1991 Citroën BX TZD - Potentially my perfect commuter car

[Flynn]

Good day,

Miles covered since last entry - 600 or so.

Issues to report: Got too attached already, excellent fuel economy, stealth rust.

So I've been using this as my daily transport up to Sunday last week when 2 things happened:

1. I finally got the troublesome Range Rover back on the road after an absolute debacle with non-genuine driveshafts - thought it prudent to get some miles on it before I use it for a big trip in the next few weeks, so the BX got a rest in the garage for most of the week.
2. I have found myself feeling very attached to the BX and so now that the roads near my house are basically made of mud and filth - Driving it on those roads feels like I'm punching a friend in the face which has meant I've made every excuse I can to keep the BX tucked up in the garage.

The roads were dry and it was a lovely morning earlier so I went out to fill up the fuel tank and see what actual economy I have been getting, I had a feeling it was pretty good simply because I can't remember when the last time I filled up was! I think a full tank would probably last 600 miles or so but I completed 520.3 from the last fill up and used 10.62 gallons doing it which nets me 48.99mpg which I am over the moon with - bear in mind my daily driver up to this point has either been an MGB which achieves 30ish (never bothered to actually work it out), a P38 Range Rover 4.0 which gets 19mpg on a good day or a TDV8 L322 Range Rover which seems to get 25mpg no matter how it is driven.

So yes, economy is pleasing and has slashed my weekly fuel bill.

I wanted to have a decent stab at some rust prevention on the front end to match my fully Dinitrol covered rear. My plan was to give the car a thorough jet wash, remove the front inner arch panels, get all of the crud out, wire wheel as much as I could, dinitrol rust converter primer on everything and then Dinitrol 4941 over that.

I started on the offside front and everything was remarkably solid apart from a bizarrely isolated section of rust at the front of the sill, where there was an 8mm hole to take a fir tree clip that held the lower section of the inner arch panel on, it had rusted out all around the hole but nowhere else, I took no photos but I cut the rust out and welded in a new patch complete with new 8mm hole so the trim clip was doing a job again. Everything else looked good so I spent ages cleaning and then decided I was ready for rust prevention so moved on to the other side.

Over on the near side and things started off great, no corrosion at all down at the sill end! Further up though and a section of the front inner wing was basically held together with the thick factory underseal, the metal underneath was long gone and was an orangey dust on contact! Annoying because the factory underseal had hidden literally any signs of this so I had no idea! Again very sparse on the photos as I was keen to press on and get this all finished over the one weekend but, I cut all of the rust out and have welded in a repair patch, not ideal but its better than rust and I try to keep telling myself this isn't a show winner, its the car I drive to work and back in!



This is the only picture I took but shows the extent of the problem.

I got it all back together and then had another good clean of everywhere I could get at, I applied the rust converter and left that and then sprayed on a liberal dose of Dinitrol 4941. The more I use Dinitrol, the more glad I am spent the extra on it over Waxoyl, it really is much nicer to work with and seems to go off quicker and better than Waxoyl ever did.

Other than that, I have also replaced the alternator belt because the old one looked like it could have been the original and was ready to fall apart at any moment.

Thanks for the kind words spudgun and thanks matfenwick for the links - very useful.

I've got some time off over Christmas and I think if funds allow I'll do the timing belt and water pump, the clutch and the front suspension bushes. Or more likely, I'll eat a lot and decide it's too cold for that and just sit looking at cars on eBay instead.

Many thanks all.

[vulgalour]

"stealth rust" is the perfect description. Also, that's nowt, you should've seen the stealth rust mine was hiding.





They like to rust behind the soundproofing on the bulkhead too, it's not somewhere you look unless you know to. Behind the soundproofing on the engine bay side there's a seam that's hidden from view, if you peel the soundproofing back you'll be able to see pretty quickly if it's gone and it can be the cause of wet front carpets.




It's a bit of a faff to get a look but well worth doing, for peace of mind if nothing else.

[Flynn]

Mileage right now: 84371

Miles covered since last entry - No idea really, 300 maybe... It's been a while and I've lost count, we're just over 1000 miles since the MOT though, I know that much.

So, it has been pretty quiet on the BX front since the rust repairs in the last update, it has been reliably ferrying me to work and back many times and I've not had to do anything to it other than fuel it (I've filled up again once - ages ago, still getting used to that).

