HELP: my exotic french car is covered in nipples, ooh la la

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Automotive Insanity > HELP: my exotic french car is covered in nipples, ooh la la

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

Awesome. A great thread and trip report. I'm a big Citroën fancier (as the name/avatar should hint at...I have a thread about my 2CV here in AI) and I've loved Tractions from the first time I drove one. They're like a very slow 1980s car in the body of a 1930s one.

Glad it seems to be treating you well so far. Traction seem quite prone to vapour lock, usually either because the heat shield under the carburettor has gone missing (e: although I see in your engine bay pics that it's still there) or the non-return valves in the lift pump are worn. Modern fuel is more volatile than what was available in France in the 1950s so even a slight leak can cause vapour bubbles to form.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2022 12:55

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 00:58

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

Hadlock posted:

Apparently the gauge cluster can be backlit, and I found what might be the switch but it's either rusted or activated in some weird way. Driving this car is like playing the first 30 minutes of bioshock

There's a chrome.... Stick under the dash that I think is the parking brake but haven't figured that out yet, still using a rock and 2x4 scrap

*"Locking" the door involves a mechanism that disengages the handle from the door and now it spins freely. That might be worth a video. Apparently this is how they do it on the 2CV as well. The first time you do it, you're like ... Did... Did I just lock myself out of my car and the only door with a lock has a non functional door handle, very disturbing

The backlight control should be a little black plastic stick on the right-hand side of the instrument cluster. It's a rheostat, with an 'Off' position and then an adjustable range. The silver round control next to that will be the adjuster for the clock.

It's been too long since I last drove a Traction, but IIRC the handbrake is a straight pull to set the brake against the ratchet, then to release you pull the handle to its limit, twist it 90 degrees and then it springs back without the ratchet. Unlike 2CVs and the later big Citroëns the brake acts on the back wheels, not the front.

My 2CV has exactly the same door/trunk lid locks. The fuel filler cap locks in the same way too - when locked it just spins. It does take a bit of getting used to.

On a late 2CV you can play the fun game 'spot the bits from a Traction which they still used 40 years later, but now made from cheap nasty plastic.' The Traction's manual windscreen wiper knob is on the 2CV as the control for the air vent flap under the windscreen, the headlamp column switch is from the very late Traction (and still has the old Citroen logo in the plastic) as are the pedal rubbers and some other little bits.

# ¿ May 9, 2022 16:46

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

Hadlock posted:

Probably getting ready to do an oil change, now that the mosquitoes have mostly died off and it's not miserable outside. Apparently this was the first year of the 11d engine, which means it was also the launch engine for the DS and has an oil filter, where I don't know. When I do that, maybe that's a good time to remove the other plug and install the optional oil pressure-sender that's supposed to go there. And grease all those nipples.

If it's like an early DS the filter element sits inside the sump. There's a circular plate in the sump which you unbolt, then behind that there's a dome-shaped cover held on by one big screw, and that holds that dome, the strainer and the filter element up inside the pump/filter assembly. The strainer has to go back in at a certain orientation, but there are triangular marks on the strainer cover and the sump which you line up to get it right.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2022 14:49

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

Hadlock posted:

Found out that by joining the UK traction avant club I get access to like 40 years of club magazines and their tech forums which ought to be useful

The Traction Owners' Club is great - I've never been lucky enough to own a TA but when I've had to write about them or source one for a magazine feature they've always been really helpful and as a Club they're sitting on a huge amount of knowledge and experience which, crucially, they've actually collated and are happy to share.

The 2CV Club is the same - as a member you can buy the Club Handbook which for £15 gets you the result of 50 years' knowledge on How To Be A 2CV Owner.

Hadlock posted:

This looks like the ticket. I was looking for a domestic style screw on filter because I'm hopelessly American

The key to running French classic cars is not to beat yourself up about being hopelessly American, but to make peace with the fact that you are insufficiently French :france:

Since that seemed to be one of the main purposes of the French car industry's export drive between 1945 and 1985 - to present the superiority of the French way of life in front of the rest of the world. I've never come across another car, from any country, with a proper oil filter with a replaceable element mounted inside the sump. Early 2CVs have a washable strainer and Fiat 500s have the strange centrifugal 'grease trap' thing, but only the French (and, really, only Citroen) would put a complex multi-stage replaceable filtration system in the sump behind a bolt-down cover.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2022 13:19

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

Hadlock posted:

Carb is either a solex 32 pbic or a zenith clone, which I guess were also used on the Porsche 356?

I've never tuned a carburetor before and everything I've read says "if it runs and nothing is horribly wrong DON'T TOUCH IT" so that's kind of where I'm at

Your carb is a Solex PBIC - should be a 34 if original to an 11D engine. It might be a 32, but they're virtually the same.

