Schaefft's Bargain Barge Extravaganza - Citroen C6 Improvements and Maserati Hassle

[Schaefft]

Can one French piece of shite get another one going?

The answer might be yes, unless the battery is utterly knackered, the battery terminal clamp turns out to be snapped in half, the cheapo jumper leads are useless junk and your jump pack possibly on it's last legs.

Boy was it a pain to get the C6 started tonight. The previous owner must have cracked the flimsy yet overly complex positive battery terminal when they swapped batteries around. That didn't prevent the car from starting before but certainly made things more of a pain now. The VelSatis' battery ended up in the Citroen in the end, the jump leads simply couldn't get enough voltage over for that diesel to turn over no matter what I tried.

It made it over to the new house anyway. I can now recreate the Top Gear episode where Clarkson compared the C6 with an M-Sport E60 by running it around a horse race course:

The fields will be the ultimate test for Citroen's hydropneumatic suspension!

[Bear]

That C6 needs a nice C6 plate 😂

(The roffle on that one stalled)

[Schaefft]

20 minutes ago, RichardK said:

That C6 needs a nice C6 plate 😂

(The roffle on that one stalled)

I'm reluctant to invest more than the absolute minimum to keep it going right now, until it has proven itself to be worthy of surviving anyway.

[Schaefft]

Finally did the oil service on the S8 when I had some time on Saturday. The car was already waiting on the ramps from my previous attempt:

Maybe somewhat surprisingly it still had its engine undertray, which clearly did a good job at soaking up the oil leak this is having somewhere:

That'll be it. I think its actually just the oil pan gasket leaking, especially after dumping the engine flush in and letting it idle for a while. I've tightened the bolts a bit, that might slow it down until I'm ready to replace it with the next oil change.

The oil filter is a bit of a pain to reach as its buried at the back of the engine under several hoses:

No nasty surprises there, no clue how long its been since the last change but it was certainly due. The plastic rings around the paper element were missing a few chunks which I found at the bottom of the housing, I don't think they contributed to any oil pressure issues clogging things up.

I then drained the 10 liters of oil, dropped the drainage bolt into the pan below and watched it overflow right onto the drive without much I could do about it... An hour of clean-up later the oil was topped up and the car was possibly running a little bit smoother (doesn't it always feel like it does after a service)? It certainly didnt hurt it but the pressure light was still on so the pressure switch will be next.

I've also ordered the bonnet release cables that didn't survive the weekend before and installed them. 60 quid for all 3 from the dealer isn't too terrible. I might get away with keeping the release lever to engine bay cable alone, it looks like an absolute pain to replace. The engine control fuse mentioned before blew again after the battery went flat. I'll have to see if that's going to be a reoccuring issue.

In other great news, after 3 years of standing idle the Dutch Chevy Caprice finally passed its MOT! And what a beautiful machine it is:

Can you believe that only 10 years separate this body-on-frame pushrod powered front bench seat Chevy from the Valve-tronic, hydraulic roll control post-modern 7-Series?

Granted, the E65 was state of the art while the Caprice was still riding on a platform from 1976 but many of these still shared the road back in the early 2000s. Technologically you'd struggle to find two other contemporary cars that were so far apart, yet could be seen side by side often enough (if you were living in the states anyway). That said all Caprices came with standard ABS and driver airbag , very unusual when it launched in late 1990.

There were a few other familiar sights there as well that some shiters might recognize:

Since the Caprice is still on Dutch plates I'll have to go through the registration process with the DVLA (which basically consists of filling out a V55/5 form and send a shit ton of supporting documents and a freaking cheque (to pay for tax and reg fees). The good news is that the previous owner already went through the NOVA process with HMRC which means no VAT should be payable (which has been the case on imported cars since January '21, thank you very much Brexit). There's certainly enough proof that the car has been here for a while. Hoping to receive my cheque book soon so I can send it all off and get my V5.

I've been absolutely obsessed with this car as a 12 year old, you could say that this really ignited my love for American cars. I've driven it up and down the road so far (being a Euro market car it should have a posi but probably needs a bit more power for real donuts, ask me how I know!) but I could certainly get used to driving this regularly. And as an extra bonus, with all the heavy duty options ticked on this one I can tow up to 5000lbs with an appriopriate trailer hitch! If anyone knows where I could get one, let me know!

[robthedonkey]

A mate just posted this on FB ... Instantly thought of you

Sent from my Pixel 8 using Tapatalk

[Schaefft]

As seen over in the Twixfest March '25 thread the turn out of cars was great, with a good mix of shite spanning 5 decades. I decided to take the Citroen C6 as I haven't really taken it for many journeys at all yet, certainly not of the windy type. That meant the day started with replacing the positive terminal battery clamp which we previously found being in pieces.

Thanks to the shiter for taking the photo above! One of the plastic y-pieces of the cooling system is still leaking water (I haven't really bothered replacing it either), aside from that the big Citroen has done well around the bumpy roads and tight turns of the North Pennines. The suspension is coping reasonably well when left in standard mode, however the Sport mode does make a difference when you are really starting to push the car (without it there seems to be more wallowing/bodyroll than in the V6 XM for example). Maybe it was because of. the 5 tons of CAR magazines I've inherited from @loserone

An ESP and electronic parking brake fault popped up at some point which appears to have gone again (silly French electronics). There's also an odd noise from the driver side front suspension when the strut isn't under normal load (like driving over a crest, unloading the front suspension), I'll have to investigate whether that could be a failing strut top bushing.

It's not pretty in it's currently state but still a nice comfortable place to be. I'll try to use it more regularly over the next few weeks and hopefully work out all the kinks to get it through another test.

If not it'll still make a fantastic farm truck😂

[Bear]

The suspension noise will probably be the annoying three-pronged lower balljoint...

