Starter Motor Rebuild - Ducellier 6182A

There are a number of jobs you should take the chance to do while the engine is out - like making sure your starter motor is going to serve you well in the future. A good place to start is with a replacement of the starter motor brushes.

Although my car had been laid-up for many years, I was confident that the starter worked consistently - even if I couldn't get the engine to fire in those first few weeks! Like many things, I tacked this job from the point of view of 'opportunistic maintenance'. However my starter looked very tired so was going to benefit from a good spruce up anyway.

A Tired Looking Starter

The Terminals Were Very Rusty

With my engine build underway, now I had the time to tackle the starter and set to work on some research:

You can find the basic instructions for removing a solenoid in Operation D.533-2 in Section 3 of Volume 2 of Manual 814. However it doesn't cover a full overhaul.

I found a very useful three part video that covers the full strip down and rebuild procedure. Although the starter featured in the video is a Ducellier 6201A, it's close enough to mine to prove very handy. You can find the first part of the video here:

Ducellier 6201A Rebuild - Part 1

I also found a very useful picture guide to rebuilding a Ducellier 6200A on the 'HD19' site:

Ducellier 6200A Overhaul

(When you are there, click on 'Restauration' at the top, then when the page loads, click on 'Emises En Etat Des Organes Mecaniques electrifies ornamentation' at the bottom).

I set to work. The first step is to split the starter. I disconnect the wire between the starter body and the solenoid/ relay piggybacking on top. I removed the two nuts from the domed bearing back cover plate. From the nose of the solenoid, I unscrewed the four small screws and removed the central cap. Some are a simple rubber grommet, mine was a threaded metal cap. I used a drift to take out the locking pin from the 'neck' of the alloy nose.

Drift The Locking Pin From The Nose Cone

The body and solenoid were then separated from the nose cone, by sliding off the long insulated bolts.

Splitting the Starter Motor

Solenoid Plunger and lever Fork: Detail

I hadn't managed to work out what size bushes were fitted to the nose cone - it wasn't clear from the parts books. Mine looked fine anyway and, as the motor only spins briefly, I reasoned it did not get a lot of wear and tear, so left well alone. The insulated bolts were removed and the nose cone was then vapour blasted, taking care to avoid the bush.

The next task was remove the armature from the starter body: To remove the starter pinion from the armature I used a long reach socket to release (push down) the locking collar, which then gave access to the circlip within. This proved quite tricky to remove.

Push The Collar Down To Reveal The Circlip

Once the circle is off, the starter pinion assembly and plate underneath were removed. The pinion teeth were checked for excessive wear and chips.

At the rear end of the starter, I winkled out the spiral spring clips from the motor brushes, allowing the armature to be released.

Using soft jaws I carefully clamped the armature in a vice to remove the bearing plate.
Removing the end bolt (IT IS REVERSE THREAD) and locking washer from the plate revealed a number of thin washers and insulators. I made a note of the order of removal and carefully removed the bearing plate.

Bearing Plate and Washers. Bolt is Reverse Thread

Under that was another series of washers and insulators. Again I made a careful note of the order in which I took them off.

Washers on the Armature

The solenoid was carefully dismantled. The large bolt that passes through the pivot on the lever connects to the solenoid plunger and is adjustable to give the correct 'throw'. Hence the removable rubber or metal end cap. I made a note of how many turns it took to separate the bolt from the solenoid. Be careful when removing the operating lever as it is made of plastic.

Solenoid Lever Fork Dismantled from Plunger

There is a also a shaped metal collar that looks like the boss from a Yale door lock. This has a similarly shaped paper gasket attached to it. This is a sealing plate that keeps dirt and dust away from the arm and pinion. Try to retain, or be prepared to replace the paper gasket with something similar.

All the parts were de-greased and cleaned of rust. 

I couldn't remove the inductor windings from the body. I couldn't budge any of large screws holding them in, so left well alone. With the windings still inside, I carefully cleaned the body using a wire wheel and then applied phosphoric acid to kill any remain rust.

Cleaning the Body

I did the same with the solenoid. 

Solenoid Ready For A Clean Up

I gave the body an initial couple of coats of paint before further re-assembly. And did the same to the solenoid.