They're a very simple fixed-jet single-choke carb with vert little scope for adjustment beyond the idle mixture. Wear in the spindles, warped bodies/bases, leaky gaskets would make it run lean. Worn jets would make it rich, but Solex carburettors are especially sensitive to float height, condition of the needle valve and the fuel delivery pressure. More than a couple of psi in the fuel line will overwhelm the needle valve and lead to rich running.

That's the instructions (and not desperately clear diagrams...) for tweaking what little can be tweaked on a Solex. But if it's running rich across the throttle/speed range I'd wager that it's a more general problem - probably worn, damaged or oversized jets. Unlikely to be excessive fuel pressure since the carb was originally fitment so the pump shouldn't over-supply.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2022 00:33

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

Hadlock posted:

So I did some more digging and found this, apparently sourced from the 1953 TA owner's manual

I have been experimenting with starting the engine and agree with the above about putting your foot in it at start, that seems to work a lot better*. Truly daily driving this car the last two weeks, especially down the same stretch of road, has given me the opportunity to do some comparisons. I swear I read the manual cover to cover before I drove it.

I have to say that none of the TAs or early DSs/IDs I've driven have ever needed any use of the manual ignition control - they've always just been left at full advance and started and run absolutely fine. But fuel, tuning, the condition of the distributor/condenser, the state of the carburettor and the driving conditions will all change that. My understanding was always that even in the 1930s the manual ignition control was a bit of an archaic throwback (let alone in the 1950s on the D-Series cars!) that was retained mostly to ensure the most 'useful' spark when starting using the handle with a half-dead six-volt battery.

Think about what the auto advance systems on a normal car's distributor do - you have the centrifugal weights which advance the timing as engine speed rises, and the vacuum advance which advances it further as engine load increases. So you generally want to keep the advance as retarded as possible that's consistent with smooth running and good power delivery, and then advance it a little at higher speeds, and be prepared to wind it further advanced if the engine stumbles when you accelerate hard. But as I said, I've never had to touch the manual ignition control on a TA. But I've never owned one so can't speak definitively on that.

At a later date you may want to consider one of the electronic ignition kits from 123 Ignition - they do TA/D-Series/H-Van distributors with pre-programmed timing curves that can be selected for different usage profiles. Their kits have a very good reputation in the 2CV world.

Hadlock posted:

Other points of order; the one thing I have been doing correctly is starting the engine without pushing in on the clutch pedal. The car starts audibly easier without the clutch pushed in. I suspect this is a holdover from the design allowing for manual (human) crank-start by a single person.

That's quite normal on a lot of pre-war/early post-war cars, especially ones with six-volt electrics. When the clutch pedal is down the counter-pressure working against the spring plate of the clutch and the force of the release mechanism is taken by the clutch release thrust bearing which transfers it along the crank, placing a longitudinal load on the main and con-rod bearings, which causes significantly more drag on the engine as it turns over. Of course in the good old days it was up to the judgement of the driver as to whether the load from the clutch was greater than the load of thick gear oil sat in the transmission on a cold morning.

Hadlock posted:

Other thing is, I finally looked up what the hell a balloon fish was and how it related to Citroen - apparently it was drawn/painted by artist Andre Francois as a metaphor for the citroen hydropneumatic suspension introduced on the final TA as an option and also immediately thereafter the DS and ID, and featured prominently in a Citroen art exhibition at (I think) the Louvre.

Tag urself...it's me!

Little did I know when I chose that username for a now-defunct classic Citroen forum is about 2005 that I'd be using it on SA nearly 20 years later...

"The elasticity of air and the flexibility of water are brought together for your comfort in Citroen hydropneumatic suspension."

That caption is the script for the original DS advert from the late 1950s, complete with an avant-garde postmodernist plinky-plonk musical score:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp5TbrYMc3k

Hadlock posted:

The clock diagram in the bottom left corner is, I think supposed to be a wheel attached to a suspension arm, and the half full light bulb is the magic part of the hydropneumatic suspension "green ball"

Correct:

Citroen used that schematic basically for the entire production run of their hydropneumatic cars - the brochure and handbook for my 1996 Xantia has something almost exactly the same, even though by then the system had been infected with Peugeot-itis and used Macpherson struts rather than leading arms.

BalloonFish fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 15, 2022

# ¿ Dec 15, 2022 00:05

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

Raluek posted:

one minor correction - vacuum advance advances the timing further under light load. as engine load increases, e.g. when transitioning from cruising to passing or going up a hill, the timing is pulled back to prevent preignition. it's for fuel economy, not power.