1996 Citroen AX VTR

The Thing is now back on four wheels and I spent last Saturday welding new metal into the offside front corner of the passenger compartment. Amazed just how much seam sealant Citroen had to use on these: very similar to my old Land Rover Discovery with ill-fitting panels tacked together and a big dollop of sealant to stop the water getting in. The rot had eaten a fair way into the floorpan and there was some nastiness in the lower outer corner of the footwell which I found by accident. All nice and strong now, but it shows just how far rust can spread underneath factory underseal without being visible until the whole thing falls to bits.

Drivers side strut went together with the new bearing, AX GTi spring and Bilstein shock insert. It seems quite stiff compared to the old strut but I'll wait till the engine and gearbox are back in before I start worrying about ride height.

Unfortunately no photos of the AX right now as I ran over my phone yesterday with a Land Rover (left it on the front bumper while doing brake tests in the yard) and it went off like a small bomb. I'm now even more unconvinced about battery powered cars than I was before.

I think it depends which way the wind was blowing at the factories as to what parts they fit to PSA stuff

I spent 7 years at a Peugeot dealership, and it was a nightmare with brake parts on vehicles less than a year old

I have engine and gearbox!




Went in with no bother at all, I have hooked up the throttle cable, clutch and gear linkages so I can now sit in the vehicle and make "brum brum" noises while pretending to drive round the Nurburgring. At least I could if it had any seats. Throttle cable is far too long, need to see if the Saxo cable has the same fitting as the AX at the pedal end.

Of course fitting the engine has thrown up a couple of issues, the main one is that there isn't any room for a radiator. My Saxo engine has the late "close coupled" cat, big dustbin shaped thing exactly where the filler is on my new AX GTi rad. Due to the age of the vehicle I need a cat of some kind, the obvious answer is a 4-1 stainless manifold and a Mk1 Saxo cat underneath (if it fits).

Question - are the stainless manifolds being sold on Ebay for £140 any good? Things are usually cheap for a reason and I wouldn't fancy trying to make something like that for £140. The Piper one is somewhere north of £500.

Next job is to look at the driveshafts and ARB, see if I can get all the big bits of metal at the front end in place this afternoon. What will go wrong next? I should have known that all the Internet experts who say the VTR engine "just drops straight in" are basically lying. Same thing in the Land Rover world with 200/300TDi conversions. It's not that simple.

More progress of sorts. The Saxo VTR driveshafts went in easily enough, once I had worked out that the bearing carrier on the offside has to be separated from the driveshaft and bolted to the block before the driveshaft goes on. I then spent far too long trying to wrestle the anti roll bar into place: it takes a really awkward path over the top of the wishbones and there appears to be only one exact way to get it in.

No excuses for what happened next other than poor lighting as I was in a dark corner of the workshop: I fitted one of the end clamps upside-down, and when I torqued down the bolts it fractured.





By this time I was already in trouble. I suspect the VTR outer CV joints are a larger diameter than the lesser cars: the gaiter rubs against the clamp bolts on full lock and will very quickly wear through it. The Saxo VTR appears to have had a different ARB design with drop links attached to the struts. That should cure the clearance issue on the CV boot: what worries me a little is that the VTR also had a different design of lower wishbone (steel tube rather than cast) and I don't know why. Clearance for the ARB? Only one way to find out... Getting to the stage now where I need to make a trip to a breakers yard, I still need a 4 stud drum braked back axle, preferably one with shot bearings for little money, and now an ARB as well.

Manifold looks nice. How's the quality?

This project is now getting into the danger zone. The bit where you have about 10,000 issues to solve, struggling to find time to work on it, and then you lose interest and stick it in a corner for five years before selling it.