I'd already bought a replacement brush set from Der Franzose. Four brushes for the 6201A: two are soldered into the body of the starter........

New Brushes on the Inductor Coils

.....and two are soldered on to the bearing end plate. It turned out that my old brushes were not badly worn, but some of the insulation was missing and damaged. So I removed and replaced them anyway - having first added some extra heat shrink. 

New Brushes on the Bearing End Plate

The armature shaft was gently polished to remove any rough spots and the commutator were carefully cleaned. I used a cocktail stick to clean out the grooves.

Commutator Was Polished with Emery and the Grooves Cleared

The nose end of the armature shaft was greased and the pinion replaced. The collar and circles were fiddly to refit: the collar compresses the ring and holds it in its groove. It took a couple of sharp taps with a hammer to get the collar to lock back over the clip without simply pushing the clip out of it's groove.

On the other end of the armature - and being careful to replace the washers and insulators in the right order - the bush of the bearing plate was greased before it was fitted on to the armature shaft. The brushes were located in place with their spring clips. The bearing plate and armature assembly were then inserted into the outer case. The remaining two brushes were fiddly to refit because of the limited space. 

The solenoid was reassembled and the pivot on the plastic lever was greased. With the armature now through the starter body, the starter pinion was liberally greased and the plastic operating lever fork engaged it it's slot. The bush in the nose was greased and the nose was then slid onto the solenoid and main body. 

The Solenoid and Body Were Mated to the Nose Cone

When I was happy that the dust shield and its gasket were correctly located, the holes through the nose cone and operating lever were aligned. Without using excessive force, the locking pin was then pushed through and home with a gentle tap.  The solenoid screws were tightened. 

The nuts on the long bolts were initially tightened down straight on to the bearing end plate - just to pull all the main parts together. I then removed the nuts, put back the domed bearing cap over over the rear end and loosely fitted the nuts again.

Following the recommendation in the HD 19 reassembly pictures, I briefly powered the starter using a car battery and, while it was running tightened the bolts. This is meant to ensure that the armature is 'true' to the bushes and can spin freely, but I felt uncomfortable putting a high current through the starter for anything more than a few seconds - the time it operates when you start your car. Hey, ho - it's done now.

Reassembled

Nuts, half-nuts and washers on terminals were replaced.

Clean Terminals

The terminals were then masked off - as was the tip of the nose, before I gave the whole thing a final few coats of paint. Half-spraying the nose cone and spraying over wires and grommets may sound odd, but that's what it seems to have been like when new.

Repainted

FOOTNOTE: Some years on from this, some asked in 'comments' how I adjusted the screw on the solenoid so I'm editing this post to include this note. Four years on, I can't remember how many turns it took to dismantle they nylon fork from the solenoid, and don't know how many when I put the solenoid back together. The adjustment is about turning the screw enough so that the pinion only goes forward so far when it's thrown forward. the adjuster fork on the solenoid fork controls that. The instructions for this are in Operation D.530-0 in the back of the 'Electricity' section of manual 814, but rely on the solenoid being off the car (so that you can measure the pinion position. Good luck!

A Quick Word About........Jacking - and Tool 2505T

You know those funny sticky-out square holes at the back of the front wheel arch? The ones everyone calls the jacking points?

Well they ARE the jacking points - but not in the way that nearly everyone uses them. Citroen actually had a special tool to insert in those square holes - Tool 2505T. 

They are large, paddle-shaped pads made of cast iron. Use of these extensions provides a larger surface area for jacking. 

Tool 2505T

One of the problems with trying to use the 2505s is that the square tubes holes on the DS tend to get filled with mud and water (also causing the box sections to rot out by the way). It means that the 2505Ts were hard to fit, or were not ffully fitted - which can be dangerous. Garages clearly had to apply force to get them in. I've got a couple and you can see where the end are flattened from hammering!

More often than not I used the 2505 'paddles' as intended: for jacking and then put an axle stand under the square section, but also admit to jacking against a block of wood placed at the corner behind the wheel arch. It's just easier than the struggle that it takes to get these 2505s out of a rusty square section!

