Hints and Tips

Do this before removing the suspension arms from the car. Afterwards is much more difficult
as the arms has to be held very tightly. The Citroen manual doesn't cover this well. The drum
brakes are on the end of the suspension arm. Attached to the arm itself is the backplate, and
coming out of the centre of this is a single large threaded post. Attached to the backplate is
the hydaulic brake cylinder and the brake shoes.

The drum is held onto the threaded post by means of a 44mm nu. This will be very tight but
can be shocked free with the right socket and a 2ft bar struck firmly with a sledgehammer.
The drum will be difficult to remove, but once the nut is off should slide off the central post.

In the centre of the drum is a wide bearing locking ring. This has to opposed cutouts, and it
is an absolute b******d to remove. To make matter worse it is also used on the front uprights.
If you don't need to change the bearings, don't touch it. If you do, then you won't be able to
tap it round, so don't try. Even with the right tool, you will need two people and a very long
and strong pole as a lever. The hardest part is having something strong enough to hold it
whilst you undo the ring. Best bet is to remove it whilst on the hub, and use wood over the
wheel studs extending to the ground to stop the wheel rotating. The ring is also "peened" to
the hub itself (this means that the boundary between the ring and hub has been hit with a
punch, effectivley overlapping the two as a safety feature). These have to be drilled, but it
is straight forward

In the end, I used a 6mm drill, drilled straight in at the cutouts , effectivley cutting the ring
in half, and then removing it. It was quick, but I'll need to get a new ring when re-building.

You will also probably find that the rear shoe eccentric adjusters have seized. These should
just pull off with the shoe, mine needed brute force.

Note: these are for a 1986 2CV with disc brakes. Yours may be different.

These have the same locking ring as mentioned above, with all of the same problems. The
main thing to note is that the bearings are supposed to have some play"in and out", so don't
try and replace them if they slide in and out a little. Haynes shows this in its cutaway
drawing, but isn't explicit. I wonder how many have been replaced unnecessarily?

The kingpins themselves are smallish tubes with drillings for greasing that link the uprights
(the bits with the hubs attached to them) to the suspension arms to allow steering.

Removing the top and bottom caps is easy enough, but the kingpins will be hard to get out.
The tip is is make sure the drift is the right size, then hit it harder. To give you some idea, I
was using the drift from 2CV tools, and I hit it from over my head with a sledgehammer, even
so, it only moved on the second strike. Heat is apparently a bad idea as it warps the fittings
the tube goes in, a bad idea with an interference fit item.

These are mounted on taper fit pins. Once the retaining nuts are removed, they will pull free,
but to break the taper seal you will need some form of puller and you must cut away the anti-
rattle rubbers between the arms and rack tube first. Don't try levering against the rack itself
as it will deform the sliding plate and/or runners, causing steering problems.

make sure that the ignition key is in the lock and turned to the second position before tring
to remove the ignition assembly. When the key is just inserted or not there at all, a metal
block seats in a recess on a collar clamped to the steering column, and with this in place, the
ignition assembly cannot be removed.

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The gaskets look as though they will fit either way around - they don't! Check the clearance
where the pushrod tubes come through the barrel, if the gasket is the wrong way around it
will overlap these tubes.

The citroen design is old and tends to use a hammer to crack a nut. This most apparent in its
use of wide apperture threaded holes. The edges of these threads get damaged easily,
making re-insertion of the rings, bolts etc. very difficult. When you are stripping down, re-
insert the bearing locking rings and kingping bottom threaded plugs whilst you are working on
them to protect the threads. If you damage irrepairably one of the threads on the swivel, for
example, a new swivel is over 100 pounds. A new plug is about a fiver!

Connecting these together is not obvious, and it needs patience – if you aren't in a good mood,
walk away and do something else.

First of all you need to get the spats shaped. The way to do this is to get a large piece of flat
MDF. Lay the cycle wing on its side and draw around the INNER edge onto the MDF. The line
should be longer than the length of the spat. Use a jigsaw or similar to cut through the board
along the line.

Now draw a line along the straight side of the spat 10mm in from the edge. GENTLY bend the spat
so that it approximates the curve you have cut in the board and then push the spat through the slot
so that only the 10mm edge protrudes above the board – this will form exactly the right curve for
the spat. Now bend the 10mm section over towards the outside of the curve – doing this whilst
stopping the spat sliding up and down is difficult so be patient. The flange needs to be bent over
to about 80 degrees – use a thin piece of wood and a a rubber mallet to get this right. Repeat the
above as appropriate until all of the cycle wings are done.

Important. You have right and left handed spats, front and back. Make sure that you get the right
orientation of curve/flange for each cycle wing. You will need to turn the board over to achieve
this.

The next job is to work out where you drill the holes in the 10mm flange. Take a cycle wing and
using a set square measure the width of the rolled bead from the outer edge of the cycle wing.
Note this is width not depth, offer up the spat to make this clear. Halve this figure and add 1mm,
this is the distance in from the inside edge of the flange bend on the spat that the holes have to be
drilled in the flange. Drill these with a 3mm drill at 60mm centers. Make sure that the holes line
up. If there are any slight errors, widen the holes in the spat appropriately, NOT the holes in the
bead

Now clamp the spat to the cycle wing being careful to make sure that the spat if tight up against
the wing edge. Centre punch the rolled bead through the holes you have drilled – if you have
measured correctly then the holes in the flange will be directly over the peak of the bead. You
are going to drill through the rolled bead but NOT right through to the outside of the wing, so put
some tubing around the 3mm drill such that only 2-3mm of the tip of the drill protrudes and don't
put a lot of pressure on when drilling, take your time.

