1991 Citroën BX TZD - Potentially my perfect commuter car

Mileage right now: 84371

Miles covered since last entry - No idea really, 300 maybe... It's been a while and I've lost count, we're just over 1000 miles since the MOT though, I know that much.

So, it has been pretty quiet on the BX front since the rust repairs in the last update, it has been reliably ferrying me to work and back many times and I've not had to do anything to it other than fuel it (I've filled up again once - ages ago, still getting used to that).

In the mean time, I had a week long holiday road trip in what has been so far, the most unreliable car of the fleet that is unfortunately too modern to post about here, my L322 TDV8 Range Rover. I was nearly in tears at one point during the work I had to do to get it ready for the trip (highlights included air sus air bag exploding in my face, driveshaft replacement debacle that meant I had to strip the HEAVIER THAN THE MOON front suspension down about 4 times) but thankfully it all paid off and I covered 2100 miles in a week with no trouble at all, we went down to Vienna in Austria and then back home via a family member's place in Germany and we also had a day in Liege in Belgium. What a machine! I've almost forgotten how much trouble it gave me leading up to the trip so maybe I won't sell it now like I had planned to.

Anyway! The BX was always my reserve car for the Austria trip but thankfully it didn't come to that. I say thankfully because on December 24th (long after we had returned from Austria) mechanical disaster struck the BX and the stop solenoid on the fuel injection pump failed and fuel started gushing out all over the place - or alles uber der platz as the Germans say, maybe. Judging by the strong diesel smell that I started picking up on, this failure occurred just as I left Coventry ring road and about 2 minutes from journeys end so I pressed on, I don't think I would've dumped much diesel on to the road and once I knew what the problem was, I left the car where it was until I could sort it out! So yeah, good job I didn't take this car to Austria eh! I reckoned it probably would've failed at some point either on the M25, or the M20, either way basically killing the holiday before it had really started!

This was unfortunate because in the weeks leading up to the Christmas break, I had purchased a timing belt and water pump kit, a new clutch and new front lower arm bushes, all of which I had planned to fit at my leisure over the last few days. Trouble is I only collected the BX this morning (after fitting a new stop solenoid of course) and that really only leaves me with tomorrow and New years day to fit everything and make sure it is all ok before I have to rely on the car for getting to work and back again. So it looks like the service jobs will have to wait another week or two - hopefully this doesn't bite me in the harris.

Pictures:

Failed stop solenoid - I had exactly the same happen to me on an old 2.5 Diesel Land Rover 90 I used to own, that one left me stranded in a Sainsburys car park which wasn't convenient - it did let go once I had parked up though so not all bad.


All good again for the grand total of £8.99 


And a rubbish picture of the car as it sits this evening, needing a wash - which it will receive tomorrow if the weather stays dry.

vulgalour - thanks for taking the time to post up excellent descriptions and even pictures of where rust might be lurking, the bulkhead area on my car is made slightly more difficult to inspect thanks to an ABS pump and lines that further pin that insulation material in place, my plan is to take a good look at that area from underneath when I have the gearbox out for the clutch change. I hope your BX is running well at the moment.

Also! Whilst doing some digging on the past of this BX, I see it attended a RetroRides Gathering in the past - If the old owner of the BX is reading this, If you want your Linkin Park CD returning, no chance - it is mine now.


Anyway, next update should see a whole host of service jobs completed. I might also finally get round to refitting the A pillar trims, which have been sat in my garage ever since the windscreen was replaced months ago now!

Many thanks!

Interesting car finds caring and appreciative owner !
Nice, thanks for the updates.
High level brake light fitted by PO looks like an RX8 one.
James

You're very welcome, I suppose I'm fortunate that my engine bay is fairly uncluttered due to it being a more basic model.  Mine has been really good, got me down to the new place in Kent no bother and has been behaving itself since I got here, though we've barely gone anywhere of note yet, looking forward to a proper explore later in the year.

Guess you've got a 'slightly' sticky caliper on the Renault there. Nice to see an update on this BX, mine has been mostly trouble free except for the occasional periods of Being French and hasn't dissolved in the bad weather just yet.

Miles covered since last entry - 10 - I'll explain why...

I've just re-read all of this, its a long and boring post but it is still all part of my story with this BX so its staying!     

I had been waiting for the weather to start getting a little warmer, drier and generally better before starting to use the Citroen for daily driver duties again. One sunny Friday morning in February I excitedly pulled the BX out of the garage with the intention of that being the first day of commuting in it again. As soon as I opened the drivers door in the light of day I noticed my rubber floor mat had a pool of coolant in it. Upon further investigation the heater control valve (which sits directly above the floor mat) had decided to start leaking. "Well that's no good, back in the garage with you" I said and reluctantly put the BX back in the garage and carried on my day with the Range Rover tackling commuter duties once more.


Leaking heater valve.