In the mean time, I had a week long holiday road trip in what has been so far, the most unreliable car of the fleet that is unfortunately too modern to post about here, my L322 TDV8 Range Rover. I was nearly in tears at one point during the work I had to do to get it ready for the trip (highlights included air sus air bag exploding in my face, driveshaft replacement debacle that meant I had to strip the HEAVIER THAN THE MOON front suspension down about 4 times) but thankfully it all paid off and I covered 2100 miles in a week with no trouble at all, we went down to Vienna in Austria and then back home via a family member's place in Germany and we also had a day in Liege in Belgium. What a machine! I've almost forgotten how much trouble it gave me leading up to the trip so maybe I won't sell it now like I had planned to.

Anyway! The BX was always my reserve car for the Austria trip but thankfully it didn't come to that. I say thankfully because on December 24th (long after we had returned from Austria) mechanical disaster struck the BX and the stop solenoid on the fuel injection pump failed and fuel started gushing out all over the place - or alles uber der platz as the Germans say, maybe. Judging by the strong diesel smell that I started picking up on, this failure occurred just as I left Coventry ring road and about 2 minutes from journeys end so I pressed on, I don't think I would've dumped much diesel on to the road and once I knew what the problem was, I left the car where it was until I could sort it out! So yeah, good job I didn't take this car to Austria eh! I reckoned it probably would've failed at some point either on the M25, or the M20, either way basically killing the holiday before it had really started!

This was unfortunate because in the weeks leading up to the Christmas break, I had purchased a timing belt and water pump kit, a new clutch and new front lower arm bushes, all of which I had planned to fit at my leisure over the last few days. Trouble is I only collected the BX this morning (after fitting a new stop solenoid of course) and that really only leaves me with tomorrow and New years day to fit everything and make sure it is all ok before I have to rely on the car for getting to work and back again. So it looks like the service jobs will have to wait another week or two - hopefully this doesn't bite me in the harris.

Pictures:

Failed stop solenoid - I had exactly the same happen to me on an old 2.5 Diesel Land Rover 90 I used to own, that one left me stranded in a Sainsburys car park which wasn't convenient - it did let go once I had parked up though so not all bad.


All good again for the grand total of £8.99 


And a rubbish picture of the car as it sits this evening, needing a wash - which it will receive tomorrow if the weather stays dry.

vulgalour - thanks for taking the time to post up excellent descriptions and even pictures of where rust might be lurking, the bulkhead area on my car is made slightly more difficult to inspect thanks to an ABS pump and lines that further pin that insulation material in place, my plan is to take a good look at that area from underneath when I have the gearbox out for the clutch change. I hope your BX is running well at the moment.

Also! Whilst doing some digging on the past of this BX, I see it attended a RetroRides Gathering in the past - If the old owner of the BX is reading this, If you want your Linkin Park CD returning, no chance - it is mine now.


Anyway, next update should see a whole host of service jobs completed. I might also finally get round to refitting the A pillar trims, which have been sat in my garage ever since the windscreen was replaced months ago now!

Many thanks!

[eternaloptimist]

Excellent car. I really like the BX.

[jamesd1972]

Interesting car finds caring and appreciative owner !
Nice, thanks for the updates.
High level brake light fitted by PO looks like an RX8 one.
James

[tofufi]

Love BXs, and the wheels on this one look great. Keep up the good work

[vulgalour]

Dec 30, 2019 21:49:34 GMT Flynn said:

vulgalour - thanks for taking the time to post up excellent descriptions and even pictures of where rust might be lurking, the bulkhead area on my car is made slightly more difficult to inspect thanks to an ABS pump and lines that further pin that insulation material in place, my plan is to take a good look at that area from underneath when I have the gearbox out for the clutch change. I hope your BX is running well at the moment.

You're very welcome, I suppose I'm fortunate that my engine bay is fairly uncluttered due to it being a more basic model.  Mine has been really good, got me down to the new place in Kent no bother and has been behaving itself since I got here, though we've barely gone anywhere of note yet, looking forward to a proper explore later in the year.

[Flynn]

Miles covered since last entry - ha! probably 50 or so - come on though look at the weather we've had recently, I'm not exposing my precious BX to that!