Last couple of days I have been tackling the fuel system and trying to make sense of the engine bay wiring. Fuel first: I got the fuel tank back in but can't remember exactly where the breather and vapour lines sit. There is a plastic canister in the filler neck with some sort of plastic clip which doesn't marry up to anything. At the front of the wheelarch are two pipes (one to the tank, the other running up to the filler neck) and a T connector. The third "leg" of the connector waas blocked with mud: should it be open, or am I missing a bit of pipe? Also the pipe from the tank seems far too long given where the T connector sits. Grrr.

Other fuel issues: the filler neck has a steel ring for the cap, which has rotted. I hope I can get a new one.




According to the Haynes book of words and pictures, later VTR engines like mine don't have a fuel return line which explains why I could only find one port on the fuel rail. Fine, but it turns out these engines don't have a pressure regulator on the fuel rail either. It's on top of the tank, where there isn't any space in an AX. So I need an in-line regulator in the engine bay. Hopefully once I have that sorted everything will fall into place, but I might replace all the rubber fuel hoses as they will be upstream of the regulator.

Wiring: I went through the Saxo engine loom and taped up the scruffy bits (except one which I missed, spot the blue tape). It all went back on fine, with a few P-clips to stop it flapping around. ECU plate fits snugly onto the AX inner wing with very slight modification.





Now to connect it all up. Err... To start with, I'm pretty good on British vehicle electrics, but the wiring diagrams in the Haynes manual make no sense to me at all. They don't actually show the connectors, which are kind of important when you are trying to splice together loom sections for two different vehicles. I found online a connector diagram for a 106 GTi which may or may not be useful. I can't find the Haynes AX manual that I was sure I had.

That shouldn't matter as I found a list of pinouts for the AX main loom to engine connector, but by that time I had already cut off the connector to make it easier to decipher the wire colours. AX wires are all solid coloured with a small stripe at each end for the secondary colour. And they use black for power feeds.



So I have a lot of work to do before I can start it up. Looks like the AX10 cat and exhaust will bolt straight up to my stainless manifold for first test run: I'm not spending money on a decent exhaust until I have heard this thing run. Oh, and I found some more rust when I removed the plastic mudshield on the offside chassis leg. Nothing disastrous but I thought I was done with welding.




In other news, I emailed three PSA axle rebuilders about having my AX axle overhauled and fitted with longer stub axles, and none of them bothered to reply. Same with the breakers I contacted about a Saxo / 106 drum rear axle to give me the brakes and stub axles I need. I'll get there in the end but this little car is fighting me. I honestly thought this conversion would be a lot easier than it is turning out to be: massive respect to all the people on here who are working on serious projects, not just fitting a slightly bigger engine from the same family.

This *looks* like the one fitted to the BX, which are available as a remanufactured part. Price, but I should imagine tooling up isn't cheap.

www.chevronics.co.uk/product/bx-fuel-filler-neck-retainer-cap/?v=79cba1185463

Starting to make a little bit of progress today. I have identified and traced about half the wires on the AX main body loom where it connects to the engine loom. At least a couple of the ones left I suspect are for the immobiliser and one will be for the "check engine" light, which just leaves the fuel pump feed to puzzle over.

I had a lucky break when I found a diagram for the engine harness to body connector pins which matched up to the connector I have (late 3 plug ECU, 36 pin connector). That has saved me a huge amount of time: I had downloaded the factory wiring diagrams for the Saxo, but without the Citroen reference number it is almost impossible to find the correct diagram. Haynes manuals are near enough useless for my purposes: for a Saxo you need the schematic and loom diagrams, and the Haynes AX manual doesn't cover cars as late as mine.

A couple more hours detective work and I should have a dash that lights up and hopefully a fuel pump as well. Getting there slowly...

I'd say that if this going to be a road car, then you ought do fit one.

While it is true to say that it compensates for weight in the rear of the car in a static way, it also does a job dynamically when braking. As weight shifts forward, it reduces brake pressure at the rear to try and stop the wheels locking.

You can of course do some test stops and fit a proportioning valve, but that will not provide optimum braking in all conditions as obviously it's fixed, not dynamic.