That weekend I had a look at the job of taking the heater valve off the car to repair it and although it looked ok for access, it wasn't and turned in to a knuckle skinning weekend from hell all in all. By Saturday afternoon I had got the heater valve off the car, stripped down and had to 'repair' an oddly shaped square section rubber gasket which had failed. Much instant gasket, CItroen trim panels and a lot of swearing later and it was all back together ready for a test run to see if my problem was rectified.

So there I was on Sunday morning with the engine idling to get the coolant warm - I was pottering about doing other things and so had taken the car out of the garage again and it was just happily idling away on my drive way. It had been running for about 20 minutes and was nice and warm - no leaks from the heater valve so that's good! I jumped in the car to drive it back in to the garage and had one of the most buttock clenching moments of my life when the engine knocked terribly, shoved a cloud of white smoke out of the exhaust and raced away uncontrollably! Luckily I had enough life in the clutch left that a 5th gear clutch dump stalled it out.

Some time later I returned to investigate - first instinct was turbo charger oil seal so I pulled the intake pipes off and sure enough, a bit oily inside... Was it any worse than I expected to see in a 30 year old engine? Not really but it had to be the turbo charger right?! What else could it be?! Well we'll get to that later. Convinced I had made a correct diagnosis I took to eBay to find a replacement turbo charger. After a brief search I had found a recon Garrett unit fit for my car - no surcharge either so no hassle with sending my knackered one back. Great, buy it now. It arrived a few days later and with a free weekend coming up, I was looking forward to a quick turbo change and then getting the car back on the road again.


Lovely job.

Saturday morning arrives and I get the BX up on the ramp and take a look at access and things that might halt progress. Everything looks ok to get at but access for getting the turbo charger removed from the engine bay looks pretty tight. Naaaaaaah I'll get the gear linkage out of the way and I'll have loaaaaaaaaaaads of space.

What followed was simply one of the worst jobs I have tackled on any car. Now in fairness, getting the turbo off the engine was no problem, getting the turbo out of the engine bay was where my trouble started. I think if I had a 2 poster ramp I would have taken the decision to get the front subframe out of the way - that would give plenty of room. On my 4 poster though it may have been possible but would have been a right old balls ache so I carried on removing what I could, to get the turbo out. In the end I had essentially stripped the turbo down and removed it piece by piece. And what did I find? Well sure this turbo was a bit tired but in no way was it ruined. But still what else could it be?! HAD to be the turbo!



These are pictures of the new turbo fitted but you see access is hardly generous.

Getting the new turbo in the engine bay and then fitted to the engine was almost as much fun as removing the old one. Mercifully the new one had a smaller wastegate arrangement so that helped but the rest of the job was just as horrible. Anyway, after what felt like forever, I had the new turbo on, everything fitted up and ready for a test drive. Off I went to the local shops (this is a couple of weeks prior to virus lock down chaos). Everything working well, drives just like before but since I had carefully refitted a few bulkhead gaskets so they fitted properly and slightly modified the interesting collection of intake hoses, it was noticeably quieter on boost, but just as powerful.

I got back underneath the car for a check over on my return and what was this? Fuel leaking all over the place?! But I haven't touched the fuel system!? OK what now car?!!

I find fuel all over a badly fitting T Piece that the previous owner had fitted for a boost gauge in what I would call a boost reference pipe - an 8mm ID rubber hose fitted from the intercooler to what I have learned is called the boost control diaphragm on the fuel injection pump. This boost reference pipe allows for more fuel to be injected whilst under boost by using boost pressure to move a plunger that is connected to this diaphragm apparently. I google my symptoms and find a few posts on Citroen forums from people who had exactly the same problem as me - engine uncontrollably racing away after idling for a long period, one guy wasn't so lucky and this killed his engine off entirely! Turns out a failed boost control diaphragm is a thing and the sure fire symptom is a boost reference pipe filling with fuel. If left idling for long enough, the pipe fills completely, which then starts filling the intercooler and so when you increase the engine speed even just a little bit, the increased air flow pulls all of that extra completely unmetered fuel straight in to the engine, making it knock wildly and speed up uncontrollably. Fun.

So - turbo change appears to have been completely unnecessary. Great. However, if I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have then gone on to find the actual root cause so in a way I'm fine with it.

I take a closer look at my injection pump and realise that there should be a leak off pipe from the boost control diaphragm but at some point, somebody broke it off and then jammed a self tapper in there to block it up! I get in touch with a fuel injection pump specialist who informs me the parts I need are no longer available however I should be able to find parts that do the same job off a range of other similar pumps, then fit a new diaphragm and then we're good as new.

Of course all the injection pump people are now shut indefinitely so the BX is parked up again for a while.

Maybe I will change that clutch after all. Plenty of time on my hands now!


Red arrow points to the boost control diaphragm assembly, follow the rubber hose out of it and you'll see the T piece that I mentioned.

Oh and the LHM pump belt was beyond tired so I replaced that whilst I was there.




So that is where I am at. If anyone reading this has got any old fuel injection pumps off a turbo charged XUD engine let me know!

Many thanks.