So the last post I made was just after Christmas and I haven't really used the BX much since then - the Range Rover has been performing daily driver duties for a good few weeks now. This rest period for the BX has allowed me to get on with some fiddly little jobs that I had been meaning to get round to for a while.

First task was getting the driver's electric window operating as intended. I could lower the glass if I pressed the switch and wiggled it about in just the right way and then getting it to go back up again was the same sort of faffery - silly little niggles like this really really get on my nerves! The joy of working on something of this age is that there is no CAN bus, no body control modules, no door out stations - none of the rubbish I have become so used to in more modern machinery. With the BX being so nice and simple, and with the motor having no trouble sending the window up or down, I decided my problem was likely the switch itself, so I stripped it down and cleaned it up - 10 minutes well spent because now I have a fully functioning window switch pack - one touch function and everything!



Whilst I had the door card off, I remembered I had ordered some new door speakers to replace the old and knackered originals - the new ones were a straight swap so another quick job. Sound quality from the stereo is just as terrible as it was before as far as my ears can tell. Never mind! All I ever listen to is radio 4 anyway and I can hear that just fine so nothing lost, nothing gained. Whilst I was in the door cavity though, I found a big lump of what appeared to be melted sound proofing. The paint on this door is pretty terrible so now I am thinking perhaps there was heat involved at some stage, maybe the car was parked near something hot which damaged the paint and melted the inner sound proofing? Strange. Anyway, it is another job off the list.

Out with the old...



And in with the new



And then one evening I fitted a high level brake light. I fitted one of these to my MGB too. I don't know why I am so keen on them, just makes me feel slightly better about using these cars in day to day traffic, like I have done all I can do to make other drivers notice my car slowing down. If nothing else, fitting this kept me out of trouble for a while.




Next job was brakes on the wife's Renault Modus - the rule with my wife is that she will only tell me something is wrong with her car when it is basically on fire or physically will not run anymore. I try to get out in it once a while and check the tyre pressures and fluid levels just to give it a fighting chance. She had mentioned one evening that the car felt really slow up hills. My first thoughts were coil packs failing or some other engine related malady but no! How wrong I was...



With her car sorted I turned my attention back to the BX with a timing belt (and tensioner and idler) change and replacement of the front lower arm bushes. Timing belt was simple enough but access tricky as expected - took my time though and it was soon all done. The suspension bushes needed quite a bit of heat and 8 tonnes from the press before they started moving but it was simple enough to get them out.

Old bushes:


Had certainly seen better days. New bushes in:



No pictures of the timing belt change, I couldn't fit my hands down here, let alone a camera!

So that is where we are at right now. I haven't changed the clutch yet - decided to leave that for a little while longer and just get some more miles on the car. I have booked on to a drive it day tour at the end of April - the last two years I tackled it in my old Jag so I feel a bit of a fraud doing it in something so modern!

Just waiting for the weather to improve a little, the roads to be less made of mud and water and then I'll be in the BX for daily driver duties!

Hope you're all well.

Tatty bye.

[vulgalour]

Guess you've got a 'slightly' sticky caliper on the Renault there. Nice to see an update on this BX, mine has been mostly trouble free except for the occasional periods of Being French and hasn't dissolved in the bad weather just yet.

[norniron]

Love a BX... there are two on the road (with separate owners) very close to me, and each time I see one I start browsing the ads...

[Flynn]

Miles covered since last entry - 10 - I'll explain why...

I've just re-read all of this, its a long and boring post but it is still all part of my story with this BX so its staying!     

I had been waiting for the weather to start getting a little warmer, drier and generally better before starting to use the Citroen for daily driver duties again. One sunny Friday morning in February I excitedly pulled the BX out of the garage with the intention of that being the first day of commuting in it again. As soon as I opened the drivers door in the light of day I noticed my rubber floor mat had a pool of coolant in it. Upon further investigation the heater control valve (which sits directly above the floor mat) had decided to start leaking. "Well that's no good, back in the garage with you" I said and reluctantly put the BX back in the garage and carried on my day with the Range Rover tackling commuter duties once more.


Leaking heater valve.

