Fantastic, thank you, I really like it. I saw it hanging out a little from the last picture and wanted to see what it looked like.
I understand about the wheels, I like to keep some things original myself.
Another question, did they offer mudflaps for the rear that resemble the front ones but maybe wrap around the corner?
Sorry to keep bugging about this car and burning up the thread, but I’m really digging it. It’s got me by the balls 
Hey no worries man, I’ll talk about cars to pretty much anyone that will listen. 
You can get rear mudflaps for them, but they’re not the same style as the front. This is the closest I can find in a picture, but from memory I think the correct ones were more round than square.
As I mentioned at the start of the thread, I really wanted to change the dashboard to that of the higher Club/Charleston spec.
Today I finally got round to doing so. Here are some before, during and after shots:
Much better! Any luck finding the single-spoke steering wheel yet?
You can still get them new, surprisingly. Just not at the top of my list currently, it’s a luxury. 
Went to a massive 2CV meeting over the last 4 days, got a lot of excellent photos and picked up a few bits. Also managed to find that single spoke steering wheel, very cheaply…
Pictures are here.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/102973208@N06/sets/72157653784134971
Unfortunately on day one it developed some carb problems, and then on the way home on the last day I seem to have popped a tired oil seal, as it is now bleeding all over my garage floor. As far as I can tell, it’s the rear crank seal, so engine out time.
I’m going to pull then engine apart and see how it’s doing, with a view to perhaps putting high compression barrels and pistons in, along with replacing every oil seal I can. Expect many pictures. 
Adamd, have you considered swapping out your points for a Pertronix kit? It is very very very simple, you eliminate the whole contact assembly but keep the original distributor. Just as accurate as the contacts, but no hassle. You will never need to adjust point gap again, and you do away with the condenser as well.
I would HIGHLY recommend it, I’ve done it to every vehicle I have which had a contact set in the distributor.
It is something I’ve considered, yeah. The 2CV has no distributor, just points, condenser and coil doing wasted spark ignition.
There are 2 fairly popular solutions over here, one is the 123 ignition which just fits on instead of the points box and works, or leaving the points and fitting something to replace the condenser. I currently have all the bits to fit a points assist system, as modern condensers are pretty shocking and are known to fail very early on.
Do Pertronix do something that will fit the 2CV? I guess something that would fit a Harley would do. They do seem pretty reasonably priced.
Well, as it turns out, the high compression barrels and pistons have become more of a necessity than first planned. When I pulled the heads to have a quick examine and replace pushrod seals, the left hand cylinder bore is quite scored, and the piston seems to have got extremely hot at some point and has a tiny deformation.
As I said above, I’m taking pictures of the whole thing so will get some during the rebuild and get them up. I intend to have it back up and running by the end of this weekend. I am being optimistic.
Right, never did get around to posting those pictures. Well, here goes the story of it anyway.
How I think this happened was a mixture of the oil cooler being a bit more plugged up than I thought, and the fact the car had mega advanced timing when I got it had probably already done some damage. And absolutely hammering it 50 miles or so each way to the 2CVGB national meeting, trying to keep up with my mates Ami 8. Not that you can really break the speed limit, even hammering it. I felt something was a bit wrong on the way home that day, and it seemed to not like warm starting very much. And quite a bit of oil had gone walkies.
Anyway, at this point I still had a troublesome oil leak I couldn’t pin down as the engine was so caked in oily dirt as the leak had existed for many years, so I figured the best way to solve it would be to pull the engine and clean it up as best I could, and check everything was OK inside.
At this point, I just needed to strip the engine down, clean it, and put it back (or so I thought):
Heads off:
This thing was seriously gunked up:
At this point, I only had a brief look inside the cylinders and it looked like it was OK:
Unfortunately, I decided to look further the next day. Good thing I did:
Vertical marks = much bad, very score. You could feel them going round with a fingernail. It looked a lot worse with the barrel off.
The piston showed evidence of quite a bit of blowby, and seemed to have just started to melt in some places (this shot lines up with the score marks on the barrel. The other side was the same in 3 places)
Anyway, I got a shiny delivery a few days later of some new barrels and high compression pistons (9:1 as opposed to 8.5:1, as used in Dyane/Ami engines):
And given that this was my first timing having an engine apart other than taking the head off a Rover K series, you can imagine I was fairly happy when this happened:
Engine started back up on the 3rd attempt, I do have a video of it somewhere but seem to have lost the link.
Annoyingly, despite replacing seals, the oil leak turned out to be a corroded pushrod tube, and a tiny hole is letting it out, so that head needs to come off again. It does occassionally leak onto the drivers side brake disc, which can make for some interesting inadverent turning left if you aren’t careful. Also rather annoyingly, the carburettor still has a mega flat spot when cold and has an uneven warm idle. I do have another carb waiting to be rebuilt to put back on however.
Once warmed up however, and ignoring the oil leak, the engine is worlds better. A lot more midrange poke, and you need less effort to keep a speed up once you get there. It’s not quite as revvy but I’m putting that partly down to the feel of the engine being better midrange now, and it still being a bit tight after 300 miles or so.
