Schaefft's Bargain Barge Extravaganza - Citroen C6 Improvements all around, now 50% less shite

[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! 🤣

[Schaefft]

With the Maserati back on the road it was the big Citroen's turn over the last few days. With the lights all sorted the parking brake was the next item on the list.

The driverside caliper mechanism was seized but the second hand replacement from Ebay did the job perfectly fine, despite only being 22 quid. Everything came apart surprisingly easily, even the brake line fitting to the caliper didn't protest all that much despite looking pretty original. I'm used to everything being completely seized, rotten or both. I want to keep things "budget" with this one so the brake discs will have to stay for now.

The parking brake lever on the other side caliper (not pictured) was somewhat free-moving enough to work as is. The cable was just hanging there though. It won't necessarily need them but there are supposed to be clips in place to make it impossible for a cable to pop out, the clip was still there so not clue why it was left unhooked. The previous owner might have replaced the cable and gave up when they noticed that one caliper needs replacing. I've tested the parking brake and it's now working as intended, holding the car in place. Only that I have no way of calibrating the cable adjustment, which means the car immediately throws an error and disables it entirely until I cycle the key again. Technological progress... If anyone here knows how I can reset the cable calibration without Lexia, please let me know!

I've also tackled the front lower hub carrier bush today, it was just an advisory but at under 25 quid for a Lemforder one why not replace it, it was completely shagged anyway. Even there everything came apart fairly easily. The center sleeve didn't need much pursuation to pop out, that should give you an idea:

Removal of the outer sleeve required the sawzall but it did come out eventually:

Bushing pressed back in without too much hassle. I probably spent the next hour trying to make the hub carrier align with the lower control arm again. I don't know for certain but I have the feeling the front axle might have moved outwards a few cm and just didn't want to move back in. It definitely wasn't unhooked so I have no clue why it wouldn't move freely back into its original position.

I needed some ballast to keep the lower arm out of the way, fortunately theres never a shortage of heavy as f*ck batteries around here:

A few tactical kicks eventually got everything close enough that with a bit of prying the bolt went back in. Car lowered back on the ground to torque everything. Funnily enough the noise I've heard from this corner before is still there. I think its the strut assembly itself that has an issue. Since it works perfectly fine I think I'll just choose to ignore it for now then... Will need to get a frontend alignment done though.

With the day young I then decided to have a go at the Citroen's abysmal paint. Not only was it failing all over, there were also still signs of the sideswipe the PO told me about, plus the worst case of stone chip mayhem I have ever seen. Photos really hide a lot but looking at the before at the top and the results at the bottom I'm quite happy:

I could have gone a lot more agressive with wet sanding things and then polishing the hell out of it but those are some decent improvements for a start.

Front door done, rear door not. At the stage the above photo was taken I couldnt really bother anymore and just rushed to the end, it didn't help that I seemed to melt the paint or at the very least leave some strange sticky residue that would be a pain to remove again.

And the stone chip crater landscape you see at the front -

A seemingly bottomless 15ml bottle of scratch remover paint made all the difference in the end. I feel like I painted half the car with it (literally hundreds of chips and scratches) and still have some left!

So for the total investment of probably about 20 quid, plus about 50 quid of parts, we should now have a car that looks decent (from 30 feet away) and hopefully can stay on the road for another 12 months. Considering the state this C6 was in when I got it noticeable improvements are finally picking up, if I can find a way to save the paint on the roof and bonnet you could almost call the car presentable again!