That weekend I had a look at the job of taking the heater valve off the car to repair it and although it looked ok for access, it wasn't and turned in to a knuckle skinning weekend from hell all in all. By Saturday afternoon I had got the heater valve off the car, stripped down and had to 'repair' an oddly shaped square section rubber gasket which had failed. Much instant gasket, CItroen trim panels and a lot of swearing later and it was all back together ready for a test run to see if my problem was rectified.

So there I was on Sunday morning with the engine idling to get the coolant warm - I was pottering about doing other things and so had taken the car out of the garage again and it was just happily idling away on my drive way. It had been running for about 20 minutes and was nice and warm - no leaks from the heater valve so that's good! I jumped in the car to drive it back in to the garage and had one of the most buttock clenching moments of my life when the engine knocked terribly, shoved a cloud of white smoke out of the exhaust and raced away uncontrollably! Luckily I had enough life in the clutch left that a 5th gear clutch dump stalled it out.

Some time later I returned to investigate - first instinct was turbo charger oil seal so I pulled the intake pipes off and sure enough, a bit oily inside... Was it any worse than I expected to see in a 30 year old engine? Not really but it had to be the turbo charger right?! What else could it be?! Well we'll get to that later. Convinced I had made a correct diagnosis I took to eBay to find a replacement turbo charger. After a brief search I had found a recon Garrett unit fit for my car - no surcharge either so no hassle with sending my knackered one back. Great, buy it now. It arrived a few days later and with a free weekend coming up, I was looking forward to a quick turbo change and then getting the car back on the road again.


Lovely job.

Saturday morning arrives and I get the BX up on the ramp and take a look at access and things that might halt progress. Everything looks ok to get at but access for getting the turbo charger removed from the engine bay looks pretty tight. Naaaaaaah I'll get the gear linkage out of the way and I'll have loaaaaaaaaaaads of space.

What followed was simply one of the worst jobs I have tackled on any car. Now in fairness, getting the turbo off the engine was no problem, getting the turbo out of the engine bay was where my trouble started. I think if I had a 2 poster ramp I would have taken the decision to get the front subframe out of the way - that would give plenty of room. On my 4 poster though it may have been possible but would have been a right old balls ache so I carried on removing what I could, to get the turbo out. In the end I had essentially stripped the turbo down and removed it piece by piece. And what did I find? Well sure this turbo was a bit tired but in no way was it ruined. But still what else could it be?! HAD to be the turbo!



These are pictures of the new turbo fitted but you see access is hardly generous.

Getting the new turbo in the engine bay and then fitted to the engine was almost as much fun as removing the old one. Mercifully the new one had a smaller wastegate arrangement so that helped but the rest of the job was just as horrible. Anyway, after what felt like forever, I had the new turbo on, everything fitted up and ready for a test drive. Off I went to the local shops (this is a couple of weeks prior to virus lock down chaos). Everything working well, drives just like before but since I had carefully refitted a few bulkhead gaskets so they fitted properly and slightly modified the interesting collection of intake hoses, it was noticeably quieter on boost, but just as powerful.

I got back underneath the car for a check over on my return and what was this? Fuel leaking all over the place?! But I haven't touched the fuel system!? OK what now car?!!

I find fuel all over a badly fitting T Piece that the previous owner had fitted for a boost gauge in what I would call a boost reference pipe - an 8mm ID rubber hose fitted from the intercooler to what I have learned is called the boost control diaphragm on the fuel injection pump. This boost reference pipe allows for more fuel to be injected whilst under boost by using boost pressure to move a plunger that is connected to this diaphragm apparently. I google my symptoms and find a few posts on Citroen forums from people who had exactly the same problem as me - engine uncontrollably racing away after idling for a long period, one guy wasn't so lucky and this killed his engine off entirely! Turns out a failed boost control diaphragm is a thing and the sure fire symptom is a boost reference pipe filling with fuel. If left idling for long enough, the pipe fills completely, which then starts filling the intercooler and so when you increase the engine speed even just a little bit, the increased air flow pulls all of that extra completely unmetered fuel straight in to the engine, making it knock wildly and speed up uncontrollably. Fun.

So - turbo change appears to have been completely unnecessary. Great. However, if I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have then gone on to find the actual root cause so in a way I'm fine with it.

