French Cars

[Happy dude]

Hello all,
When I came to register on this site a week or so back it dawned on me I had had more French cars (in the past)than I had previously realised!
My previous cars ........French ,all the english ones are too embarassing to admit to!
years ago ,a Renault 18 , 2.0 litre auto,I bought it cheap because the lad had took the sump and some bits off the auto box and didn't know how to put it back together.I took the risk and on the 2nd attempt at putting the bottom of the auto box back together..........it worked!yipee.We used that for a couple of years until the autobox gave trouble.We had enjoyed a weeks holiday down near Bath,the auto box had been slipping and I had been tinkering under the bonnet trying to fix things?we got the car loaded for the journey home to Leyland ,Lanc's.
The dammed auto box would get up to 29mph then the car would rev as it lost it's drive? all the way home at 28 mph(we weren't in the AA then)Bloody nightmare of a journey,the car was full we even had the mother in law with us,she's nice really.
I found the problem once we landed home.....there was a potentiometer on the throttle linkeage,I had re-made the connection down there and there was a very fine strand of wire shorting two contacts out duh!
I lost faith in the autobox after that and converted it to a 5 speed manual.
My brother had a big peugeot 505 2.0litre ohv,we swopped cars the pug was better at pulling the catering trailer I had back then.This car was a 5 speed manual
and although it was a nice car,metallic blue with blue velour and a tinted sunroof visor oooh! It was overshadowed by another 505 we had years before the renault 18...
paid £73 for it from a farmyard up near Garstang,moss growth on the window rubbers and the bronze paint job was marred by a peeling bonnet.
This car earned the nickname the LIMO it was absolutley superb yet another 2.0 litre but this was the fuel injected ohc motor and coupled with the beautiful auto box it was as smooth as silk and extremley powerful,I would have another no worries.never forget you Limo sob sob.that car gave us about 3 years,fantastic.

Then there was a Renault Master high top van incredibly that was another 2.0 litre
same engine as the 505 injection but the master had a carburettor.I used that to start me off running my catering buisness,hard days but we pulled through them.
So did the Master it was a really good work horse.

years before these I had a Talbot samba think it was 1.1 and it was an art to drive
gear lever like a porridge stick and the engine sounded like a sewing machine,
it went up hill and down dale though,never gave up,we did.

Before that or was it after? a ratty looking Talbot Solara yukky yellow with a crusty bonnet lip,matt black leading edge someone had put masking tape on it and painted over,not me.That beast had a 1600cc engine a pulled like a steam train,amazing motor
Talbots,they where French weren't they?

Just recently I had a really smart Xantia 1.9 td "R"redg absolutley reliable but a bit too cramped,after a long journey it felt like you had driven all day.
That was written off unexpectadly!
I still had the Citroen bug when the insurance payed out but didn't want another Xantia.

Roll on my present set of wheels my cherished Citroen XM 2.1TD "J"redg.
It doesn't bother me the age of the car,it is a joy to drive and there is bags of room inside.Travel all day in this motor and get out of it feeling fine.
If I haven't bored you to tears..............what have you had?
Happy dude

[Peter.N.]

I have had Citroens almost exclusivly since about 1985, a few years earlier I did have a Peugeot 404 diesel but I have been running diesels since 1960, let me explain.

A customer of ours (I'm a TV engineer) had a diesel Standard Vanguard estate and I liked the noise it made, believe it or not, this was what started my interest in diesels.

In the late '50s-early60s Perkins produced one of the first indirect injection high speed (4000rpm) diesels, the 4/99. They also made conversion kits to fit practically all British cars and these were very comprehensive kits enabling the use of the original gearbox, exhaust system and engine mounting points, the one I bought (the TV trade was quite lucrative in those days) for my '56 Vauxhall Cresta even had a mechanical take off for the wipers!

The power output of these engines was 43 bhp although they later brought out a larger version, the 4/108 which managed 52 BHP and 89lb/ft of torque, in their day this sort of power was acceptable although the 5cwt of the engine didn't do a lot for performance. but the fuel consumption was brilliant.

In later years I converted a number of cars, making up my own conversion parts, for vehicles as diverse as a Vauxhall Viva and a Granada estate. The main problem with the early engines, was noise, partly due to the engines themselves but largly due to the low gearing needed because of the poor power/weight ratio.

As I was travelling down the motorway one day I was overtaken by a large lorry with a far worse power/weight ratio than mine and yet the engine was purring contentedly, this got me thinking, it was all down to gearing.

So I hatched a plan, I obtained my 4/108 engines from scrap Bedford vans, the bellhousing of which would also fit Vauxhall overdrive boxes but the ratios of these boxes were to close for the comparitivly low power of the diesel engine, pulling away in first gear requiring a considerable ammount of clutch slipping, I resolved this problem by fitting the wide ratios from the commercial box. I also modified the inhibitor switch so that overdrive could be used on all 4 forward gears, giving me in effect, 8 forward gears, although the overdrive would slip in 1st if pushed.

I used this conversion, combined with different axle ratios on about ten different vehicles with varying degrees of success, but in all cases it was a vast improvement, noise wise over the then available diesel cars. My last conversion was on a 1980 Cortina estate, then I discovered Citroens.

I drove a 1980 diesel CX safari, although a non turbo, the refinement and performance had me hooked, it was only later that I came to appreciate the fantastic drive that it gave, since then I have had two more CXs and four XMs, the rest, as they say is history.

Peter.N.