GSA Road Trip

[mnde]

On Saturday, my girlfriend and I will be leaving leafy Surrey to embark on a Great North Tour in my trusty GSA.

 

 

We're staying in Calderdale, and the peeps whose barn conversion we are living in for the week are fellow Cit CC members and own this OMG ORANGE GS estate with matching interior...

 

 

 

... amongst other old Cits I thought it would be just rude to rock up in the BX... or the Honda Jazz, aircon or not!

 

In the process of meeting up with various friends/family we will be taking in the delights of Chester (possibly or somewhere nearer by), Goole and sunny Manchester and possibly Huddersfield among other as yet undecided places.

 

So wish me luck!

 

I've spent the last couple of evenings prepping it for the trip: On Tuesday I dismantled the passenger front door and had the glass and winding mechanism out because the front runner guide thingy had come unstuck and I need to reglue it to the glass. MAJOR FAFF but essential for passenger comfort and happiness in this heatwave. Yesterday I took a wheel to Merityre because it had gone down abruptly over a weekend and I'd had to swap it for the spare. Diagnosis: leak from around the rim so they cleaned it up and sealed it. Last night I derusted as much as I could the crusty bubbling lip of the tailgate where it presses against the seal and slapped on some Rust Beater paint, reassembled the passenger door trim and gave the dash, doorhandles etc a spring clean with cockpit shine cos there were dirty oily marks everywhere from driving it with dirty oily hands.... Apart from an oil, LHM and tyre check, and a damn good wash (bloody Sahara dust, no car cover) I think it's good to go!

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[michiel]

Good luck, and take lots of pics!

[pompei]

I'm in love with your Citroen

[Station]

Good luck! And Good Luck!

[M'coli]

Good luck! Love the car. I myself am embarking on a northern tour tomorrow, leaving leafy West Yorkshire for a tour of the highlands in the Cavalier 1300L, and as with yours, I've been fettling it prior to the run (probably a good 1200 miles worth, if not 1500!) - new locks, front suspension bushes, new(sic) brake pads, oil and filters... It'll be its 9th run up the M74 in the last 7 months!

[mnde]

Thanks everyone! The car's going to pass the 160000 mile yardstick at some point next week M'coli: good luck with your road trip too. Please take lots of pics!Mark.

[VWPowered]

Good luck, and take lots of pics!

yep lots of pics

[M'coli]

^^^ I have treated myself to a new camera - a Panasonic TZ6 - and will indeed be taking lots of pics, as it's got a start-up time of less than 5 seconds, just great for those on-the-move shitespots!PS 160000 - is it still on the original engine etc? Good going!

[trigger]

Both of them GSA are lovely, Very Orange!,

 

It's Too Orangey for Crows!

 

Good luck on the trip, It sounds like fun!

[pogweasel]

Excellent. Have fun etc. Good work on being prepared though, I wouldn't be anywhere near so conciencious[sp?]. "Are any warning lights on?" "No" "Are there any funny noises/smells?" "No" "Right, lets go" is kind of how it goes.

[M'coli]

Both of them GSA are lovely, Very Orange!,

 

It's Too Orangey for Crows!

 

Good luck on the trip, It sounds like fun!

Do you now realise that I have to get one of these, in orange, as transport for pet canine? "It's just for me and my dawg!"

[mnde]

Yep it's still on its original engine. I'm told the original owner changed the oil every 3000 miles and never drove above 60 mph but I seriously doubt the latter. It's incredibly hard not to do so on the motorway/dual carriageway in this car Also for a long period under my ownership it leaked oil from various places, so the oil was constantly fresh Now it still consumes a bit of oil - as can only be expected! It runs more sweetly than my BX which has c 100K on the clock!

Excellent. Have fun etc.Good work on being prepared though, I wouldn't be anywhere near so conciencious[sp?]."Are any warning lights on?" "No" "Are there any funny noises/smells?" "No" "Right, lets go" is kind of how it goes.

I find preparedness necessary when my better half asks "do we have to take this car?" cos it's hot and smelly. The passenger window was an important fix . I know it'll be a sweltering journey up North, but I'll grin and bear it . Funny smells are par for the course with this car, what with heat exchangers on the exhaust filled with crud and oil from past leakages bringing hot oily smells through the ventilation system (but mainly when the temp control is set to hot which ain't going to happen on this trip!!). I'll try and take some sneaky shitespots but my camera's got a slooooow start up time and no guarantee that I'll be able to distract my other half while taking photos of giffer spec Proton Sagas. I remember seeing some prize chod last time I was up in Sheffield direction though!Mark.

