The old girl goes in tomorrow to an old-car electrics expert in Chislet (Kent village, near(ish) to Grove Ferry and Canterbury). I know these guys are good, but they may not be that familiar with 2CV's specifically, so we've assembled a number of helpful items -

1) Llew, our 2CV doctor who can be on the end of the phone

2) Some pics of the car we took while we had her stripped out.

3) The book "How to Restore a 2CV" by Lindsay Porter, which also has lots of good dynamo pics and

4) A special tool - basically a long thick bolt with an unusual thread, which you wind down the middle of the armature and keep on going till the end strikes the end of the crank, where-upon something's gotta give, and the armature slips neatly (you hope) out of its tapered hole into your hands.....

Watch this space

This the red British phone box given to La Chapelle d'Armentieres as "our" twinning gift, when they gave us the 2CV. It stands next to the new "Mairie" - the Town Hall you can see behind it. It has been vandalised several times and the glass replaced several times, but it currently sits rather forlorn, glass-less and phone-less

We feel we are getting organised. Over the weekend, including a good excuse for a posh Birthday Meal in St Omer, we headed for La Chapelle to meet the main twinning contact (Anne, English, married to Claude) and make plans.

We came away all fired up and inspired, and feircely determined to get the old car over there by hook or by crook (even if we have to trailer her there and back). The towns people are so looking forward to her and to us, that they'll be distraught (and we'd be mortified) if we can not pull it off.

They are asking for a small show of old Citroens, too, so if you know of anyone heading for Northern France on the weekend of the 16th/17th May, please point them in the direction of La Chapelle, near Lille. It's the same weekend as the big 2CV club of Holland meeting in Waggel, so we're thinking plenty of people will be passing through from Calais, and La Chapelle is literally only 100 kms south-east of Calais - good roads too - an hour and a quarter, if that.

It's the 20th Anniversary of the Twinning, so the Carnival will be extra-special. They are lovely people, too - we can vouch for that. More soon

There I was, hoping that JJ's diagnosis that Mmle was not raising any charge might be a mistake. Yesterday I took 2CV-doctor Llew over to see the old girl and to do a stethoscope impression with his multi meter. I'm afraid the diagnosis is confirmed. She fired up first turn, Bless her (better than my "normal" 2CV) but not an ounce of juice was getting from the dynamo to either the voltage regulator, or the battery.

This was confirmed as the battery voltage sat there ar a stubborn 5.6 volts no matter what - revving, headlights, you name it. Not even a flicker.

We didn't start taking bits off (yet), so we've no way of knowing whether this is a problem within the dynamo (we think not - the windings and commutator were replaced as part of the rebuild, and an expert said the bits all look fit off the vehicle.

There is hope though. Llew knows a couple of guys, coincidentally both called Kevin, who know about old car electrics, and specifically our 1961 6 volt system. Watch this space

No moves on the car lately, although behind the scenes we have been in contact with the Twinning teams at La Chapelle d'Armentieres and at Birchington, prior to our proposed mission to join in La Chapelle's 20th Anniversary of twinning Carnival in May 2009. We are proposing a new year pre-visit visit to case the joint and meet our contacts.

Meanwhile we are concerned that the Car is not quite satisfactorily finished, and still has that bad vibration in the engine/transmission at the top of Third and bottom of Fourth. Our tame 2CV fixer Llew suspects a drive shaft or CVJ is worn and out of kilter. We need to get him to the car or the car to him for a look see. It's just that we are all sooooo busy this side of Christmas.

There is also the ongoing electrics problem - the dynamo looked ok off the car, but has never yet donated a single amp to the battery. Dynamo itself? Cabling? Who knows

Also, there is talk by one of our crew that he might bale out. When we started this project with a £100 stake each, he says, his intention was always to stay in for the re-build, but that he's not so interested in the actual "ownership" of the Old Girl. He is therefore steering we remaining three into buying out his share of what is probably now a £2000 car. Well, OK JJ but probably not this side of Christmas!

 

 

Well, here we are. We have number plates now painted on and the tax disc stuck in place, so this afternoon, myself and Andy were out buzzing around Blean and Boughton-Under-Blean.

Andy now agrees with me that there is a bit of an un-nerving vibration from the engine as you hit the top of 3rd and bottom of 4th, which we will need to diagnose and sort, plus there is a bit of a list of stuiff to "de-snag" over the next few weeks.