I know the pain of jumping to the wrong conclusion and spending hours on it. At least you got a shiny new turbo out of it! Last time I just opened up my engine and gave it a new small oil leak in the process...

My dad still has boxes of xud bits from a string of PSA cars, but I have a suspicion they were all Bosch pumps. I'll ask though.

I wish my BX had a paintjob like yours!

Boredom got the better of me.

I had and still have lots of other jobs to do, an en-suite bathroom to refit, hall stairs and landing could do with a smarten up, gardening never ends. But none of those tasks allow me to potter about in the garage and pottering about in the garage has become my favourite hobby.

I decided to replace the clutch and the clutch cable and the nearside driveshaft, these are tasks that I have been putting off for some months now however with most of the other mechanical issues sorted, it would be satisfying to cross these ones off the list and the clutch really was on its last legs, fifth gear cruising now made almost impossible when encountering any sort of incline, the clutch would just slip, it also made a noise like an emu being put through a mangle when the clutch pedal was released so I was keen to sort that out too! 

I've changed clutches on east/west engine configuration cars before, it is never much fun but it is doable and never so awful I'd pay someone else to do it.

I make a start by clearing as much removable stuff out of the way as possible, battery, air box and associated pipework, starter motor, header tank etc. The engine bay of a BX is not a tidy place at the best of times and semi stripped apart looks even worse:


My plan was to use the support beam to hang the gearbox end of the engine so I could raise and lower it a little on the chains to aid gearbox re-installation, I would then use the jacking beam of my ramp underneath to support the gearbox whilst I removed/refitted it.

To give me less ballache when reassembling everything I removed both driveshafts, the nearside one was knackered anyway so was being replaced as part of this job (new single cv joint £35 or whole new shaft assembly £27?!). I got the shafts out without any fuss thanks to having the front lower arms off not long ago.

Actually no that's not right, there was lots of fuss. I thought I'd get ahead of the game and drain the gearbox of oil, I placed a container below to catch the fluid, loosened the drain plug and gave it one final check over before taking the plug out and all looked well. With the plug removed, gearbox oil headed straight for the container below... For about 0.5 seconds it did this, thereafter the oil flow hit the jacking beam handle which diverted the flow and fired gearbox oil absolutely everywhere. I shouted "abort" and ran away. It took me 30 minutes to clean up the mess.

Gearbox removal was actually not much of a problem, I had to take off the gearbox mount threaded pin because it fouled the battery tray/inner wing but with that removed and a little engine tilt, the box came out, I had to be very careful not to damage LHM pipework because I had kept the pump pretty much in place and just loosened mountings and pipe clips, in hindsight I could just have easily removed the LHM pump and pipes but I didn't want to disturb any of the pipe fittings for fear of failures and leaks and it would have made even more oil based mess!

So with gearbox off I could see what was what:


I can only assume this was the original clutch, it is a Valeo part, which had reference to '91' on it (my car is from 1991) and had paint marks on the bolts like you'd expect to see on a factory fitted item.


Gearbox out and the clutch release fork seemed just a little stiff, I worked it about and gave the pivots some oil and it seemed much happier for it.



Old friction plate has life left however the pressure plate seems to have lost its spring over the years and wasn't applying enough pressure anymore.

I fitted the new clutch and hoped that my eyeball alignment would work ok, I've got one those cheap universal alignment tools but it wasn't deep enough for this clutch. Reassembly was actually reasonably straightforward, had a 5 minute battle with the gearbox to get it all the way home but once it was there, I started bolting things back together. Now came time for the clutch cable. Haynes manual suggests removing the pedal assembly from the car which made removing the cable a fairly painless experience. Refitting the new clutch cable however was where the fun really started. I have only profanity to describe how I feel about this job and to whoever thought that the BX clutch cable was a good idea in the first place. I honestly believe to do a proper job of fitting a new clutch cable, you need the engine and dashboard removed!



This is about the only footage of the pedal end of the clutch cable I have, it is from a video I sent to a friend who also dabbles in rubbish old cars, 90% of the video is me swearing. The little white bit and its smaller black collar are the source of my pain, I cannot find a way to make sure they are fitted properly before refitting the pedal assembly, I tried every which way I could think of but in the end settled for having it 'somewhere about right'. The clutch works and is a marked improvement on what was there before but the clutch cable really made me mad and no joke cost me at least 4 hours in guffing around trying to fit it properly.

Anyway. shuffled the car around on the driveway and all is well, clutch feels a lot better and no more noise so that is good. I'll be doing the food shopping tomorrow so it'll get a proper run then, it'll be odd to be able to cruise without the clutch slipping now.

In other news, the hole that used to have a cover over it and then didn't at the end of the drivers sill is now sorted with potentially the highest quality part on the whole car...


Problem.


Solved.

I'm going to take a break from cars for a week or so, it looks like the weather is going to be on my side for the next few days so I am going to crack on with painting some exterior parts of my house.

Hope everyone is safe and well.