Citroen AX GT.......no idea what it's like!
Discussion
So, quite a lot to update on with the AX! I've largely been using it daily as my own daily Saab snotter was being used by my wife. This included the school run, which always brings a smile to the face seeing it parked among all the modern 4x4s (though not in this pic....):
The kids love going out in it though. I guess it is quite fun even just to travel around in compared with more modern stuff!
When I was inbetween jobs at work, I decided to get it ready for the impending 400ish mile round trip, this weekend just gone. First things first.....tunes. I love having the standard Blaupunkt tape deck, but the sound quality was shocking. Even Radio 4 had to be listened to on the left-hand speaker only, at not much more than a whisper, otherwise the speaker just cracked up. Something had to be done, so a trip to Halfrauds was in order. I didn't want anything flashy, and if anything I was gutted not to keep it standard looking. So, imagine my joy when I spotted these at £10 each!:
I was right to ditch the near 245,000 mile old speakers....:
They served their time!
The Vibe replacements were duly fitted:
I cleaned out the inner wings, continuing to be amazed at the condition of the shell overall:
I refitted the trim and promptly wet myself in delight at the standardness of my 'upgrade':
Then, to bring the 1986-launched AX rip-roaring into 2011, I bought this tape on eBay:
Appearances can often be deceiving, and in this case (unless you're extremely slow) they're not. What it is, is a tape cassette you pop an SD card into.
[i]Fitting instructions:
All you need to do, is simply spend an hour of your life beginning at 11:10pm going through iTunes and dragging 5hrs worth of tunes onto a 4GB SD card. Then, you pop it into the cassette, insert that into the tape deck and hit play. At that point, you start throwing f
ks around loudly because the only song that will play is Breakthru by Queen. Once you've done this, you simply retreat to your house, switch your computer back on (at around 12:20am) and go through the album only to find Breakthru is the only MP3 on there - everything else is some weird iTunes st. You then Google how to convert the iTunes things to MP3, and go through your 5-odd hours of playlist converting it all to MP3. You go back to car, stick it in and cry sweet tears of delirium as Kasabian fill the flimsy 80's cabin plastics with the sound of 'Stevie', among 89 other tracks from Nirvana, Rush and an 80's Electronica album you bought your wife 10 years ago, then nicked to record it all onto your computer. Then you go to bed.[/i]
After the pressing issue of sounds in the AX, it was on to less pressing issues, like external lighting, alternator wiring and a cambelt change. Obviously, it isn't possible to simply change a headlamp bulb (though I did do just that, and found the actual reason the headlamp had died was in fact the wiring). What I really needed to do was remove the old spot lamps (AXs don't have front fogs, they have spot lamps, which come on with main beam - much more useful, in my worthless opinion) and take a bottle of Cif to the plastic:
Once I'd established it worked (and washed the Cif out of the cuts on my hand) I fitted the new spot lamps. Brand new genuine ones go for £170 a pair. I'm not up for paying Ford-tax on a Citroen part, so I got some non-genuine replacements direct from France. £50, the pair. They look ok:
And of course, being the AX, I couldn't just remove and refit the bumper, could I? Nope, I had to shot blast and treat the bumper mounting irons with 2k Rustbuster epoxy mastic paint. They're prone to rusting away, so worth saving them (though these ones were absolutely fine to begin with.....:
So when it was all refitted, we had lights:
Before I did anything really dirty, I also set about sorting out the boot lock. Since I've had the car, the boot has never locked or unlocked, and to open it I've had to lean in, fold a rear seat down and unlock the boot from inside! One solenoid (robbed from a BX) later and the boot now opens. This means I can refit the inner plastic trim:
The bit where this gets funny (not, 'Haha' funny, or funny like a dodgy old guy who likes young lads. Funny like.....well, no, it's not actually funny at all) is in the flimsiness. If you scan back through this thread, you'll see there was a point where I swapped the bootlid over with the other white AX I had. I adjusted the lock and striker plate, as you do, and had the boot shut neatly. So today, when I go to fit the inner trim, i find the boot doesn't shut anymore. Is it fouling something? No. then, when I operate the tailgate a few times, I realise it feels different. It feels less flimsy! Yup, the inner boot trim on an AX actually appears to be [u]structural[/u]! The alignment of the boot had changed slightly, so I had to adjust the lock and striker again to suit it. Mental!