[mnde]

GAH.The window repair hasn't held! So once wound down it won't close properly because it drops at the front and goes all skew-iff on the way up. So I'm going to get complaints either about being unable to open it/close it, or about the wind noise because there's a gap at the rear top corner.Any suggestions chaps? My first thought was ask my better half to travel in the back where there are working windows. The window is only held up with two metal tabs glued near the bottom edge of the glass. The tabs have nylon balls at the bottom that engage in two separate horizontal runners on the winding mechanism. Because the front tab has come adrift, the edge of the glass has dropped slightly and is resting on the runner. Maybe a tiny G clamp will be my friend?? My only other thought is that I can try and wedge something rubbery or polystyrene-y between the bottom edge and the front runner to get it level again. I don't want to give up now and take the BX (with tempremental ventilator fan electrics) or the Honda Jazz. BX would be fine but will be slightly out of place in the company of the GS Estate, DS, Ami and Dyane that the apartment owners have in their collection. At least the forecast says it's gonna be cooler/raining next week!Mark.

[autohausdolby]

MEH! I drove all the way to the Algerian border and back in my AX with a similar driver's window. A quick tug (on the glass! Easy tiger!) would see it right.

 

Have a couple of roadtrip photies as proof

 

 

 

[dollywobbler]

I'm just back from a cross-country blat to Devon in the 2CV. 800 miles in the week (600 miles of which was getting there and back!) and she clocked up 170,000 miles on the way back - though she's not had her original engine in for a few thousand miles (sitting in the garage repaired and ready to run again).But I'm rubbish so got no pics other than of a crusty Fiat Tempra which made me think of this place!Hope you do a better job with pics! Dan's Orange GS estate is truly a thing of beauty. I once sat in it and the orangeness was truly almost too much (but in a very good way!).

[mnde]

Right, I've finally got round to uploading some pics and videos taken during our trip up North last week. Sadly there wasn't much in the way of Yorkshite or Cheshite, and the bestest ones were encountered on the M1 when I couldn't get a photograph. Northbound, I overtook an OMG RELIANT KITTEN ESTATE!!! R Reg, Lincoln Green, old chap driving it

Southbound, a light blue Renault 4 on foreign plates (couldn't work out the country) overtook us at a fair lick (I was driving more sedately following the "tyre incident" - more later). But here's what I can bring you:

 

By the River Dee in Chester, I present this fab Grannie. Loved the white trims.

 

 

Parked up in a carpark in Hebden Bridge, I captured this "French corner" including bonus Twingo.

 

 

Rusting Mini with flat rear tyre on Main Street, Haworth.

 

Here we are on one of our daytrips:

 

 

We went to some nice places:

 

Parked up at Oxenhope Station to take a trip on the KWVR.

 

 

Our train

 

 

Derelict theatre(?) in Bradford town centre complete with plants growing out of the tower.

 

 

Televisionshite in the National Media Museum

 

 

 

 

Speed camera at sunset, outskirts of Bradford

 

 

Parked up looking at the lovely view

 

 

We stayed in a fantastic apartment. The Citroen wall:

 

 

The family owned these:

 

 

 

and also 2 Dyanes and a 3 wheeler special. (Numberplates obscured just because I noticed the owners did the same on their website by the way).

 

Youtube videos:

 

Overtaking cyclists uphill. Hear the flat four powah as I dispatch the last one. Look out for two bonus VW campers.

 

Driving on a quiet country road.

 

On a twisty turny road high up.

 

 

Passing the magic 160000 on the M1 on the journey back (my girlfriend took this, by the way!).

 

 

Then just as I thought it had gone all so well...

 

During my mid-journey pressure checks, I undid the valve cap on the OSF tyre and air started to escape. Pumped the tyre back up to pressure, but when I removed the pump hose, the threaded part of the valve came with it psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst.

 

I pushed it back in and pumped the tyre back up, but I wasn't happy with the thought that the valve could blow out at speed on the M1... So we went round to the filling station to change for the spare. After much faffing around because I couldn't find any level ground and bent the jack because I forgot the handbrake pads on GSAs might as well be made of French cheese for all the use they are and shoulda oughta put it in gear etc., wheel was on, all tightened up. Started to move off and there was "cla- clonk.... cla- clonk" from the OSF wheel. Thought that's not right. Thought maybe through fiddling around trying to balance the wheel on the hub with effing seized wheelnuts (they are two part nuts) I'd crossthreaded a nut or one wasn't done up enough. Took it all off again, oiled the nuts, all on again. Cla- clonk... cla- clonk. Worse on RH lock, disappeared on LH lock. Dammit. It's just had new driveshafts, so I thought it can't be that. So I had to call out Britannia Rescue. Half an hour later, with my other half having lost the will a while back, a top bloke arrives with a flatbed truck, says the car's not his cup of tea but still enthuses over it, never seen one before etc etc. Anyway, once he's got the wheel off and is checking over the CV joint, I happen to notice that the inside of the wheel has fresh scuffs on it. I suggest that maybe it's been catching on the upper balljoint nut. He says "well spotted!", gets a hammer out and starts welting the offending areas and dislodging a fair amount of iron oxide. So corrosion had bulged a welded seam in two places, hence the "cla- clonk". Wheel back on, noise gone. FFS!