The dynamo, for one, plus the "frotteurs" (friction dampers in the ends of each axle tube) are rather stiff, so will need to be taken out, slackened off a tad, and re-fitted. Some new rubber rings will also be needed in the driver seat upholstery, and there's a few spots of paintwork to touvch up.

But we're basically there.We can drive her about and admire her.

 

Yeee hah! We finally have our resgistartion, and we are officially "historic" with our pre-1965 format registration of 134 XUR

Those numbers will be painted on on Sunday afternoon, and as soon as possible after that I will slap some up on Flickr and you will be able to see them on the relevant page of this site

Just the electrics to sort now, and the project will be (sadly)

Ahh... we finally made it. Today was the day of our DVLA inspection in Maidstone. Andy and JJ took the day off work and loaded the old girl, in the rain, onto the car trailer on the back of JJ's DS Safari. They drove to Maidstone, the combined rig so long that they had to steal a coach parking slot at the inspection garage to get parked

In the event, our "inspection" took 5 minutes, and seemd to comprise the bloke checking we had the correct chassis number on our paperwork (although he might have cast an expert eye over us too, to make sure we were as old as we said we were (November 1961)

JJ was rather sore to find, having used half a tank of juice trailering the rig from Walmer to Preston (nr. Canterbury) and over to Maidstone and back, that the inpector guys are actually willing to come out on site and check your car where it stands.

So now, we are Registered, with docs and a registration number coming in the post in a few days. The plan then is for Andy to hand paint some period number plates, we all get our insurances changed to the number plate (rather than the chassis number) and then to get a few English miles on her with a support vehicle, as a "shake down".

There is also the small matter of finding out why (and solving) the dynamo will not put any amps into the battery

The future has always held our dream that one day we drive her to the two towns involved in her original twinning gift-ery, La Chapelle d'Armentieres (in Northern France), and Birchington (North Kent Coast)

Wish us luck

Matt

We should have known. With our smoothe run through the MOT (well, 2nd attempt anyway - brakes had seized on the way there first time!), we should have expected something would smack us on the nose. First the DVLA reg'n boys weren't happy with our forms around the "who paid the VAT when it was first imported" question

We have no idea, and suspect nobody did. She came over as a non-street legal mock up for a photo shoot, pretty much. No brakes, engine not connected up etc, and on made-up (1991!!!) number plates - it was 1984.

So we returned the forms to DVLA with a VAT sheet filled out but with lots of blanks and annotations. That seemed to be OK, but the car has now been called in to one of the DVLA's random inspections, which can only happen on a Tuesday (I know....). The first Tuesday we can do, because we need JJ and his trailer, is the 23rd, so watch this space

Yeeee HAH! She's through! She passed! This afternoon down in Deal, at Ebden's garage, our old girl passed all the checks and came away with her certificate.

There were a couple of moments of panic - she's not yet registered, so you MOT her as the chassis number, rather than the reg', and the nice man couldn't make his computer accept the chassis number in the Reg' Number field. Then she blew an in-line fuse, apparently because of a short in the rear number-plate illumination light. This was repaired and the fuse replaced, and the test began.

Now she's out, and I have driven her back round to Andy's Mum's farm. Andy has all the docs and can now get her registered.

Driving her was an unusual experience, for one not used to 47 year old 475cc cars of this level of (cough) sophistication - she rattles and lurches, groans and grinds, doesn't accelerate when you think she might (I was being chaperoned by JJ in his DS and we had to pull off the fast road into a parking layby at one stage, while a big tailback cleared. Excellent fun though. Andy is quite envious that I've had a drive, while he's still stuck at work.

More soon 

After a long break of nobody doing very much apart from JJ, who has been quietly sorting the finishing touches to the bodywork, touching up the heraldic insignia on the doors, and tidying up the dash, plus making the seriously dodgy looking loom a bit safer by wrapping it in insulation tape, and colour coding the wires, we all descended today.

JJ had been getting frustrated with the lighting stalk/switch, unable to make any sense of the switch in its various positions. Ian showed up today with a replacement switch, so that end worked, but it turned out that headlights had been set up wrong, with one side on dip when the other was on main beam and vice versa.

We'd also had a problem with the brakes, in that the washer which releases the brake lights switch when you boot the pedal, had sprung past the switch body, so was now working backwards, preventing you from releasing the barkes. JJ on a test drive had been going slower and slower so that he barely got home. Those two bits are now all sorted. and she's off for her MOT this week

That just leaves us with the no-output dynamo to fix (the battery has enough oomph to get us to the test and back, and once we're legal, we can drive her round to JJ's electrics guru