Of course, I mentioned briefly before that I had a surprise visit from the old owners from France, and they donated a sheep. Well, here is said sheep:
I've got two more spares too, incase I get it resprayed, or what to go full racecar on it.
After all that nonsense, I changed the cambelt. the old one wasn't that old, but it had been fitted so tight I could have played a tune on it, if I could play tunes on strung instruments of course. So I changed this, and also reset all the valve clearances in a bit to make it less tappy. Turns out I forgot that TUs are tappy engines, and it sounds exactly as it did before. Character.
Of course, the book time to change a cambelt on an AX may only be an hour or so, but that's not going to happen, is it? No, because you'll find other things that need attention, like this alternator charging cable:
Once I'd trimmed all that bumfluff away, there wasn't enough left to reach the starter motor. it was pretty old and frail too, so I made a new one:
All sheathed in new conduit, and it fitted nicely. Charging at 14v again, result!:
Anyone remember the frilly fuel hose? Nope me neither. Totally forgot to change it, but luckily managed to source some decent Gates stuff before my trip, so that's changed now too:
Knowing that a portion of my journey would include lots of traffic in London, I began to worry about the state of my 245k mile old coolant hoses. Felt a couple of them up during the cambelt change (got a slap too) and they didn't feel as strong as I'd like, though appeared in pretty good shape. I didn't fancy running them at 15psi for hours on end, and nearing 100deg C with it, so seeing as I harp on about it in every other car, and seeing as the AX uses about 35ml of coolant, I decided to convert it to Evans Waterless Coolant about 12 hours before I was due to leave. Clever! She was actually a bit of a bh to bleed back in, which is something I've found with the Evans stuff. I suspect it's because the system is designed to run under pressure, and the heater circuits often bleed more easily on regular coolant as the pressure assists the flow of coolant around the higher points of the system. No big deal though, and she got there eventually. Now, it can be sat there, fan running and the coolant hoses are as soft as when they are cold. No risk of overheating, no risk of corrosion in the engine (which I'm keen to preserve, due to the history) and I'll never change it again!:
One of the final jobs I did was to fit the bargainous genuine mudflaps I bought ages ago. Always like an AX GT wearing rear mudflaps. It's one of those weird fetishes. I should really paint my walls pink and start wearing eye-liner and leather jackets:
The final addition to the car was a smart phone mount. This was the bit I was proudest of, partly because I've been meaning to do it for years, and partly because I'm such a fking genius sometimes. So here's the rig:
The genius bit? Well, my Sony Xperia M4 Aqua (seeing as you asked) is a pretty decent phone, for a base-spec thing. It does the Google maps sat-nav bit very well, but the phone does tend to get hot pretty quickly. Solution? Turn the blower fan on behind it. I know, I'm so clever I could actually st gold.
So there we go, all done. Next update will be a summary of what I did on the big trip following all this.
Better crack out the Cif for that rear bumper!
The kids love going out in it though. I guess it is quite fun even just to travel around in compared with more modern stuff!
When I was inbetween jobs at work, I decided to get it ready for the impending 400ish mile round trip, this weekend just gone. First things first.....tunes. I love having the standard Blaupunkt tape deck, but the sound quality was shocking. Even Radio 4 had to be listened to on the left-hand speaker only, at not much more than a whisper, otherwise the speaker just cracked up. Something had to be done, so a trip to Halfrauds was in order. I didn't want anything flashy, and if anything I was gutted not to keep it standard looking. So, imagine my joy when I spotted these at £10 each!:
I was right to ditch the near 245,000 mile old speakers....:
They served their time!
The Vibe replacements were duly fitted:
I cleaned out the inner wings, continuing to be amazed at the condition of the shell overall:
I refitted the trim and promptly wet myself in delight at the standardness of my 'upgrade':
Then, to bring the 1986-launched AX rip-roaring into 2011, I bought this tape on eBay:
Appearances can often be deceiving, and in this case (unless you're extremely slow) they're not. What it is, is a tape cassette you pop an SD card into.
