Month: May 2016

Battery box repair plates

29th May 2016 19:48

The way the load of the battery is transmitted through the bulkhead puts stress into parts of thin metal that can’t really handle it.

At some point in the past someone had applied some repair panels to the bulkhead round the lower mounting points.  These were untreated steel that had been liberally pop-rivited and had inevitably picked up surface rust.

2CV battery tray mount in bulkhead

Given the number of rivets, removing the panels isn’t really practical so the next best option is to clean them up and paint them.

Usual techniques apply here:  remove as much of the surface rust as practical, treat with rust remedy, mask up, etch prime, prime and top coat.

This is another case where Citroen’s legendary build quality shows up.  I’ve painted the patch panels with the correct Blue Nuit paint used on the body but this section of the bulkhead got little more than a cursory blow over at the factory – certainly not enough to cover the undercoat!

2CV battery box repair

Also visible here is one of the cracks that had formed on the lower edges of the battery box.  I’ve drilled these out to stop them spreading any further and treated them with Waxoyl to keep the tin worm at bay.

Aviation Adventures – Lego 3 in 1 Creator 31011

28th May 2016 12:18

Setting up for my next Lego project, something that could have rolled out of Granville Brothers former dance hall in Springfield.  Ideally I’d like to get as close to a Model R as possible but it’s not an easy shape to reproduce in Lego.

For the starting point I’ve used an off-the-shelf kit, Aviation Adventures which has a plane as the featured build.  With the big rotary engine and the rounded wings it’s got two elements that are a key part of the Gee Bee designs.

Lego Creator 31011 plane
Lego Creator 31011 plane

There are some nice features of the model that I won’t be retaining, first is when you slide the tail wheel backwards and forwards it works a bi-directional gear assembly that turns the propeller.  It’s nice but it’s going to be to restrictive to retain.

Lego Creator 31011 unidirectional gear assembly

The other is the retractable undercarriage, again a nicely implemented feature but the Gee Bees had fixed, spatted, undercarriage and housing it makes the wing more restrictive.

Lego Creator 31011 retractable undercarriage

Swallowed a spider to catch a fly

14:40

A while back I replaced a missing bolt for the rear door retaining strap. Also missing was the strap that holds the rear seat belt away from the door opening1 as that’s held in by the bolt that had departed. After obtaining a replacement strap (they’re the same as the door handle straps) I set about restoring everything.

Unfortunately I managed to drop the nut from the surviving original bolt down into the mounting bracket for the rear door strap, this being nothing more than a curved piece of metal welded onto the B pillar.

2CV rear door strap body mount

To give you and idea of the restricted access, the above photo is the best I could get with phone camera – the Mk. 1 eyeball can get a slightly better vantage point. It’s too narrow for either of my magnetic pick-ups and too deep for most of my tools – about the only thing that would get down there was a pick. I tried to magnetise the pick but it really wasn’t going to cut it so time for plan B: more magnets.

A trip to an online market place provided a large range of available rare earth magnets – after some consideration (and some measuring) I settled on 10 5mm cube magnets. These duly arrived by first class post and, at the next available opportunity, I set about retrieving the errant nut. After plenty of trial and error – the latter mostly involving the magnets also getting stuck inside the bracket – the spider magnets finally came out with the fly bolt.

spider and fly

Reassembly from this point was straight forward using the equivalent off side components as a guide. However, this time I was much more careful when handling the bolts.

2CV rear door strap and seatbelt retainer

Now this might seem a lot of effort for one bolt that nobody would ever have known was stuck down there – and it was really. However, it’s this kind of attention to detail that separates a classic car from a utility vehicle.

Footnotes

  1. Three point, inertia reel, seatbelts post date the design of the 2CV’s body shell, there will always be some compromises when retro-fitting things like this.