I take a closer look at my injection pump and realise that there should be a leak off pipe from the boost control diaphragm but at some point, somebody broke it off and then jammed a self tapper in there to block it up! I get in touch with a fuel injection pump specialist who informs me the parts I need are no longer available however I should be able to find parts that do the same job off a range of other similar pumps, then fit a new diaphragm and then we're good as new.

Of course all the injection pump people are now shut indefinitely so the BX is parked up again for a while.

Maybe I will change that clutch after all. Plenty of time on my hands now!


Red arrow points to the boost control diaphragm assembly, follow the rubber hose out of it and you'll see the T piece that I mentioned.

Oh and the LHM pump belt was beyond tired so I replaced that whilst I was there.




So that is where I am at. If anyone reading this has got any old fuel injection pumps off a turbo charged XUD engine let me know!

Many thanks.

[matfenwick]

Mar 29, 2020 20:40:17 GMT Flynn said:

Saturday morning arrives and I get the BX up on the ramp and take a look at access and things that might halt progress. Everything looks ok to get at but access for getting the turbo charger removed from the engine bay looks pretty tight. Naaaaaaah I'll get the gear linkage out of the way and I'll have loaaaaaaaaaaads of space.

What followed was simply one of the worst jobs I have tackled on any car. Now in fairness, getting the turbo off the engine was no problem, getting the turbo out of the engine bay was where my trouble started.

For a moment I thought you had tackled the heater tap and turbo change in the same weekend, which would be somewhat masochistic of you!

Heater tap is bad enough, but turbo change is no fun at all. I think it's almost worth popping the head off for better access. I feel your pain!

Sadly I've only got spares for the Bosch pump, but have a fair few general BX parts I've amassed over the years so drop me a line if there's anything else you're after.

[gryphon]

I know the pain of jumping to the wrong conclusion and spending hours on it. At least you got a shiny new turbo out of it! Last time I just opened up my engine and gave it a new small oil leak in the process...

My dad still has boxes of xud bits from a string of PSA cars, but I have a suspicion they were all Bosch pumps. I'll ask though.

[Flynn]

Good day,

matfenwick  Heater tap and turbo change in one weekend would be actual hell on earth! Thanks for the offer on parts, I don't need anything right now but this is a Citroen so I may well be in touch soon!

gryphon Yes that is how I was looking at it, the turbo that came off was ok but if original, had nearly 30 years use on it so hardly a spring chicken.

In my last post I ended up on the lookout for fuel injection pump parts which are no longer available new. I kept my eye on eBay hoping something might come up and my patience was rewarded with a knackered pump off a 2.5TD:



I checked through the list of pump part numbers that I had been given and sure enough, this one would have the boost control bits I needed so I bought it and it arrived this morning.

I got the boost control assembly removed from the eBay pump and also removed the broken one off the car - access was actually ok! I removed the top radiator support bracket and the clean air pipe and was able to get at everything without swearing a lot or slicing my hands up - both of which seem to be standard when working on this car. It does however come with a handy engine bay tooling shelf that I make use of when I can:


With the parts removed, it looks like I can make one good assembly from two knackered ones.



Above is the broken collar that you can't get anymore, the small pipe stub that is now a self tapper is fuel run off (I think, I am learning about this pump as I go, no experience prior!) and the larger pipe is for boost pressure from the intercooler.



And that is what it is supposed to look like, this is the one off the eBay pump.

That collar sits neatly on the largest O ring at the top of this thing, I'll call it the boost control main body:


And within that sits this, the diaphragm:


I'd carefully cleaned all the parts up by the time I had taken these pictures, they were caked in old gunge, even the internals had some small black gunky deposits on them. Thing is, the diaphragm actually seemed fine, no damage at all and still nice and flexible. It was grotty and horrible when I first got at it. I can't quite work out what had gone wrong to make fuel enter the boost pipe.

I got it all back together and back on the pump in the car:


There is a little tin cover that is supposed to go over that lot (you can see it in the eBay ad) but I have left it off so I can check for leaks easier.

I have so far ran the engine for 5 minutes or so, moving the car around a bit in that time and have had no fuel enter that boost pipe which is nice. I am going to go to the shops in a short while so it'll get a good run and then I can check again when I get home, even if the diaphragm is still a duffer, I can get a new one and all of the O rings for about £40 so not the end of the world.

