1990 Citroën CX 25 Safari! DTR Turbo 2 Restoration

Blown_Imp - Funny enough the hydraulics work amazingly! its leaks (alot) but only from one area so thats a good thing! that one area being the single main line that runs down the center of the car (most likely to fuel the rears) but most will get ripped out and changed anyway so its promising.

I see what you mean about the love hate relationship, at the start I was really motivated about this project then a month into it i dwindled, I had this thought in my head "oh it will be done in a month" and then every time I found a new issue it put me back and back. Just had to take a step back and look at it with an open mindset. The car has been sat since roughly October '08 judging by the last MOTs mileage and the date the last tax ran out, so it will never be perfect, especially considering there must have been a reason why it was took off the road for one reason or another? economy crisis in '08?

-Michael

bilkob - As i say, its either nothing or an emergency stop!

Something to get used too

todays update:

French electrics mixed with the previous owners engine swap resulted in some quite bad tasting electrical spaghetti, regardless I had to push on, due to the fact my feet kept getting caught in the mess under the footwell. I decided to take all of the covers off, along with the clocks to really "start again" as such, sorting wires my own way, pushing more wires into the dashboard that didnt need to be exposed and so forth. This is what is looked like just after I had took the clocks out. 



And this was the work after about an hour, may not seem much but during this time it was a great learning experience of where cables went, and where they were plugged into. Especially for a very novice CX owner. so all the cables in my hand would go to the clocks, with the cables on the floor being for the shroud, for hazards, rear wiper etc. 



After the top half was sorted and the clocks were back in (forgot to take a picture, thanks Michael you daftarse) this was the result after the shroud was fully fitted, some cables as you can see are still on the floor however, those will be tucked up when the junction box is ready to go back in, however the car is still plagued with loads more electrical gremlins so not jumping to conclusions just yet! 



To end a lovely productive day, I took this photo, enjoy it! 

Hey Guys! time for another update: 

Unfortunately, I am chocka full of cold, along with the weather being mainly sh!te this has caused work to come to a standstill.

However, winter is on the horizon and with this comes the dreaded weather, so making the car watertight, and welding new sections to place the rust is a priority, as no doubt it will only get worse as winter rolls in.  

So I decided to start by cutting out the sections of the rear drivers side door, it was fully intact, however it had rust away from the outer skin of the door, leaving it to trap water and what will eventually rust the door more if its left. 

So a few sparks in my eye, a few burnt fingers, and some metal in my eye later the bottom of the door was chopped out (i later invested in some safety goggles)

This being the before......



With this being the after cut photo, its just like getting a new haircut ey! 




Once I removed the section of metal however, the rust problem became more evident, clearly the rust had started on the outer skin of the door, and when that developed several small holes water got in, and water sat inside on top of the metal base, leading to the rust. 

This can be evidenced by the amount of rust that fell out of the door, when i removed the section of metal 

RIP - Citroen CX, ashes to ashes, rust to rust



Once that was all dust paned away (using my parents best indoor brush), I decided to straighten the edge on some metal I got a while back (0.8mm) from Ebay. I decided rather than one big piece, I would use several smaller pieces, this would allow me to get alot more adjustment on each panel, along with making welding abit easier, and would not waste as much metal if something did go wrong (blew a hole in metal etc)




So it was getting late by this point (around pm) and we have a 1 year old at home, and I'm sure my neighbours wouldn't appreciate the grinding noises (insert dirty joke here) so i decided to call it a night, after i got around 5 pieces made. 

This was a picture of the first piece of metal roughly taped in place, I realised after i was done, that it still need a slight few mm taking off as it makes the door bow out ever so slightly, not noticeable, but if you bend down, you can see it on the sill cover how it doesn't fit quite right 




Next stage is to slowly start to spot weld the metal in place! once I have had a play around with my flux core electric MIG. 

Thats all for now folks! thanks for staying interested

Take care, 
Michael 

Evening folks! 

Started off the weekend with tackling some of the inner rust, starting with some rear sill work. 

Its been patched towards the rear jacking point, however water has got in and rotted it away inside out!, the easiest way possible was to just cut it out and start again, which is exactly what happened
Before: 

After:


Now a lovely (staying optimistic) blank canvas so the outer bodywork can be glossed up, and a new reinforced section of metal welded in place, with a lovely dose of WaxOYL. Whilst owning the car, i reckon its had a wack of some description on this side, as the door catch section of bodywork was 99% filler and 1% metal, that much infact when i shut the door quite abruptly (after banging my head on it) the filler fell out ! leaving me with this: 


Anyways, it started to get cold inside the garage, and i decided to hold off on any further work until weld through primer arrives (thanks Evri)

Any questions do ask away, I love hearing from you all

Very neat work! Nice welds on thin tin, and the return you've formed is nice as well. This car looks like it's in good hands!

Love those 80's citroens, great color on this one too!
Your welding has greatly improved since your first posts, great job!
Keep up the good work!

I can't see your pictures, which is making me sad because I f*cking LOVE CX Safaris. Am I doing something wrong are are your pics down?

Just a quick update from me!

The cars getting moved to (hopefully) its final garage space at the end of this month, its hard to keep a space for a car that is over 16 feet long! Anywho, see below some more areas tack welded/ welded in.

The biggest addition is the area around the rear seatbelt