Winter Diversions 1 - Sharing The Love

The February Citroenian plopped through my door at the end of January and the following advert caught my eye:

Lots of people (as far away as Australia!) have helped me with my own restoration and the thing you realise is to take the opportunities to do the same and help others when you can - be it with knowledge, experience, a helping hand or parts. In this instance I had some spare seats that were just the thing Tim was looking for. This also had the potential to be a "win-win". 

Many years ago I'd acquired a couple of sets of Rhovyline-covered, early-style, low back, lever-operated seats. When I moved house in 2002, these ended up in the eaves of my parents garage down in Essex. As with my car, they sat forgotten for many, many years - but my aged parents would occasionally remind me they still had them. The last time they had mentioned this was Christmas 2018, and I had gradually come to realise that they were worried about them on my behalf. I had resolved to move them (somewhere) if only to stop my parents worrying. 

Anyway - here was a potential solution. I rang my parents to remind myself quite what I had stored away. I had no idea what the covers and foam would be like (they were pretty poor when i got them), but if Tim only wanted the frames, then he was welcome to them.

I rang Tim, checking what car he needed them for. It turned out that he has a 1968 DS21 bvh.  Seat condition wasn't going to be an issue: Tim planned to buy new foam liners and had sourced some red fabric. He was planning on making new covers with his own fair hands. The seats would be just fine and so I duly offered them up. 

It wouldn't have been practical or cost-effective for Tim to have the seats couriered. It turned out that Tim is based in Suffolk and, with my parents being down in Essex  - that was not too far away at all. Rather than me collect the seats and then have Tim collect them from me at a later date, it made sense just to meet at my parents and get it over and done with. A date was set. Tim would be driving his DS. That was a bonus. My car is also a 1968 DS21 bvh Pallas, so there was a great  opportunity to compare cars and notes. Especially as, at some point in time, his car had acquired a DX2 engine - just like mine once had.

Leaving early in the morning I arrived at my parents with time for a cup of tea and a sandwich before it was time to fish the seats out of the eaves. 

Waiting To Go

It wasn't much of a surprise to find that mice had been nesting in at least one of the seats. Boy, did it stink! 

There's a mouse nest in there somewhere.....

It was more of a surprise to find that they had chewed a neat, deep, round crater in the underside of the rear seat!

Mouse Action

Mouse Crater......

Tim arrived and over a cup of tea we spent some time admiring his car. He'd bought it while living in France. He'd spotted it at a garage where it had been left for work - either never completed or never paid-for. Maybe both. Anyway, there it sat. It took the intervention of another French friend before the garage owner agreed to sell it to this Englishman. Tim was thoroughly enjoying owning and driving his car and uses it to tow a vintage caravan - which he also plans to re-upholster! 

Tim's lovely 1968 DS21

I think Tim said his car had recently had a full engine rebuild, and he was getting through a few other jobs. He had, for example, re-sprayed the wrinkle finish on his dashboard using what we concluded would have been VHT grey wrinkle paint. I recall many years ago that Charles Vyse had also done this on his 1966 DS21 "Snoopy".

The dashboard has been re-painted with wrinkle paint

The colour of the wrinkle paint wasn't the factory-correct 'gris rose' but on seeing it, I felt that if I had the choice between smooth gris rose, or wrinkled mid grey - I would go for the wrinkled: that seemed to be that factor that made the mid period DS dashboard what it was meant to be, and the mid grey colour was not out of keeping.

As well as picking up a DX2 engine at some point, the car had also picked up a tired leather interior from a later car along the way, which was why Tim wanted to put back in a set of 'proper' lever operated seats. He'd been on a fruitless search for replacement "Jersey Rhovyline" fabric to recover his seats. It's a lovely material, with a felt-like feel. It's warm in winter but cool in summer. Unfortunately, that fabric is no longer manufactured. You can buy covers (and the foam) for the earlier style of seats from the usual suspects. The colours are a good match to what would have been available at the time. Unfortunately the material used is Jersey Nylon - as used from 1970 onwards. 

Tim was more than happy with the seats frames. The seats themselves tend to go a little bald and loose their shape because the 'Dunlopillo' foam inside hardens and compresses. Although he had managed to find some suitable fabric he was happy with, he was even happier to see that the Rhovyline covers on the seats I was giving him were dark red - just the look he was trying to recreate.  Since he planned to buy new foam anyway, Tim was considering washing and re-using the covers from my seats. On that basis, I gave him the two halves of the rear seat too. I've also got the other red front seat somewhere and when I find it I'll give Tim a call. Perhaps it's just as well I didn't have it at the moment: all the seat pieces just about fitted in his DS. I took a couple more reference photos of under his bonnet to aid my own rebuild and with that he was on his way.

All Loaded Up and Ready To Go

Since I was on a road trip, and sharing the love, I'd also made arrangements to drop in and see Peter 'Badabec' on my return journey. He's over Epping Forest way. He had been kind enough to give me a set of pistons and liners when I was rebuilding my engine. More recently he'd lent me a gearbox input shaft to help realign my clutch  - and I needed to get  that back to him.

Using Peter's gearbox shaft to refit my clutch

Peter had restored his own D Super 5 and carried out a number of improvements along the way. He's a great believer in fitting relays to ease the burden on electrical switches and wiring: using relays for your headlights means they can be wired to draw power straight from the battery, rather than through the delicate contacts of switches and so can be more consistently brighter. Fitting the relays requires a bit of a re-think of the wiring loom so a rebuild is the ideal time to 'future-proof' the car. 

My 1968 DS has a single relay fitted for the high beam of both headlamps. There is no relay for the low beams. I've already bought a couple of period 'Sanor' relays and am planning to fit those as part of the rebuild. As Peter has done, I'm thinking of mounting them to the battery cage under the bonnet and have sourced an old mounting bracket from Citroen Classics with that in mind.

Peter's Ambulance - All Relayed-Up

Peter had also devised a very clever solution to the poor design of the plastic-bodied valve mounted on top of the heater matrix in later cars. He used an in-line valve intended for a TX1 taxi cab.

TX1 taxi heater valve

Like the later Ds, it's also cable-operated, but the open and closed positions are the reverse of the Citroen tap (and so the reverse of the hot/ cold indicator on the dashboard lever). It will still work that way, but to rectify this, Peter took the tap apart and swapped the lever around.  For the hose connection to the top of the matrix, Peter made a plate from 1/8" brass, soldered on a 15mm copper 90 degree elbow and a short length of copper pipe. It all looks like this. All very neat and looks as though Citroen designed it that way. 

Peter's in-line heater valve

As well as owning, driving, maintaining and improving his D Super 5, Peter is now also getting stuck into restoring a DS20 Safari - and I was very keen to see it. When he bought it, it was an ambulance, and part of the transformation will be to return it to standard spec. 

I say "standard spec" but I'm sure there will be a few modifications along the way.

I'll keep you posted!