Anyway, far more importantly than stopping the engine from blowing up, I have been cleaning and polishing the bodywork. With all of this time I have at home now I thought I'd go all out with a polish and wax for the old girl and she came out really well, took me about 4 hours all in but it was worth it. I keep looking at it out from my office window, shiny like a new penny!





Well hopefully that is it for a while now. Still on the cards is a clutch change and a few tidy up jobs on the interior but I'm not starting any major works until I get my MGB back together, my MGB currently looks like this:



So plenty to do!

Take care all.

[bumper3d]

I wish my BX had a paintjob like yours!

[Flynn]

Quick update

bumper3d - to be honest the camera is being very kind! Every panel has some sort of dent or mark, I think the rear bumper was originally red but has since been perhaps brush painted black and the driver side door has a bizarre finish on it. A quick glance from twenty paces though and she looks mint!

So, in my previous post I had said this:
"Thing is, the diaphragm actually seemed fine, no damage at all and still nice and flexible. It was grotty and horrible when I first got at it. I can't quite work out what had gone wrong to make fuel enter the boost pipe."

On closer inspection the diaphragm was shot and was the root cause of my problem.



Above are all of the components of the old diaphragm laid out, crazy just how many individual parts go in to an old injection pump, must have presented quite a challenge to manufacture on a large scale.



And what you are looking at above is the root cause of my recent troubles with this car, one split diaphragm rubber that ended up costing me a weekend and a turbocharger haha. Still, it's all done now and to be fair, the car does seem a lot happier on this new turbo and I got to learn about old Lucas fuel injection pumps which was interesting.

Next post may include a clutch change if I can summon the enthusiasm for it.

Chin chin.

[Flynn]

Boredom got the better of me.

I had and still have lots of other jobs to do, an en-suite bathroom to refit, hall stairs and landing could do with a smarten up, gardening never ends. But none of those tasks allow me to potter about in the garage and pottering about in the garage has become my favourite hobby.

I decided to replace the clutch and the clutch cable and the nearside driveshaft, these are tasks that I have been putting off for some months now however with most of the other mechanical issues sorted, it would be satisfying to cross these ones off the list and the clutch really was on its last legs, fifth gear cruising now made almost impossible when encountering any sort of incline, the clutch would just slip, it also made a noise like an emu being put through a mangle when the clutch pedal was released so I was keen to sort that out too! 

I've changed clutches on east/west engine configuration cars before, it is never much fun but it is doable and never so awful I'd pay someone else to do it.

I make a start by clearing as much removable stuff out of the way as possible, battery, air box and associated pipework, starter motor, header tank etc. The engine bay of a BX is not a tidy place at the best of times and semi stripped apart looks even worse:


My plan was to use the support beam to hang the gearbox end of the engine so I could raise and lower it a little on the chains to aid gearbox re-installation, I would then use the jacking beam of my ramp underneath to support the gearbox whilst I removed/refitted it.

To give me less ballache when reassembling everything I removed both driveshafts, the nearside one was knackered anyway so was being replaced as part of this job (new single cv joint £35 or whole new shaft assembly £27?!). I got the shafts out without any fuss thanks to having the front lower arms off not long ago.

Actually no that's not right, there was lots of fuss. I thought I'd get ahead of the game and drain the gearbox of oil, I placed a container below to catch the fluid, loosened the drain plug and gave it one final check over before taking the plug out and all looked well. With the plug removed, gearbox oil headed straight for the container below... For about 0.5 seconds it did this, thereafter the oil flow hit the jacking beam handle which diverted the flow and fired gearbox oil absolutely everywhere. I shouted "abort" and ran away. It took me 30 minutes to clean up the mess.

Gearbox removal was actually not much of a problem, I had to take off the gearbox mount threaded pin because it fouled the battery tray/inner wing but with that removed and a little engine tilt, the box came out, I had to be very careful not to damage LHM pipework because I had kept the pump pretty much in place and just loosened mountings and pipe clips, in hindsight I could just have easily removed the LHM pump and pipes but I didn't want to disturb any of the pipe fittings for fear of failures and leaks and it would have made even more oil based mess!

So with gearbox off I could see what was what:


I can only assume this was the original clutch, it is a Valeo part, which had reference to '91' on it (my car is from 1991) and had paint marks on the bolts like you'd expect to see on a factory fitted item.