[i]Fitting instructions:
All you need to do, is simply spend an hour of your life beginning at 11:10pm going through iTunes and dragging 5hrs worth of tunes onto a 4GB SD card. Then, you pop it into the cassette, insert that into the tape deck and hit play. At that point, you start throwing f
ks around loudly because the only song that will play is Breakthru by Queen. Once you've done this, you simply retreat to your house, switch your computer back on (at around 12:20am) and go through the album only to find Breakthru is the only MP3 on there - everything else is some weird iTunes st. You then Google how to convert the iTunes things to MP3, and go through your 5-odd hours of playlist converting it all to MP3. You go back to car, stick it in and cry sweet tears of delirium as Kasabian fill the flimsy 80's cabin plastics with the sound of 'Stevie', among 89 other tracks from Nirvana, Rush and an 80's Electronica album you bought your wife 10 years ago, then nicked to record it all onto your computer. Then you go to bed.[/i]After the pressing issue of sounds in the AX, it was on to less pressing issues, like external lighting, alternator wiring and a cambelt change. Obviously, it isn't possible to simply change a headlamp bulb (though I did do just that, and found the actual reason the headlamp had died was in fact the wiring). What I really needed to do was remove the old spot lamps (AXs don't have front fogs, they have spot lamps, which come on with main beam - much more useful, in my worthless opinion) and take a bottle of Cif to the plastic:
Once I'd established it worked (and washed the Cif out of the cuts on my hand) I fitted the new spot lamps. Brand new genuine ones go for £170 a pair. I'm not up for paying Ford-tax on a Citroen part, so I got some non-genuine replacements direct from France. £50, the pair. They look ok:
And of course, being the AX, I couldn't just remove and refit the bumper, could I? Nope, I had to shot blast and treat the bumper mounting irons with 2k Rustbuster epoxy mastic paint. They're prone to rusting away, so worth saving them (though these ones were absolutely fine to begin with.....:
So when it was all refitted, we had lights:
Before I did anything really dirty, I also set about sorting out the boot lock. Since I've had the car, the boot has never locked or unlocked, and to open it I've had to lean in, fold a rear seat down and unlock the boot from inside! One solenoid (robbed from a BX) later and the boot now opens. This means I can refit the inner plastic trim:
The bit where this gets funny (not, 'Haha' funny, or funny like a dodgy old guy who likes young lads. Funny like.....well, no, it's not actually funny at all) is in the flimsiness. If you scan back through this thread, you'll see there was a point where I swapped the bootlid over with the other white AX I had. I adjusted the lock and striker plate, as you do, and had the boot shut neatly. So today, when I go to fit the inner trim, i find the boot doesn't shut anymore. Is it fouling something? No. then, when I operate the tailgate a few times, I realise it feels different. It feels less flimsy! Yup, the inner boot trim on an AX actually appears to be [u]structural[/u]! The alignment of the boot had changed slightly, so I had to adjust the lock and striker again to suit it. Mental!
Of course, I mentioned briefly before that I had a surprise visit from the old owners from France, and they donated a sheep. Well, here is said sheep:
I've got two more spares too, incase I get it resprayed, or what to go full racecar on it.
After all that nonsense, I changed the cambelt. the old one wasn't that old, but it had been fitted so tight I could have played a tune on it, if I could play tunes on strung instruments of course. So I changed this, and also reset all the valve clearances in a bit to make it less tappy. Turns out I forgot that TUs are tappy engines, and it sounds exactly as it did before. Character.
