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John Dragon Man's Citroen BX Diesel Estate

Introduction

Well here I am, now an owner of a BX Diesel Estate in Sliver!

so yesterday (the 20th of June 16) i took a trip down to London with a car transporter and picked up this nice little... (umm.. a little more larger than i am use to) estate car!

i am pretty happy with it, the overall cost was £400 for the car and around £350 to get it delivered here to Derby (yes i know i could have got it cheaper now :x ).

bodywork wise the car is a little "used". given what i have seen of London (first time i have been!) i think the car survived well!

the engine is dead. the bottom end may be savable but i think i am going to go down the complete engine swap fix route. i am not sure if it may have damaged anything else bar the head. so that said i am now looking for a low miles XUD engine. be it a 1.7 or 1.9 (ill worry about that camshaft pump pulley further down the line)

the hydraulics are untested. the spheres are dated 2001 so are 15 years old they they need changing but are near the bottom on my list of things to change for obvious reasons. i will try and test the hydraulics by spinning the pump using an electric motor. being as it is cam driven it does not turn very quick even with the pulley ratio. maybe even a battery drill could do it.

the LHM fluid is more of a cloudy yellow/cream colour, i have read that it should be green. so i will change that when the engine is in and connected up.

who wants to see some pictures?

so these are the pictures that the seller sent me:










and these are from yesterday now i have the car at work:



















a slight bit of rust.. but nothing i cant fix..



and now the really bad stuff...



ouch... smashy smashy



i will also be making online video logs. and here is the first:




see you in the next update!

the Citroen BX is a beautiful car to look at, be in, and drive. but a hateful car when it comes to mechanics. an engineering nightmare filled with planned obsolescence.

i am pretty sure i am going to be selling, or storing this car very soon as i have ran out of "life" to spend on this car any further.

it has faults that i am just not willing to fix as i am sure it would require much work.

Game Over.
 
That's a shame but if anything I'm surprised you got as far as you did. Hopefully if you do sell someone will pick up and make good but realistically an ancient Citroen estate is not going to be a car that just anyone will pick up.

We've got a much more modern one and I hate to think what that'll be like in 10 years nevermind 20. It's already starting to rust and there are some interesting design choices that reinforce the feeling this is not built to last.
 
I understand where you're coming from.

I loved my Xantia estate (2.1td), but they are not "mechanic friendly" vehicles, the same could be said for PSA products in general. This is a personal opinion, but I think this is mostly Peugeot's doing, pre-takeover cars were better.

In my case, there were no major problems, just needed every suspension bush replacing, new spheres and a new fuel filter housing (crap bit of design that), I just wasn't willing to spend the money on a car that already had 400,000km on the clock.


Citroens, when they work, they're a dream, when they don't, the stuff of nightmares.
 
for some reason everyone hates me saying this, but rather than using common never fail metal on metal flares in pipework (the flares and unions used on not just fiat.. all other cars brake lines good for well over 5000 bar) citroen use a bulged pipe with a bit of rubber as a seal as its flare. the rubber in time brakes up and goes into the system which cause no end of problems. just no need to use a crappy design like that when a good one already exists.

hydraulic_pipe_flare.gif


not to mention the weird pipe sizes of 3.5mm 4.5mm and 6mm!

on the rear axle they use thin ball bearings for the swing arms to pivot on.. rather than use roller bearings like how i have managed to.

you even have to take the steering rack apart to change the damn rubber gaiters!

just not a fun car to work on. no future planning was ever took into consideration. the car was designed to last X amount of years, after that buy a new one as repairs will cost so much it would just not be worth it.
 
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Good news is they still build them the same way...brake disc backing plates that thing invented in the 60s to prolong the life of the brake discs and stop wet weather knackering braking performance? Not on a ds3 no..so the discs are 60% worn after 14k..left it a fortnight when we went on holiday the rear brakes had corroded so bad they had to be replaced. The exhaust fell off at 2 years and was welded back on by the dealer..

At least the BX is interesting..the ds3 is deeply conventional but executed terribly.
 
for some reason everyone hates me saying this, but rather than using common never fail metal on metal flares in pipework (the flares and unions used on not just fiat.. all other cars brake lines good for well over 5000 bar) citroen use a bulged pipe with a bit of rubber as a seal as its flare. the rubber in time brakes up and goes into the system which cause no end of problems. just no need to use a crappy design like that when a good one already exists.

hydraulic_pipe_flare.gif


not to mention the weird pipe sizes of 3.5mm 4.5mm and 6mm!

on the rear axle they use thin ball bearings for the swing arms to pivot on.. rather than use roller bearings like how i have managed to.

you even have to take the steering rack apart to change the damn rubber gaiters!

just not a fun car to work on. no future planning was ever took into consideration. the car was designed to last X amount of years, after that buy a new one as repairs will cost so much it would just not be worth it.
Most peculiar! Then again, it is a classic Citroen, lol!
 
you even have to take the steering rack apart to change the damn rubber gaiters!

That rang a bell.
Can't remember much (any) detail, but I think there was a special stretcher for the gaiters to get them over the otherwise seemingly impossible obstruction. Can't remember how it was done, but the pipe union apparently in the way can be overcome. Probably involves a lot of swearing and personal injuries, so dismantling easier and more satisfying.
 
Citroen have always felt the need to quite literally reinvent the wheel. Then, once they've found a different way to do what everyone else does, they stick with it.

The hydraulic fittings are familiar, even on the non-hydraulic cars such as the 2CV. To make things even more fun, you need a different 'olive' depending on if you use brake fluid or LHM, so if you decide to swap a Dyane gearbox (disc brakes) on to your 2CV (drums), you have to replace every seal in the brake system.

Try finding a bottle of LHM at 3am in Germany...

They really are love/hate cars.

Modern ones are just Peugeots though.
 
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