Getting The Engines Home

Now more firmly settled in our new home, my thoughts turned to the important business of 'claiming' the garage before it was overrun with box, bikes and lawnmowers. I bought a second hand engine crane from Ebay, using the specification of the one I had borrowed from Doug as my guide.

Typically cranes are sold in 1 ton and 2 ton versions, the weight that can be lifted is not the only consideration.You also have to consider how far you will need to extend the lifting arm: the further you extend it, the less load you can safely lift. With the DS gearbox out front and engine behind, you need to extend the arm quite a way to be over the lifting eye attached to the water pump housing. Another factor to consider is the 'spread' of the legs of the crane as you will need to manoeuvre it between the from wheels to get over the engine. 

I bought a one ton crane. At 'half-stretch' it can carry half a ton safely - which was enough for the engine and gearbox. In addition to the crane, I also bought myself some lifting straps. These are colour-coded according to the weight they can cary. I got a couple a couple of two meter purple loops - rated for 1000kg.

DX Engine Retrieval - 11 September 2016

First to come home was the remainder of the DX engine I had bought from Adie.

The weekend of 10 and 11 September 2016 was the Citroen Car Club's 'Chevrons' rally on the Little Horwood site. I'd already arranged to meet Darrin from Citroen Classics there on the Sunday to collect some new valve guides and cylinder head bolts. Killing several birds with the same stone, I also used the trip to collect the DX engine from the farm nearby. Setting off very early, I was at the farm soon after 8am.

In It Goes......11 September 2016

Tyre pressures had been increased for carrying a full load and the back of the car was suitably padded-out. With the use of Doug's crane at the barn I carefully loaded the engine in. Mission accomplished and I still had my parts to collect from Darrin and the Chevrons rally to enjoy!

Arriving home at the end of the day, I used my new engine crane at home to unload at the other end. I'd rigged up a couple of trollies using pallets and some sturdy castors from Screwfix. Rubber wheels - not plastic one that might shatter.

Engine and Gearbox - 25 September 2016

A man on a mission: I was back up at the barn two weeks later. This time with Richard. With his help the DX2 engine and gearbox were split.

By now most of the peripherals and hydraulic pipes were already at home. I took lots of reference photos of the various different bolt shapes and lengths and their locations, as many of them are double-ended to accommodate other brackets and clips. The engine and gearbox came apart surprisingly easily.

As before the engine - and this time also the gearbox -  were loaded in the Zafira for the journey home.

Piece of Cake - 25 September 2016

"Teas Up Richard!"

It had been another productive day. Now all I had to do was retrieve my DS..........

Getting organised (Part 1) - Workshop and Access

Although the plan had been to work on the car and replace the engine up at the barn, the previous 18 months had shown me that this was just unrealistic. Although my car was stored there, I lacked a suitable workspace. Well - not enough space and resources to do what I would need to do.

Car in the Barn - 8 May 2015

AND it was an hour from home. There was no way I was going to be able to put in the hours that would be necessary to fix the car at the barn.  With my trips to the barn infrequent, I would sometimes arrive to find my DS had been moved further back in the barn and sometimes completely boxed in by other cars. Sometimes it had things stacked against it. Not only was there no room to work, there was also a very real danger of the car ending up back in the corner again!

Unusually Empty Barn - 7 June 2015

Luckily that problem was resolving itself with our move to a house with a double garage. I just needed to make sure I got the car out of the barn as soon as I possibly could. That meant getting the garage at home ready.

Adjoining the garage was something I assume had been intended as a 'summer room' or early idea of a conservatory. It wasn't directly accessible from the main house, but did back on to the garage and had already become a workshop of sorts - complete with a couple of cupboards and a wood working bench.

When Gayle and I had first viewed the house, I'd made a mental note of the potential to have a door going directly from the garage to the workshop at the back.  That would be a messy job, so needed doing before the car came home.

In August 2016  I re-topped the workshop cupboards and workbenches I had inherited with 9" x 2" roof joists, held in place by hex-headed screws/ bolts recessed into the surface. As well as giving a rock-solid surface, this also raised the working height to something more suited to my 6'3" frame. I refitted the wood-working vice I had also inherited. This has proved surprisingly useful, opening, as it does to 13".

Richard came to visit, and we did a 'test fit' of the garage with his DS.

'Test Fit' With Richards DS - 3 September 2016

I also borrowed from Richard a HUGE and scary angle grinder and cut a doorway in the back wall of the garage straight into the workshop. Cutting the door was one of the messiest things I think I've ever done as the grinder turns the brick to heavy, cloying dust: cutting it, fitting a lintel and lining it took a couple of weeks. Hoovering the dust up took months! The results, however, gave me a really workable space. 

New Secret Doorway to Workshop

The ability to flit from car to a working space in a matter of seconds was a significant step on the journey towards getting my car back together and worlds away from the two hour trip to the barn and back.

House Move!

The big day finally came. Friday 27 May 2016 - and we moved house. The kids were both nervous and excited. The plan was that they went to school leaving the only home they had ever known, but came back home from school to a different house. Would mum and dad be there? Was this an elaborate plan to get rid of them?

Goodbye Old House.......

We'd invested a lot of time and effort in our current home  and our family had grown up there. I wasn't actively looking to move but was fairly open-minded about it. We'd been talking about a house move for several years and had even got as far as putting in offers on another house. The impetus to move was coming from my wife Gayle: with a growing family, wanting a bigger garden and thinking ahead to queues for the bathroom. With no off-road parking and my head full of all things -DS,  I'd told Gayle that if she could find a house with a suitable garage, I'd be 'in'.

............Hello New Home

Although the new house had little 'kerb appeal', my wife had the vision to see beyond that. The house move was about 'quality of life' and this house was going to deliver in spades. Good call Gayle xx. From my perspective this was a winner because, as well as ticking all the families boxes, it also had a double garage long enough for a DS and a small brick workshop behind.

As you can imagine, those first days and weeks in the new house were spent finding our feet: working out taps and fuses, getting keys cut, organising a phone, changing address with utilities. High on the agenda was a trampoline in the garden for the kids and building a guinea pig hutch: if a garage was my part of the house move deal, then a trampoline and pets were the kids.

Through all this, thoughts of getting my DS organised were never far away. In the run up to the move I'd emptied most of my DS bits out of the garden shed and back into my lock up. I'd left this as late as possible as I was worried about a break in at the lock up. I left a few sealed boxes in the shed but loose crates of bits and sloppy buckets of zinc plating acid and electrolyte were all taken to the lock up over a couple of days.

Initially the garage at our new house was full of boxes and furniture waiting for a spot in the house. As bits and pieces were unpacked, the garage as instead filled with empty boxes and the unwanted things our things replaced: old lamp shades, curtains and things destined for recycling and the tip. A couple of huge pine wardrobes we'd brought with us were sold on eBay and finally collected. As we began to find our feet, and starting with the boxes I'd moved from my garden shed, I started to trickle my DS things out of the lock up and into the new garage. Small bits went in the workshop.......

New Workshop - August 2016

......bigger bits went into the garage

New Garage - August 2016

Boy, there was a lot of it.....

Richard came to visit and we did a 'test fit' with his DS. Well, you would, wouldn't you?

"Back A Bit More" - 3 September 2016

The garage even had a car port with enough height to get a DS bonnet fully open and a wheelie bin to put your tea on. That was going to be very handy.