Engine Rebuild (Part 8) - Water Pump and Housing

In 2014, when I was planning to get my DS running again, I thought back to the last time I had seen it running: probably back in 2002 and on one of the short trips between barns at the farm. One thing I remembered about that start-up, was that there was a dribble of water from a small hole on top of the water pump shaft.

'Breather' Hole on Water Pump

Research back at that time had told me that it indicated that the ceramic seal on the pump shaft had been breached - probably because the car had sat idle for a long time. There is a small chamber into which any water that leaks past the seal, can escape to. There is then a drain hole on the bottom. The hole on the top is an air vent to allow air in to replace escaping water. leaking water is a pre-cursor of impending bearing failure. In my case the bottom hole was silted up (not a good sign anyway) - so water bubbled out of the top hole.....

If the seal leaked with the car parked up between 2001 and 2002, what kind of state was it going to be in having been laid up between 2002 and 2014! I bought a new replacement water pump ready to fit.

As anticipated, removing the water pump and housing as part of the engine strip down revealed lots of silt and rust......

Water Pump Housing On My DS - 6 August 2015

Water Pump Housing Off My DS - 28 May 2017

Now 2017, and with my cylinder head recently fitted, I turned my attention back to fitting the water pump. The new pump looked lovely, but sandwiched between my new pump and the vapour blasted cylinder head would be a grubby water pump back housing. Shiny replacements were very expensive and could only be considered a luxury. They also seemed to have a different shaped mount for the centrifugal regulator and I couldn't risk a replacement not being suitable. 

My Mount Point for Centrifugal Regulator

Later Style Mount Point?

I decided I would re-use my original Citroen one, but the thought of a grubby 'sandwich' on my rebuilt engine was enough to convince me to get it vapour blasted.

The studs of various lengths for mounting the water pump were removed, as was the 'boomerang' bracket for lifting the engine, and the remains of the gaskets were scraped off. The water temperature sender was unbolted. these have a reputation for being tough to remove but it came off pretty easily and without damaging itself or the pump housing. The housing was sent for blasting. The results were great, other than they highlighted the pitting where the top radiator hose fits. No matter, refitting the hose would cover those again.

I struggled for a while to match the long water pump studs to their correct locations. Putting them back where they'd been removed-from looked odd, as some of the lengths were uneven?

Water Pump Studs - 28 May 2017

Details of the replacements that you could buy didn't help as they didn't correspond to the lengths of the ones I'd removed! Also, one of the five after-market studs you could buy was an M9? All mine were definitely M8s. A quick check of the parts books confirmed that later cars had one M9 stud out of the five and also that the lengths had changed several time. I had to go right back to a parts book from 1966 to confirm mine were the right lengths for their time.

Parts books didn't help with telling me which stud went in which hole though. Some studs not only hold the water pump on, but also hold the bracing bars for the alternator and centurial regulator. Two of the studs also hold the 'boomerang' bar used for lifting the engine. Only by looking at the lengths of the threaded parts and working out where these bracing bars went was I able to work out which stud went where. Phew!

With the studs replaced another hurdle.... A trial fit of the new water pump on the studs showed it had a lot of free play: the holes through it were considerably larger than the diameter of my M8 studs. A refit of my old, dead pump showed that it didn't exhibit this free play. I was concerned about the free play because it meant there was a lot of sideways movement. With the pulley belts fitted and under load, would they pull the pump sideways and break the seal - allowing coolant to leak? I got around this by putting some heat shrink over each stud. It took up the free play and, being heat shrink, should be able to cope with temperatures under the bonnet.

Water Pump Studs With Heatshrink - 28 January 2018

Manual 814 says to fit the gasket dry but I decided to include a thin smear of Hylomar Blue - partly out of concern for those studs in over-sized holes. The final hurdle was how tight to tighten the bolts holding the water pump on? Advice from the CCC forum was about 22lbs/ft BUT advice from Aussie Frogs was that this was too much. In the end it was irrelevant as I found that the pulley wheel got in the way of the end of the studs - meaning I couldn't fit a torque wrench anyway.