Of course, the book time to change a cambelt on an AX may only be an hour or so, but that's not going to happen, is it? No, because you'll find other things that need attention, like this alternator charging cable:
Once I'd trimmed all that bumfluff away, there wasn't enough left to reach the starter motor. it was pretty old and frail too, so I made a new one:
All sheathed in new conduit, and it fitted nicely. Charging at 14v again, result!:
Anyone remember the frilly fuel hose? Nope me neither. Totally forgot to change it, but luckily managed to source some decent Gates stuff before my trip, so that's changed now too:
Knowing that a portion of my journey would include lots of traffic in London, I began to worry about the state of my 245k mile old coolant hoses. Felt a couple of them up during the cambelt change (got a slap too) and they didn't feel as strong as I'd like, though appeared in pretty good shape. I didn't fancy running them at 15psi for hours on end, and nearing 100deg C with it, so seeing as I harp on about it in every other car, and seeing as the AX uses about 35ml of coolant, I decided to convert it to Evans Waterless Coolant about 12 hours before I was due to leave. Clever! She was actually a bit of a b
h to bleed back in, which is something I've found with the Evans stuff. I suspect it's because the system is designed to run under pressure, and the heater circuits often bleed more easily on regular coolant as the pressure assists the flow of coolant around the higher points of the system. No big deal though, and she got there eventually. Now, it can be sat there, fan running and the coolant hoses are as soft as when they are cold. No risk of overheating, no risk of corrosion in the engine (which I'm keen to preserve, due to the history) and I'll never change it again!:One of the final jobs I did was to fit the bargainous genuine mudflaps I bought ages ago. Always like an AX GT wearing rear mudflaps. It's one of those weird fetishes. I should really paint my walls pink and start wearing eye-liner and leather jackets:
The final addition to the car was a smart phone mount. This was the bit I was proudest of, partly because I've been meaning to do it for years, and partly because I'm such a f
king genius sometimes. So here's the rig:The genius bit? Well, my Sony Xperia M4 Aqua (seeing as you asked) is a pretty decent phone, for a base-spec thing. It does the Google maps sat-nav bit very well, but the phone does tend to get hot pretty quickly. Solution? Turn the blower fan on behind it. I know, I'm so clever I could actually s
t gold.So there we go, all done. Next update will be a summary of what I did on the big trip following all this.
Better crack out the Cif for that rear bumper!
mwstewart said:
Lol. Brilliant.
Lol. Thanks.itcaptainslow said:
Super write up. Loving reading about this slightly daft, but brilliant obsession with a car my parents would deem inappropriate.
Thanks! Your parents are probably in the majority, seeing as there are only 200 or so left, apparently.james_tigerwoods said:
I'm loving this write up - It's officially brilliant 
I'm not sure Chris Harris is quaking in his boots just yet, but thanks - The Harris reference particularly apt as he owns an AX GT too
BenWRXSEi said:
Yep, keep it coming. Really enjoying this! 
As long as I keep driving it, there will always be more to come. It writes itself S10GTA said:
Still not been out in it 
You're the one who doesn't want to take it to France in October!C70R said:
A cracking write-up. You've a real flair for language, so well done.
The alignment on that rear bumper is hilarious, assuming you haven't slackened it off to fit the mudflaps...
Thanks. Bear with me, just trying to find my old English teacher on Linkedin. I'm using that!The alignment on that rear bumper is hilarious, assuming you haven't slackened it off to fit the mudflaps...
Shadow R1 said:
Brilliant.
They really are, in a cacky kind of way.CarlosV8 said:
Loving your work as usual!
How did I not know about the SD tape adaptor?? Will get one of those ordered straightaway
Here's the link:How did I not know about the SD tape adaptor?? Will get one of those ordered straightaway
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/252337049606?_trksid=p20...
Look to all be sold, but if you do find one, throw the fag lighter USB charger in the bin - mine got REALLY hot, really quickly! I got the double one from Asda (about 2 hrs before I attempted to make a mix-
Awesome thread. My first AX was a mint H plate GT500 in black. I bought it from an old man that was the original owner who was selling because he was giving up driving. The most fun in a car I've ever had. Then during bad weather on the M4 and a sudden traffic stop that I couldn't see in the outer lane I went up the arse of a Peugeot 406 and wrote it off as it crumpled like tin foil.....gutted.
My first encounter though was a good friend of mine bought one. We had some good fun in that too. I remember seeing it clock 125mph on a "private" road.
My first encounter though was a good friend of mine bought one. We had some good fun in that too. I remember seeing it clock 125mph on a "private" road.
Lovely, lovely writeup, as ever. I bought a car magazine recently for the first time in years. It was really dismaying how thin the content was, and the writing - presumably, after a commissioned/written/subbed/edited process - still suffers in comparison to some of the great writing here, freely volunteered.
Also, that's an awesome car.
Finally, I've been positioning my phone in front of a cool blowy air thing for a couple of years. Just saying. (Ever since it kept overheating and shutting down on me in central Seville, leaving me utterly lost, to the amusement of everybody sitting outside cafes watching a stupid english old Merc drive past them eighteen times in all directions)
Also, that's an awesome car.
