only requiring the removal of 3 clips and 2 covers:

Who would have expected that from a modern French car? The reg plate bulbs only required the lenses to pop out. However, I did notice that both reverse and rear foglight bulbs never turned on either. What would the chance of that be?

Well, after faffing about for about an hour trying to find the reason why 4 perfectly good bulbs wouldn't illuminate when they should (normally this would indicate a broken harness, although still unlikely) I was about to conclude that there must be impossible to diagnose electrical gremlins. I then wiggled one of the bulbs one more time, turned the foglights on again and it finally illuminated. With zero signs of corrosion on any of the bulb holders this was surprising but more intense wiggling eventually resulted in all bulbs illuminating again:

That leaves us with the caliper on the right. As always that doesn't mean that the car will be trouble free in the end. The clunk from the front is a shot lower hub bush which I hopefully can get individually (edit: apparently I can despite not being listed separately in the parts catalogue, odd). I also still need to sort the coolant leak from a plastic Y-piece that naturally is a pain to reach. At least I got a good look at it today from below:

With this being a typical C6 weakness I can't say I'm mad. In general this rough looking C6 originally sold as a parts car turns out to be more solid than I ever expected. Everything I mentioned above are typical old car problems you'd have with a car of almost any mileage, and all of them are cheap to sort (if you put some time in). Fingers crossed it'll stay that way for a little while then!

Bonus shot of an XJ with a C6 reg, taken from a C6:

[Schaefft]

I've adjusted the handbrake shoes on the Maserati over the last two evenings. I'm not 100% sure whether there's still something rubbing but it was certainly good enough for the first real test drive since the MOT pass months ago.

And my god is this car a blast to drive! The deeply rumbling (but also high revving) V8 is just a dream! It has gobs of torque pretty much throughout the entire rev-band, it's such a sweet engine. My 6-speed 540i is a joy to drive but 110 extra horses and actual, sharp handling really put this on another level. And it's surprisingly comfy at speed over these fairly rough country roads as well, the skyhook suspension does a pretty good job at floating over the larger bumps in the road.

I'm hoping that the car stays in one piece for a little while now so I can start concentrating on the cosmetics. I'm actually contemplating whether I should wrap it in a darker color, the wheels also need a refurb badly unless I can find a later set of 7-spokes for reasonable money.

[High Jetter]

If i'd spent 2 evenings adjusting things there'd deffo be some rubbing! 🤣