With the pump back on the car, I refitted the Jaeger temperature sender that I had cleaned up.

I haven't done it yet, but I will re-make the wire that attaches from the sender to the main loom. 

Distributor Tower - Strip Down and Overhaul

One of the steps in an engine rebuild is replacement of the camshaft seal. As the camshaft drives the distributor, it passes through an eye at the base of the distributor drive tower, and that is where the camshaft oil seal is. All this hidden away behind the bell housing. 

Distributor on the drive tower - August 2015

I planned to vapour blast the drive tower. To do that, I would need to dismantle it - so this was also a good time to change the distributor spindle oil seal. 

When I ordered a load of new seals from Citroen Classics, I'd very rashly also ordered a replacement seal for the distributor drive tower spindle, as well as the cam shaft seal and oil pump seals. Money changed hands and I started to put the phone down. "Good luck with the distributor drive tower seal" were Matt's parting words. Whatever did he mean?

I soon found out. You won't find it in manual 814, but instructions for dismantling the drive tower are covered in Operation DX.211-6 of Manual 518. The oil seal is located near the top of the drive spindle, just underneath the slotted head. 

And that is where the difficulty lies..... The technique for removal involves pressing the spindle and its cam down and through the slotted distributor drive socket, in the course of which it also pushes out the sealing cup (a hefty core plug) at the bottom.....That's a lot of pushing, and the ledge on which the drive socket sits would take all the pressure.

I was worried about the force on the cast alloy underneath the drive socket - and so was my local engineer. He welded a threaded bolt to the cup at the base and used a nut to pull the cup out. He left me to remove the spindle.  

The manuals make no mention of the need to align the distributor drive socket with the teeth of the cam on the spindle - to preserve ignition timing settings, but I would strongly advise you do mark the relative alignment, as there is no way to check or adjust this once the distributor tower is rebuilt. 

With the cup removed by my local engineer, there was less resistance to the spindle and, with the alignment marked, I carefully drifted it out from the drive socket. The oil seal was then easily removed - as was the camshaft seal. The spindle seal was lubricated and fitted back into place.

Something You Don't See Every Day: The Oil Seal in the Distributor Tower 

While the body was vapour blasted I zinc-plated the distributor clamp and cleaned up the drive socket and spindle. Reassembly was pretty straightforward. My engineer gave me a replacement core plug for the bottom but it was not as hefty as the proper Citroen one - which I decided to re-use.

Drive Tower Stripped - 16 December 2017

With the spindle and oil seal lubricated with engine oil, The spindle was orientated on the drive socket using the marks made earlier, and the spindle was then pressed back on from the bottom of the tower.

With the spindle pressed back through the drive socket, as per Operation DX.211-6, I checked the freeplay at the base (0.15mm to 0.30mm) to make sure the spindle was free to rotate. Once happy, and leaving the feeler gauge in place, I used a long socket of the appropriate diameter to press the cup back into place until it just touched the end of the spindle. (The feeler gauge prevented me from pinching the spindle too tightly in the tower body). The gauge was removed and, with a bit of judicious wiggling, so was the welded bolt on the cup. 

The camshaft seal was lubricated and pressed into place using a socket. On my first go I pushed it all the way to it's base - only to find that it snagged on the pinion of the distributor drive spindle.  Luckily it could be pushed out a little from the other side.

All back together and ready to go back on the car

I'm still deciding on whether or not to buy 123 electronic ignition, or to rebuild my distributor. However, since my distributor is not the right one for the car, I'll probably go for the 123. If so, I'm hoping to be able to fit a new Ducellier distributor cap.

A Quick Word About.......Oil Filter Replacement

Before I try to fill the engine up with oil, I thought I'd better put the oil filter in. While I remembered......

I'm not going to go over the procedure for changing the filter as that's a routine maintenance thing. However if it's a job you've not tackled yourself (or you've never changed your oil!) then the  'DS Technical Team' people have produced a very handy video showing you how to go about it. You don't need a car hoist but if you plan to crawl under your car remember to support it properly on axle stands  - not the car jack:

DS Technical Team - Oil Filter Change

Well I don't know about you, but whenever I've changed my oil I've simply wiped the oil filler assembly down with a rag, popped a new cartridge on, then bolted the assembly back in. My focus has always been on three things: the new filter, the new gasket on the closing plate and the new washer on the sump plug.