Finally, I've been positioning my phone in front of a cool blowy air thing for a couple of years. Just saying. (Ever since it kept overheating and shutting down on me in central Seville, leaving me utterly lost, to the amusement of everybody sitting outside cafes watching a stupid english old Merc drive past them eighteen times in all directions)
So, update part two. Weekend.
Having carried out some important remedial jobs (mudflaps, choons), and some less important tasks (cambelt, fuel lines) it was on to the weekend. Here was the planned route:
Either I deviated somewhat from the original route, or the AX's odometer is a bit on the hyper side, as it ended up being 387 miles recorded on the trip counter! But that was what my mammoth Saturday consisted of, in a nutshell.
Here's me getting slightly anxious on Friday night (about the time I was pissing around with the mix-SD Card) at the prospect of me undertaking some kind of Ranulph Fiennes-style transformation the next day. Venturing into the unknown, alone (wife REALLY doesn't fancy going to Citroen meets!) Was I crazy? Was I brave? Or was I flapping about over nothing, given that, firstly, it is a car (and that's what cars do - drive places) and secondly that the people I'd met on Thursday for the first time in the flesh drove the thing all around Europe and racked up 244,000 miles in it? Possibly (nay probably) the latter.
Reality? It's a tinny little French hatchback known for long travel suspension, wky dashboards and durable metal bits. It's not exactly the moon landing.
So first thing to do (for you, the person trying to decipher the cryptic riddles I'm spewing out) is to click this link and turn the volume up while you read, because this is the first album that was on my new mix-card:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIGKlicb8n0&li...
The first leg of the route was home, in Fareham, up to High Wycombe to meet Graham, a man with a million* Hillman Imp parts. I wanted a rear seam trim for mine, and somehow managed to talk myself into buying a dashboard too. Well why not, I had a massive boot, afterall.....
High Wycombe was kinda en-route to Abbots Ripton (stop number two, for those of you who are getting ahead of the game), so it made sense to swing by as they're not really parts you can post easily.
So it meant a frankly obscene pre-8am Saturday morning start. Obscene, mostly because it was my own decision to wake at this time, not my children's:
(The oh-so-80's clock is mounted on the roof console, because of reasons.)
I rocked up at Graham's at 9am, parted with a very reasonable amount of folding, chatted for a bit about Imps and was on my way again. Having proclaimed the AX to be a mechanical marvel at said meeting, I then promptly failed to get it going again from the hot(ish) start, and drove away in a very Kangaroo-type fashion, accompanied by plumes of black smoke.
Hopefully Graham didn't notice, otherwise my proclamations that the AX is a fantastic example of the glory days of Western-engineering for the masses would look sans foundations. He might even begin doubting my claim that it was the greatest car of all time! Luckily the issue was organic. It has been such a long time since I properly ran a car with a carburettor, that I forgot all about fuel vaporisation.
(I later learned that if the car is hot from use, and you want to run it again, by all means attempt to start the engine, but then fast idle it for a few seconds, let it fill the float bowls back up and then drive away. Don't go looking for clutch biting points while the starter motor is still spinning!)
With the car still looning around trying to assist with a complimentary nosebleed, I parked up, knocked it back off and took a photo of an old lady by mistake:
I then took a picture of my new found wares to remind myself they were there, should I forget:
So, it was on to Abbots Ripton. Graham suggested I take the A414 through St Albans on the junction after the M1, and this was music to my ears since the prospect of sitting on the M1 was one I relished with all the enthusiasm I shared for country dancing in Junior School. I fking hated Country Dancing! In fact, I hate dancing full stop. I don't have surplus dignity to start wasting it attempting to pull shapes.
Anyway, the A414 didn't happen. The junction after the M1 wasn't the A414, though it was St Albans. I put my faith in Graham, and found the A414 never came (or if it did, I missed it!) In the end I just drove up the A1(M). No bad thing though, because there is the Hatfield Tunnel. "Awesome!" thinks I. I planned an epic tunnel run. As I approached, I lowered the window (not all the way down, about 3/4 of the way - it jams otherwise, unless you guide it with your hand a bit, which I opted not to do at that point). I entered the tunnel, window down, changed down from 5th to 3rd gear, around 65mph. I gave it the berries, realised I was driving a fairly wheezy 1.4 8v engine, re-selected 5th and put my window back up.