When you have drilled all of the holes, you attach the spats to the wings using short 3.2mm
standard head rivets. These won't pull directly – insert the rivet as far as it will go, pull it slightly
with the rivet gun and then push it in further. Once the head is flush with the flange then it can be
fully pulled.

If you are not using the 2CV headlights but are using new ones from suppliers such as Stafford
Vehicle Componments, Europa etc., then you have two choices in how to fit them. The first option
is modify the headlamps for side mounting directly into the lamp bar on the chassis, the second is
to fabricate an angled bracket that attaches to the light bar and allows the headlight to sit
upright.

To my mind, the former option looks cleaner. If you choose to follow this option the following
explains how to do it.

The headlight you have will doubtless have the harness exiting the shell through a hollow mounting
bolt, which is a problem in this type of mounting, and the hollow bolt will have an odd thread.

First of all, mark each shell, bezel and headlight as off side or nearside with sticky labels, tie
tag etc. Now put a sticky label across the shell, bezel and headlamp and draw a line on the label
that goes across all of them. Repeat this at exactly 90 degrees (clockwise or counterclockwise
depending upon which side the headlight is going on), and then use a knife to cut through the label
along both the bezel/shell joint and bezel/headlight joint. The best way to find 90 degrees
quickly is to put a piece of string that goes exactly around the bezel/shell joint and mark where it
passes the line you drew above, then remove the string, measure it and mark off a quarter of its
length from the mark you made before. Re-apply the string and look to see where the marks are.

Remove the bezel and headlight from the shell – the wires will go with them. The headlight will be
held in the bezel with "W" clips. Note the exact orientation of the clips as they can go in either
way, but only one is right. Remove the clips carefully and rotate the headlight within the bezel by
90 degrees using the marks you made on the sticky labels earlier. Re-insert the "W" clips (usually
lots of cursing required here).

Now take the shells, remove the hollow bolts and replace with an M12 domehead socket setscrew.
This allows the shell to connect to the light bar, however there is now no exit for the wires. This
is resolved by drilling through the shell. There will be a grommet on the wires, so drill the
appropriate sized hole for that grommet, and drill it so that the wires exit horizontally behind the
bolt, and as near to it as possible, when the shell is bolted to the light bar – this is important as it
keeps the wires away from the hot exhaust. Also note that the light you received had other holes
which are drain holes for water, you will need to drill a new one at the lowest point (as it appears
when it is fitted) of each shell .

Bolt the shell to the light bar trying to get it as square to the car as possible. Run the wires
through the grommet/hole and connect them up. Offer the bezel/headlight upto the shell and test
the beam. Adjust the shell until the beam is correct (this is a fiddle) and then finally attach the
bezel/headlight assembly to the shell.

When you have finished re-building your brake system, there are couple of potential problems. The
first is a spongy pedal, the second is a pedal that pushes to the floor, and only firms up after it has
been fully pushed once or twice. The 2CV braking system is as simple as it gets, but here is how to
tackle the problems. I have put them in the order in which they should be carried out - don't start
half way down the list. I am assuming the braking system has been overhauled and that all new
seals etc. have been fitted and the car has disk brakes and uses LHM. If it doesn't the procedures
are probably still valid, but I have no experience.

1) First of all check that there is no fluid weeping from any of the unions or bleed nipples.

2) Confirm that you have the pipes correctly installed at the master cylinder. The front outlet from
the master cylinder i.e. the one furthest from the pedal, goes to the rear brakes. The rear outlet
goes to the front brakes.

3) Bleed the system. The number of curly pipes in the 2CV system creates lots of traps for air
pockets. The best solution is to use an eesi-bleed. If you don't have one of these then it will need
two of you.

4) Set-up the rear drums. This is critical as they aren't self adjusting, but it isn't easy. The shoes
must be exactly concentric to the drum and must be within 1mm clearance from the drum braking
surface. Follow the procedure in the Haynes manual closely

5) Leave the car for 24hrs, and then without touching the pedal remove the drum and examine the
gap between the piston and the end of the brake shoe. There should be no gap - if there is then you
have the problem with the wheel cylinders. IMPORTANT - make sure you have set up the shoes
properly before doing this as if they are not adjusted properly, you will still have the same problem,
although the cause will be different.

Apparently the wheel cylinders Citroen originally made had a high friction sealing ring between
piston and cylinder, these are now unobtainable, so a more modern rubber one is used. This has
low friction, especially when in contact with LHM. Because of this the strong rubber dust cover can
push the piston back into the cylinder slightly, meaning that the first pedal depression is sloppy as
the piston is not contacting the brake shoe i.e. the first depression only takes up the slack.

Two ways of resolving this. First is to remove the dust covers altogether and put a smear of grease
around the piston/cylinder joint, second is just to cut the dust cover around the piston and remove
the bit attached to the piston, so that the dust cover no longer applies any force to it.

6) If you still have problems, then the likely cause is the master cylinder. Either replace the seals or
replace the whole unit