[Schaefft]

38 minutes ago, Bear said:

The suspension noise will probably be the annoying three-pronged lower balljoint...

It sounded a bit like as if the strut was mounted to the strut tower with 3 studs and nuts and the nuts now being lose allowing the strut to move up and down a tiny bit. I guess the ball joint could make sense, will only know once I take the wheel off!

[bunglebus]

Just seen this, might be of some use?

[Schaefft]

5 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Just seen this, might be of some use?

Nooo, where's that exactly? 76k miles🤦‍♂️

[bunglebus]

I think Harry Buckland's is quite well known but not near me. Hopefully a local Shiter might be able to go for you? Think there's a Shitely section on here somewhere 

[Westbay]

56 minutes ago, Schaefft said:

Nooo, where's that exactly? 76k miles🤦‍♂️

http://harrybuckland.co.uk/

[Schaefft]

1 hour ago, bunglebus said:

I think Harry Buckland's is quite well known but not near me. Hopefully a local Shiter might be able to go for you? Think there's a Shitely section on here somewhere 

 

43 minutes ago, Westbay said:

http://harrybuckland.co.uk/

Yeah, managed to find them and gave them a ring. The guy on the phone had absolutely no clue what an Oldsmobile is so I gave them the reg. I'll call them back in 30mins but should they not want to sell the car as a while (certificate of destruction might have been issued already) I would be grateful for anybody nearby to pull some parts off of it for me (mostly trim, lights, radio etc).

[Schaefft]

So yeah, they don't want to sell the car as a whole which is a huge waste of rare parts. They obviously couldn't care less.

I'll probably start a separate thread but if there is someone near Cheltenham who could take a few bits off of this one I'd be very grateful and happy to pay for your services (and the parts).

[hairnet]

ask antonyg  tell him not to go in the jag just in case  (joke tony)

[Schaefft]

The spirit of Autoshite showed once again and thanks to the help of @Asimo and my mate Matt (also on here but not posting enough!) some huge progress was made on the scrapyard Aurora. You just don't come along an opportunity like this very often (never in fact). Unfortunately someone already ruined the fuel rail by taking all 8 injectors:

The car had the rather rare black interior though. With all 3 of mine thr typical beige/tan (and some bits not the prettist anymore) this was a great opportunity to grab everything needed for an interior swap:

Matt certainly went to town and took pretty much the entire interior minus the carpet and headliner (passenger seat obviously still in the photo). Since I'll be in the area towards the end of the month I will try and get the rest of the remaining parts worth pulling before this Aurora goes into the crusher. It would make sense to pick the car clean down to the frame but its not really feasible living so far away.

He also took the intake, starter motor, headlights, backboxes and a few other bits I know I will need. Hopefully that'll be enough to get the German Aurora currently waiting at the garage into much better shape.

[Schaefft]

After Twixfest '25 the Citroen C6 is back into action. We took it for a quick journey to Hadrian's Wall yesterday, aside from a driver front clunk of some sort its incredible how well the car really drives:

Turns out there must be another Citroen aficionado living along our road, there's also a semi-abandoned Berlingo behind the 2CV:

With the C6 driving so well it's the cosmetics of that are the major let down. Today was the first day to finally do something about that.

The trim was poorly glued to the bonnet before and naturally has fallen off shortly after I bought the car. Most of the studs are snapped off (probably when the shit paintjob was done) and the remaining ones are missing their circlips. I've taped it back on using stronger doublesided tape and ordered new clips, fingers crossed that'll be enough to keep it on there.

The next issue was the heavy tint on the side and foglights in the front. The previous owner had a completely blacked out C6 back in France, I assume this was an attempt at version #2. Fortunately it all came off fairly easily, I used the opportunity to pop the front left/right PDC sensors back into their correct positions while I could reach them easily:

Much better, if you ignore the scuffs and terrible stone chips anyway. The former can be polished out, the latter would require a respray. I naturally will try and push touch-up paint to its limits instead! If I only knew what the paint code for whatever this color is now.

The reverse and rear foglights were covered in the same tint, without it things are looking much better now. I also used the chance to reassemble the boot liner a second time after swapping the battery (seems to hold charge for about a week at least now), replaced a burnt out taillight bulb and replaced the zipties holding the bootlid insert on with stronger zipties (naturally the mounts are missing).

Sharp eyed shiters will have noticed that the chrome trim on the driverside has gotten the M-Sport* treatment (not on the passenger side though). I actually don't mind the black gloss look at all. But since A: I definitely can't be bothered to do the same on the passenger side and B: this stuff already started pealing along the corners anyway it had to go. Fortunately again a pretty straight forward job as it just peeled off:

While we are on this side, I've also glued the high gloss trim back on the map pocket door which naturally fell off at some point:

I've also reattached the doorcard a little better as it probably wasn't installed properly the last time someone was in there.

So lots of little improvements on the C6 in just a few hours. It still needs a wash and the touchup paint should make a difference where the paint is just missing entirely. With such a poor quality paintjob you'll never get something resembling a factory quality finish but with a bit of polishing (once I actually have a polisher again) we should be able to achieve a major improvement, at least from say 10 feet away.

Since the sun is up for so much longer now I had a quick look at the Maserati's powersteering leak as well:

As I had already expected the powersteering cooler has burst a leak. I haven't looked at my options yet, I could just bypass it entirely but if there is a reasonable cost option available (definitely not from Maserati) I'd definitely consider it. @MAF260 let me know if there's a UK supplier for an aftermarket PAS cooler if you know one, or even better, a similarly sized cooler from something else that happens to fit.

The Supercharged Xedos 9 meanwhile has found some shelter. No sheep on the field yet so why not make used of theirs!