At one point on the A1(M), I decided to open the AX up, really put the 0.31 drag CO to the test! I came whipping up behind an equally awesome specimen of a machine - ANOTHER AX! It was a....something; I passed it pretty quickly. I held my hand out, waved and carried on wondering what the people probably driving to the shop thought about the guy who just ploughed past at speed wearing 155-section rubber in 2016.
So, "What's in Abbots Ripton?" you didn't ask. Well, not much. In fact, I saw nothing there, except the field in which this most prestigious soiree was taking place. The weather was glorious, until I arrived. Then it promptly began pissing it down, which exacerbated the fact I needed a leak myself. Eventually it cleared, and I was able to finally go for a piss.
After the watering, I spent the rest of the day chatting to other Citroen nuts. It was a like a secure hospital day trip out. Care in the community, that kind of thing. We were all safe from society, penned in the field getting excited at the prospect of the 2.1TD engine being in a Xantia VSX, rather than the paupers 1.9TD.
The AX handled the run there beautifully, and my confidence (that shouldn't have been in question in the first place, being that the car was reminding me on it's milometer the whole time that it's actually quite good at driving places) in the car grew, in only the way someone relieved to make it to their destination when they really think they shouldn't do it so easily can appreciate.
You know what? It actually looked the part too. Ok, up close it's pretty battered (Didn't I mention? It's an AX with nearly 250 thous....) but in the pictures it looks pretty good, and at one point I counted 8 other AXs. High turnout for the AX, but we were actually hoping for more, as the AX as a model is 30yrs old this year!
Some pictures from the event:
(The E-reg blue one in the UKIP position is the car I whipped past on the A1(M).)
It wasn't just my car there, though. Oh no. There were plenty of other cars normal people don't give a fig about. Remember when S10GTA used to buy interesting cars, and then blog about them? Here's one that escaped!:
(I can't be arsed to find the thread, but it's now owned by one of the Practical Classics mag writers, and is often used as a shooting platform for snapping other classics on the move for features etc). Really nice XM, too! Far too nice for Simon....
There was other stuff, such as:
And the AX GT's spiritual predecessor:
There were plenty of the usual crowd (taking bets on how long it'll be before I end up restoring one of these!):
An exceptionally cool, and rare (and not a Citroen), machine:
A seriously capable, yet seriously discreet machine (no, not one of S10's former lovers - another PC writer owns it, and the car below it):
Really into XMs at the moment. Lucky I don't have a habit of buying lots of cars, otherwise there's a chance I'll end up with one:
There was the familiar:
....and the bonkers:
Finally, there was inspiration to get on one of my other cars again - can't even find the thread for that one now!
I did collect a part at the event that I need for that car though, so progress is now possible.
I probably should have stayed the night, as the next day more arrived, like a few SM's, the CX Loadrunner (Google it) and various other interesting machines. But there will be more to do before the year is up. So I hopped back in the AX:
....not quite sure why I took a picture of that....
And began preparations for the trip to Sydenham, London. I was going there to collect a big, heavy tool bag we'd left in the back of a customer's Chimaera at work. It's called the 'Breakdown Bag'. If I've just put a car back together, I sling it in the boot and should the worst happen, I stand a chance of repairing it roadside. Luckily, I've never needed it, and this was especially lucky as it was in bloody London, not in the workshop! Logic dictates I should probably have collected it first, being that if the AX broke down....well, you can fill in the gaps. But, I did it on the way home, and the AX behaved well again all the way to London. In fact, the afternoon went so well, that I didn't end up paying on the Dartford crossing! Mind you, I can't remember which way you normally pay....
So, bag collected, London mostly looked like this:
(That Seat was mightly impressive. He managed to cut me up on three separate occasions, two of which were at the same junction. Special kind of special!)
I made a hasty (average speed of about 7 mph) retreat from the capital and headed for the A3. The fuel light began flickering around Guildford, and being that a full tank is about 40 litres, I was pretty happy with the misery approach to fuel consumption the AX had adopted. I continued onwards wondering if I could time my hills and bends sufficiently to keep the light extinguished for the remainder of the journey (even something as simple as a right-hand bend can give you an additional 1/4 of a tank!)
I approached the Hindhead Tunnel. "Awesome! A tunnel!" thinks I. No, wait......
