1988 Citroen 2CV - what have I bought

[Jimbob McGregor]

Nice car. I had a red Spécial as my first car.

Make sure the Dyane air duct outlet is blocked over or your engine cooling/occupant heating can suffer.

If you can find the ducting to fit this outlet and feed air to the airbox that would be great.

Make sure the oil cooler fins on the upper part of the front of the engine behind the fan are kept clean and check the cooler pipes for cracks/leakage as these can go with resultant loss of oil pressure

The rust will most likely go further (not trying to be negative, just realistic!). The toe board gets it as can the parcel shelf/crossmember that the gear lever/steering column is bolted to/around the windscreen (with structure behind the dash) etc.

Key thing is to check the chassis all over, and tap it lots in the main central section. If there’s rattling, the complex internal structure may well be rather rusty, compromising strength and the torsional rigidity of the chassis, which was very finely honed by Citroen.

High values these days make the effort to sort it well worth doing, so good luck!

I’m sure there is loads more help/advice to come.

[lesapandre]

&  you can get every single part I believe? Though I expect as with all these things quality varies. Immensely popular in France with a massive following there. You will be welcome anywhere.

[eifion]

2 hours ago, Jimbob McGregor said:

Make sure the Dyane air duct outlet is blocked over or your engine cooling/occupant heating can suffer.

This has already been expertly* done by a previous owner. There's a plastic lid from what looks like an aerosol can there, held on with a cable tie. It's cracked, though, so will need updating.

Cheers to everyone for the help and advice so far. The next job is for me to do give it an oil change, grease the kingpins and replace the points (which are pretty worn), spark plugs and leads, etc. After that I need to get in touch with a 2CV specialist to get all of the welding done. I've never tried welding and I'm not going to start with a job this big.

[Jimbob McGregor]

Parts-wise, there’s ECAS in Stafford and 2cv City in Yorkshire. I’d say the latter were the ‘budget’ setup.

I’ve had some great stuff and service from Burton in the Netherlands, such as cast iron exhaust clamps which almost make working around the heat exchangers etc a pleasure compared to the usual nightmare.

I seem to recall someone on here (6Cylinder?) getting a hood from there lately?

[somewhatfoolish]

Thank the FSM someone has produced better quality clamps; they gave me teh fearz whenever I had to deal with exhaustiveness.

[eifion]

This afternoon we took the bonnet and front wings off the 2CV to see what horrors lurked underneath. I'd tried removing the bonnet before but it'd been a bit reluctant. I squirted penetrating oil along the hinge a few hours ahead of today's attempt and with a bit of Chuckle Brothers action it eventually slid off. Taking the wings off was straightforward.

This wasn't just done for fun, although I did drive it around a bit like this, but to look for crusty bits. As suspected there was plenty of rust underneath. Both nearside...

....and offside

 

The rest of the toeboard part doesn't look too bad, though, which was a relief.

I also took the fan off to take a look at the points, which were pretty worn. Setting the gap has improved starting considerably, and it'll be getting new plugs, points, condensor, etc. soon to (hopefully) improve things even more. I suspect that this poor car has  been neglected over the last few years and some TLC will help considerably. Then it'll be off to someone who can weld.