 

 

I CAN HAZ NEW WHEELZ?

 

 

More soon, when I've uploaded them!

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[michiel]

so far (apart from the wheel bit ofcourse), those roads look pretty cool!

[Mr Lobster]

Looks like a good trip! Reminds me that there are a few places up here I should really try and go to for a bit of a day out - Haworth is fairly close by and Hebden Bridge (aka The Lesbian Capital of The North) is an ok day out too.GSA looks superb too

[dollywobbler]

Ah, 2CVs do that wheel thing too, and my H van did exactly the same 'tyre valve comes off' thing once! Tyres don't half go flat quickly with no valve...Clearly, the GS is very definitely a Citroen.Nice pics though and a top trip!

[andrew e]

A nice holiday by the looks of it, Granada is unusual LX spec.

[Mr H Sceptre]

Looks like a perfect holiday, of which the wheel incident only adds to.

[trigger]

Like the others have said, It looks like you had a great time apart from the dodgy wheel, Love your GSA BTW, Looks lovely.

[mnde]

Thanks! I'm going away for the weekend, but will upload more pics next week, and some steam train vids. Lo qual, but better than nowt and the sound's quite good!Cheers,Mark.

[mnde]

Here's my steam train vids:

 

 

 

 

 

Not great quality, but the sound's not bad!

 

More pics to come.

 

 

Mark.

[VWPowered]

being a GS man i spotted this little thread/blog about a bloke who brought a GS from the garage around the corner from me and drove it home.. made a good read

[mnde]

Hey VWP, that's a great story about the GS - thanks for sharing.

 

Here's a very overdue picture update to this thread.

 

 

 

During our day out in Hebden Bridge we went to this flea market that was CHOCK FULL of tat of all descriptions. Somehow I couldn't bring myself to buy anything. Not much car oriented stuff stood out except for a couple of car badges (Vanden Plas, Vauxhall Victor), some models and a parts washer.

 

Doing the round of charity shops I saw this and had to have it: a British Caledonian promotional LP from 1979!

 

 

 

 

 

My favourite track from this evocative selection is Swingin' Safari.

 

Also while browsing one of the excellent retro tat shops in Haworth, I couldn't resist this celebration of retro home computing:

 

 

 

 

which is appropriate because I still have a ZX Spectrum 48K and a Spectrum 128K, and my family used to have a Master System II on which my brother and I used to play many a game of Mortal Kombat!!

 

 

Mark.

[j-j]

 

Doing the round of charity shops I saw this and had to have it: a British Caledonian promotional LP from 1979!

 

 

 

-excellent killer (literally) plane shite Douglas DC-10.

 

As for the tyre valve phenomenon, I have also had a tyre valve blow the center out and it was also on a Citroen....

 

Kudos for actually checking the tyre pressures en route - I never do this

[mnde]

Yes, I didn't realise... the DC-10 does have an unenviable record from what I've read My girlfriend gets bored when I insist on doing my mid-journey checks of oil, LHM and tyres, but considering what happened with the tyre valve, you can never be too careful! I dread to think what would have happened if it had done that on the M1... well, saying that I've had two blowouts at speed, and the car has lived up to Citroen's claims (and the old adverts) in that I remained in complete control... and each time I thought a driveshaft had failed Mark.

[j-j]

the DC-10 does have an unenviable record from what I've read

Well to be fair, the DC-10 was a great plane it's just that there were a couple of high profile and spectacular fatal incidents with them in the 70s all caused by (or extenuated by) design oversights such as a spasticated cargo door hatch locking mechanism and the lack of essential hydraulic fuses for the slats and flaps.Otherwise an ace beast to behold - killed off in the end by the more efficient 2- engine or 4 - engine offerings of rivals (tri jets like the DC-10 and Tristar have more expensive serviceing due to the third high up engine)I've yet to experience the joys of a blow out

[autohausdolby]

We had a blow out at about 40 in the AX while in Morocco. A 50p sized hole appeared in the inner sidewall. The only indication something was wrong was that we got weird vibrations. I pulled over and all the air was conspicously missing. The car had been sat on the tyres with them all flat for 3 years prior to leaving, but my tyre budget was all spent by then for various reasons. I did take the precaution of asking for a free deathmaster on a rim from the scrappy when I was buying the engine before we went, and that saw us home