Last weekend I made the trip from home to Cupar in Fife, it was about 2.5 hours with the trailer to rescue a CX that I'd never seen before...
It was nose into the garage which was at the end of the driveway up the side of the house, I winched it onto the trailer backwards but wasn't happy with all of the weight being right at the back of the trailer as previous experience tells me the weight of an engine right at the back of the trailer acts as a giant pendulum so we drove it out onto the road, dropped it back off the trailer, turned the trailer around and then winched it on nose first.
Thankfully I'd taken loads of bits of wood of varying thickness so I could break it's approach angle onto the trailer slightly as it is stuck on low at the moment due to a hydraulic leak. Were there for around an hour before we'd got everything loaded and tied down, I was then given a box of stainless steel brake pipes that were bought from Germany for the car, a genuine Citroen workshop manual and a host of other parts. Once we were all done we had a cuppa and a chat about the car.
It turns out this car was on the Citroen stand at the 1988 Glasgow Motor show. It was bought at the show by a photographer from Paisley (11 miles from here) called David Deayton. In 1991, he then traded the car into Citroen Glasgow and bought an XM V6. Andrew, the chap I bought the car from bought it in 1991 from Citroen Glasgow for the sum of £4000. He even gave me the receipt he got for the car from Citroen Glasgow
When I was at our last CCC monthly meet, I was talking to the CCC Scottish Section Secretary. He was at the motor show in Glasgow when he was a kid and had his photograph taken in a CX GTI Turbo 2, it turns out it was this very car! It's got an amazing bit of history to it
Here's just a couple of pictures I took on the day:
I put some LHM in it and started it up and saw the high pressure leak. Thankfully one end of the pipe was very easy to get at, the other end however, wasn't. It only appeared to be one end of the pipe that was a mess. I got it unscrewed from the union without any problems which was surprising, followed the pipe and found the other end of it disappeared up behind the height corrector.
I cut the pipe on a nice straight run and flared it on the car, then used a joining piece and spliced in a new piece of pipe. I then put 2 litres of LHM back into the reservoir and started it up. The STOP light on the dashboard wasn't going out and the suspension wasn't going up. I checked the pressure screw on the regulator and it was loose, I tightened this up and the car went straight up.
Apparently it's incredibly rare that all of the LCD readouts on the dashboard still work too...
I had the car running for about an hour, most things seem to work, the fan kicks in as and when it should, unfortunately the oil pressure gauge doesn't work. When I pressed the brake pedal there was an LHM leak from the drivers side front brake pipe and there is a leak from one of the rear brake pipes. It sounds like time to fit the box of stainless steel brake pipes that came with the car.
Anyway, the brake pipes were fitted and I needed to move the car off the ramp to get my brothers 207 GTi up in the air. The bonnet was a jar and the rear wheel covers were still off, but she looks spectacular
As of Thursday, the car is finished apart from one bloody brake pipe!
The entire car has been repiped from front to back and all the pipes at the rear have been replaced. After this was finished, on I took the front O/S wheel off to get a look at the leaking brake pipe so that I could sort that out. The CX has 4 piston split calipers, a very similar idea to Brembo's. There's a metal pipe that runs around the caliper taking fluid from one half to the other half. Typically, it's this that's pouring fluid out of it.
I've found one place who stock them, a company called CX Basis in Germany, and they certainly know how to charge for them!!
I was a bit concerned that the flexi would break when I removed it from the brake pipe so I ordered one of those as well, once they arrive, 30 minutes to fit that and then all I need to do is bleed the brakes and she's finished.
I'm going to put the car into a bodyshop locally to have the patch welded on the longeron as I don't fancy doing that myself. Other then that, we're MOT ready almost and well on target to be roadworthy for 1st July!
David.