So, tunnel exited (in 5th gear, with the feeling that I was probably frowning) and fuel topped up (yeah, ok - I bottled it) I decided to stop and grab a shot of the AX on the side of the A3, just to prove it got that far should everything goes arse over tit now, regards my progress:
It also gave me a chance to eat my Yorkie. I love Yorkies.
When I filled up, I took this picture of the receipt, and the odo for future mpg workings out:
(The odo reads 340 miles, and the pump clicked three times. Go ahead and work it out - I shat a brick!)
In the end, the day went almost perfectly. I really enjoyed my day out with the little AX, far more so than I would have done if I was in 1993 and just driving somewhere in my daily driver. To do trips like these, even in something easily capable of doing it (read, pretty much anything from 1980 onwards) is good fun. You create memories that last a lifetime, and even if you forget the details, you'll see a picture one night on your PC that reminds you what you did on a particular day, in a particular part of your life. Cars can provide memories in spades
So where now for the AX? Well, the next day a somewhat anti-climactic trip to Iceland (don't get excited, I went to buy milk) and Monday morning it was back to work. It's been used daily since and will probably continue to do so for the immediate future. Still have some kinks to iron out, and plenty of work still be done. One thing I do know I'll be doing, is a trip to Wrexham in October. It's the 30th birthday bash for the AX, which translates as a piss-up I'm assuming!
Thanks for humouring me this far
* Million being about 56, possibly 71. I didn't count.
Having carried out some important remedial jobs (mudflaps, choons), and some less important tasks (cambelt, fuel lines) it was on to the weekend. Here was the planned route:
Either I deviated somewhat from the original route, or the AX's odometer is a bit on the hyper side, as it ended up being 387 miles recorded on the trip counter! But that was what my mammoth Saturday consisted of, in a nutshell.
Here's me getting slightly anxious on Friday night (about the time I was pissing around with the mix-SD Card) at the prospect of me undertaking some kind of Ranulph Fiennes-style transformation the next day. Venturing into the unknown, alone (wife REALLY doesn't fancy going to Citroen meets!) Was I crazy? Was I brave? Or was I flapping about over nothing, given that, firstly, it is a car (and that's what cars do - drive places) and secondly that the people I'd met on Thursday for the first time in the flesh drove the thing all around Europe and racked up 244,000 miles in it? Possibly (nay probably) the latter.
Reality? It's a tinny little French hatchback known for long travel suspension, w
ky dashboards and durable metal bits. It's not exactly the moon landing.So first thing to do (for you, the person trying to decipher the cryptic riddles I'm spewing out) is to click this link and turn the volume up while you read, because this is the first album that was on my new mix-card:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIGKlicb8n0&li...
The first leg of the route was home, in Fareham, up to High Wycombe to meet Graham, a man with a million* Hillman Imp parts. I wanted a rear seam trim for mine, and somehow managed to talk myself into buying a dashboard too. Well why not, I had a massive boot, afterall.....
High Wycombe was kinda en-route to Abbots Ripton (stop number two, for those of you who are getting ahead of the game), so it made sense to swing by as they're not really parts you can post easily.So it meant a frankly obscene pre-8am Saturday morning start. Obscene, mostly because it was my own decision to wake at this time, not my children's:
(The oh-so-80's clock is mounted on the roof console, because of reasons.)
I rocked up at Graham's at 9am, parted with a very reasonable amount of folding, chatted for a bit about Imps and was on my way again. Having proclaimed the AX to be a mechanical marvel at said meeting, I then promptly failed to get it going again from the hot(ish) start, and drove away in a very Kangaroo-type fashion, accompanied by plumes of black smoke.
Hopefully Graham didn't notice, otherwise my proclamations that the AX is a fantastic example of the glory days of Western-engineering for the masses would look sans foundations. He might even begin doubting my claim that it was the greatest car of all time! Luckily the issue was organic. It has been such a long time since I properly ran a car with a carburettor, that I forgot all about fuel vaporisation.
(I later learned that if the car is hot from use, and you want to run it again, by all means attempt to start the engine, but then fast idle it for a few seconds, let it fill the float bowls back up and then drive away. Don't go looking for clutch biting points while the starter motor is still spinning!)