In honesty, the car had been annoying me quite a lot doing things like this, and then I uncovered another couple of problems since and I was well on the way to selling it. However, I haven’t even had it a year yet, so I think I’ll keep it a little while longer, perhaps get the bodywork improved, and sort out the carb and oil leak issues. It also has mega chunky snow tyres on, so might have to help me out if the GT86 can’t manage if we get a bad winter.
Just mentioning the GT86 as well, as a side note, the picture above with the engine running I was already extremely happy. Shortly before that, Toyota had invited me to go to the Goodwood FoS, and drive one of their modified heritage GT86s up the hill. We all know how well that ended… 
Spent the last couple of days putting together a new carb due to issues with the other one. Kind of went well.
Pros:
Cons:
I’m completely stumped now as to the problem with the flat spot. Ignition components are all new and timing has been set a million times, and it’s fine when hot with no knocking. I don’t seem to have any air leaks that I can find. Fuel flies out the pump when I crank it over, and it’s only a small low pressure pump.
Answers on a postcard, please.
Does the carb have an acc pump? Maybe it is set a little to rich or lean.
It does, but unfortunately it’s not that advanced, it either just works or it doesn’t, haha. However, I think you have given me inspiration.
The problem is definitely worsening, the accelerator pump squeezing would explain the initial second of power before it gives in completely. If I keep the power on it keeps moving along on tiny farts, but it’s as if there is no fuel. Once warm, no issues. Hmm, coming back to the fuel pump again I guess now. 
Buy a lambda probe/gauge, and add to your exhaust. That will show if you are drenching the engine or starving it.
Maybe share the cost with some mates. Or some might know someone with one to lend you.
Alright, it has been a while since last update, and the car is much much improved.
To be polite, ragging it around after putting that new carb on seemed to clear up the cold running problem, and much much smoother. This was further improved by fitting this:
An antique, but works perfectly. Car starts so much better and runs extremely smoothly with this switched on. This also helps me get round the issues with new condensers (they’re a bit crap).
Currently having a small issue with charging when lights are on that seems to be caused by poor connections, so I’m cleaning/replacing as required. Also fitted a new steering wheel finally:
That looks very nice! 
Haven’t had an update on this for a while. A bit ago I traded some old shock absorbers for some custom speaker mounts for the roof, but I had no other audio bits and it was always on the “to do” list. Then a couple of months back, a friend gave me a proper 2cv head unit mount he was going to bin, with a very dusty old Philips cassette deck in it that had been in his garage for years he was sure wouldn’t work.
He shouldn’t have told me it would never work.
(Still a bit dusty but waaay better than it was.)
Don’t use cheap paintbrushes! They were already plated, so just wanted to give (mainly the inside) a quick going over to match the car.
Surprisingly they sound pretty great with these FLI speakers in, I wasn’t expecting much. The tape deck I gather was actually pretty high spec back in it’s day, and you get very little hiss with decent bass. Has a CD changer control I might try and modify for a proper Aux In connection at some point.
For the first time since I’ve had it pretty much, I have a fully working carburettor. As I mentioned in an above post, the current carb had no power high up, it felt as if the second choke was doing nothing to help the car out. All the jets were clear, seals and gaskets good, it made no sense.
I decided to pull apart an identical but knackered old carb and see if I could see anything. At first glance, all was the same. Checked the secondary fuel jet and the old carb had a 90, whereas my current had an 87.5. A slight difference, but 87.5 was standard fitment and it didn’t feel like that small a difference. Checked the secondary air corrector jet and while both were stamped 2AA, the one in the carb I was using was absolutely massive compared to the one in the knackered carb. Swapped the smaller one in and the car drives absolutely spot on, perfect power at higher revs (as perfect as a 2cv gets, anyway).
Also managed to squeeze in dropping the fuel tank today and changing over the sender and repairing the wiring to the gauge, so I can see how much I’ve got in again for the first time in months.
Well, last week I went out to do an oil change as I had 140 miles to do this weekend, and I decided to try and tackle the oil leak. This suddenly resulted in an engine in pieces, and me making a complete cock up of reassembly and completely destroying (read: ripping off aluminium) the pushrod tubes.
This left me with a dilemma as I had now made the oil leak go from mildly annoying to full on BP oil spill status, as they no longer sealed against the engine. After a lot of swearing, Pepsi (that is an important factor later on) and hitting things, I decided it was knackered and that was that.
I had a brainwave as I was going to sleep that night that the Pepsi (other brands of cola are available) can from earlier was just thin steel sheet. The next day, I cut some of it out, rolled it into the end of the pushrod tube and then filled over it with JB Weld, which I then filed back down to make the tubes smooth and round again.
After much more swearing, a late Friday night and Saturday morning reassembling, today I managed those 140 miles perfectly. Oh, and now I get to show off the little bits of paintwork I’ve done to colour code it a little bit better…
well…
a nice literal case of “pepsi to the rescue”