It wasn't until I began the engine rebuild that I had cause to actually stop and consider (by which I mean 'clean') just how many pieces there are in that oil assembly. Lots! Here they all are:

Oil Filter Components......

In the picture:

Top row:

• Bolt
• New flat copper washer
• Pre-filter Plate
• Pre-filter
• Pre-filter 'O' ring
• Large Cup
• Spring
• Flat washer
• Ring Seal (small 'O' ring)
• Small Cup

Bottom Row:

• Sump Plug (with new copper washer)
• Cover plate
• Fixing Bolts and washers
• New 'Purflux' Filter
• New Filter Gasket

Phew!

You should really replace the copper washer on the bolt each time - which means pulling the assembly apart. And it wouldn't hurt to check the large and small rubber 'O' rings on the pre-filter and by the small cup. These go very hard and brittle over time so, before you go snapping them out in pieces (yes - that brittle), make sure you buy your replacements first! The other thing that goes missing is the small cup right on the end of the assembly.

All those parts can be bought from the usual suppliers and Citroen Classics have produced a video showing you how it all fits back together:

Citroen Classics - Oil Filter assembly

Anyway, having got the sump back on my car, I was finally able to fit the oil filter and it's cover - and that all important sump plug. Mustn't forget that.

Engine Rebuild (Part 7) - Studs and Inlet Manifold

With the head in place I went round and put in new studs for the inlet and exhaust manifolds, plus two replacements for the water pump housing. When the time comes, I've got new copper nuts for the exhaust manifold and locking nuts for the water heater pipe.

The cylinder head is odd in that some stud holes are 'blind' i.e have an end to them, whereas others are drilled right through into the water way. Ideally I would have used some kind of thread lock to prevent the studs from working loose, but with some stud holes open to the water way, it was more important that they were sealed again leaks. In the end I used Hylomar Blue on all the studs. 

Exhaust Manifold Studs Fitted.....

My thoughts turned to the inlet manifold.The inlet manifold had looked a mess.....

Mount Point for Clutch Re-engagenment Control 

When I'd first got the car going back in November 2014, I'd found a water leak under the manifold. It was impossible to get down there and find out why and where - especially in the gloom of the barn. I assumed it was a burst hose - maybe frost damaged. When the cylinder head was pulled in October 2015 I was able to look more closely and found the problem was actually a rusted-out core plug.

Silted Up Coolant Nozzle and Rusted Core Plug - 27 October 2015

I initially tinkered with the manifold earlier in 2017 and found that the little metal breather inlet (that takes a pipe off the sump breather tube) was completely blocked. I took advice and was assured that it was meant to be hollow. I eventually cleared out all the impacted silt with a small twist drill.Whatever it was meant to do - it hadn't been doing it for some time.

Cleaning the Breather Tube - 15 July 2017

I turned my attention to the core plug. Using a socket that fitted neatly within it, I tapped the rusted core plug into the manifold. I couldn't find a reference for it in the parts books, but It seemed to be coming up as 30mm diameter. I ordered a replacement from Ebay - for just a few pence. It wasn't quite as heavy duty as the original, but it was the best I could find.

Dead Core Plug

Having discovered the joys of vapour blasting in summer 2017, I put the inlet manifold through the process. It came out looking fantastic. 

Nice and Clean Inside - Excess Petrol Drain Hole

I fitted the new core plug. I smeared a little Hylomar Blue around the circumference and gently tapped it into place using a socket inside the cup of the plug. It seemed to fit quite nicely so I was happy with my choice of 30mm. Just to be sure, and using a screwdriver as a chisel, I bent over the three tangs that stop the plug popping out too readily.

The three gaskets for the inlet manifold are part of the engine gasket set and I soon had the manifold fitted and torqued-up. I'd ordered a new hose that runs between the water pump housing and the manifold and did a test fit.

Inlet Manifold Fitted

New Core Plug Fitted

Core Plug, Water Hose and Petrol Drain Nozzle