Gearbox out and the clutch release fork seemed just a little stiff, I worked it about and gave the pivots some oil and it seemed much happier for it.



Old friction plate has life left however the pressure plate seems to have lost its spring over the years and wasn't applying enough pressure anymore.

I fitted the new clutch and hoped that my eyeball alignment would work ok, I've got one those cheap universal alignment tools but it wasn't deep enough for this clutch. Reassembly was actually reasonably straightforward, had a 5 minute battle with the gearbox to get it all the way home but once it was there, I started bolting things back together. Now came time for the clutch cable. Haynes manual suggests removing the pedal assembly from the car which made removing the cable a fairly painless experience. Refitting the new clutch cable however was where the fun really started. I have only profanity to describe how I feel about this job and to whoever thought that the BX clutch cable was a good idea in the first place. I honestly believe to do a proper job of fitting a new clutch cable, you need the engine and dashboard removed!



This is about the only footage of the pedal end of the clutch cable I have, it is from a video I sent to a friend who also dabbles in rubbish old cars, 90% of the video is me swearing. The little white bit and its smaller black collar are the source of my pain, I cannot find a way to make sure they are fitted properly before refitting the pedal assembly, I tried every which way I could think of but in the end settled for having it 'somewhere about right'. The clutch works and is a marked improvement on what was there before but the clutch cable really made me mad and no joke cost me at least 4 hours in guffing around trying to fit it properly.

Anyway. shuffled the car around on the driveway and all is well, clutch feels a lot better and no more noise so that is good. I'll be doing the food shopping tomorrow so it'll get a proper run then, it'll be odd to be able to cruise without the clutch slipping now.

In other news, the hole that used to have a cover over it and then didn't at the end of the drivers sill is now sorted with potentially the highest quality part on the whole car...


Problem.


Solved.

I'm going to take a break from cars for a week or so, it looks like the weather is going to be on my side for the next few days so I am going to crack on with painting some exterior parts of my house.

Hope everyone is safe and well.

[matfenwick]

May 6, 2020 21:09:21 GMT Flynn said:

clutch cable

You really do like picking the most fun jobs don't you :-P

A BX TD is probably the only car on which it's debatable whether it's easier to change the clutch instead of the cable! You'll feel my pain then, when I did the job one weekday evening. I didn't actually *need* to change it, just that I had one in stock and I was taking out the pedal box to weld up a crack - I mean, how hard can it be to change a clutch cable? Darkness fell, and I was still trying to get that barsteward plastic ring onto the clip at the pedal end of the cable. It must have been approaching midnight when it finally snapped into place with a satisfying click.

Then came the simple job of attaching the gearbox end, and it was at this point I realised I should have compared the two cables before fitting. The new one was about a foot too short! Arrrgh FFS!!! I can only think it must have been an LHD cable (on which the job would be much easier).

So, out with the pedal box again, and on with the original cable. This if anything was more difficult, as the clip did not want to go back together on a used cable. I was at the stage of kicking and swearing at inanimate objects by this stage, so not my finest hour...

It's been another 10 years, and I still have the car, and another (correct) clutch cable (still firmly in its packaging!)

[Flynn]

May 9, 2020 12:14:22 GMT matfenwick said:

Then came the simple job of attaching the gearbox end, and it was at this point I realised I should have compared the two cables before fitting. The new one was about a foot too short! Arrrgh FFS!!! I can only think it must have been an LHD cable (on which the job would be much easier)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Hahaha oh man that is the stuff of actual nightmares!



How you didn't just push the car in to a hedge and set fire to it when you discovered the new cable was too short is beyond me, you are more tolerant than I am! I mean how stupid is that clutch cable clip?! I had been fighting with it for about 2 hours and I just had to walk away and come back to it the next morning and have another 2 or 3 hours of total misery. As you say a LHD car is probably better for access. It is reassuring to know it isn't just me struggling! Are there any more horror jobs waiting for me that I am yet to tackle?


The only consolation I could find in this was that my original clutch cable looked pretty dodgy so I think sooner or later I was going to have to tackle it.

[Flynn]

Well this quote box thing is going about as well as the clutch cable change went.

You can see what I wrote though so I am going to quit while I am ahead.