With the car still looning around trying to assist with a complimentary nosebleed, I parked up, knocked it back off and took a photo of an old lady by mistake:
I then took a picture of my new found wares to remind myself they were there, should I forget:
So, it was on to Abbots Ripton. Graham suggested I take the A414 through St Albans on the junction after the M1, and this was music to my ears since the prospect of sitting on the M1 was one I relished with all the enthusiasm I shared for country dancing in Junior School. I f
king hated Country Dancing! In fact, I hate dancing full stop. I don't have surplus dignity to start wasting it attempting to pull shapes.Anyway, the A414 didn't happen. The junction after the M1 wasn't the A414, though it was St Albans. I put my faith in Graham, and found the A414 never came (or if it did, I missed it!) In the end I just drove up the A1(M). No bad thing though, because there is the Hatfield Tunnel. "Awesome!" thinks I. I planned an epic tunnel run. As I approached, I lowered the window (not all the way down, about 3/4 of the way - it jams otherwise, unless you guide it with your hand a bit, which I opted not to do at that point). I entered the tunnel, window down, changed down from 5th to 3rd gear, around 65mph. I gave it the berries, realised I was driving a fairly wheezy 1.4 8v engine, re-selected 5th and put my window back up.
At one point on the A1(M), I decided to open the AX up, really put the 0.31 drag CO to the test! I came whipping up behind an equally awesome specimen of a machine - ANOTHER AX! It was a....something; I passed it pretty quickly. I held my hand out, waved and carried on wondering what the people probably driving to the shop thought about the guy who just ploughed past at speed wearing 155-section rubber in 2016.
So, "What's in Abbots Ripton?" you didn't ask. Well, not much. In fact, I saw nothing there, except the field in which this most prestigious soiree was taking place. The weather was glorious, until I arrived. Then it promptly began pissing it down, which exacerbated the fact I needed a leak myself. Eventually it cleared, and I was able to finally go for a piss.
After the watering, I spent the rest of the day chatting to other Citroen nuts. It was a like a secure hospital day trip out. Care in the community, that kind of thing. We were all safe from society, penned in the field getting excited at the prospect of the 2.1TD engine being in a Xantia VSX, rather than the paupers 1.9TD.
The AX handled the run there beautifully, and my confidence (that shouldn't have been in question in the first place, being that the car was reminding me on it's milometer the whole time that it's actually quite good at driving places) in the car grew, in only the way someone relieved to make it to their destination when they really think they shouldn't do it so easily can appreciate.
You know what? It actually looked the part too. Ok, up close it's pretty battered (Didn't I mention? It's an AX with nearly 250 thous....) but in the pictures it looks pretty good, and at one point I counted 8 other AXs. High turnout for the AX, but we were actually hoping for more, as the AX as a model is 30yrs old this year!
Some pictures from the event:
(The E-reg blue one in the UKIP position is the car I whipped past on the A1(M).)
It wasn't just my car there, though. Oh no. There were plenty of other cars normal people don't give a fig about. Remember when S10GTA used to buy interesting cars, and then blog about them? Here's one that escaped!:
(I can't be arsed to find the thread, but it's now owned by one of the Practical Classics mag writers, and is often used as a shooting platform for snapping other classics on the move for features etc). Really nice XM, too! Far too nice for Simon....
There was other stuff, such as:
And the AX GT's spiritual predecessor:
There were plenty of the usual crowd (taking bets on how long it'll be before I end up restoring one of these!):
An exceptionally cool, and rare (and not a Citroen), machine:
A seriously capable, yet seriously discreet machine (no, not one of S10's former lovers - another PC writer owns it, and the car below it):
Really into XMs at the moment. Lucky I don't have a habit of buying lots of cars, otherwise there's a chance I'll end up with one:
There was the familiar:
....and the bonkers:
Finally, there was inspiration to get on one of my other cars again - can't even find the thread for that one now!
I did collect a part at the event that I need for that car though, so progress is now possible.
I probably should have stayed the night, as the next day more arrived, like a few SM's, the CX Loadrunner (Google it) and various other interesting machines. But there will be more to do before the year is up. So I hopped back in the AX:
....not quite sure why I took a picture of that....
And began preparations for the trip to Sydenham, London. I was going there to collect a big, heavy tool bag we'd left in the back of a customer's Chimaera at work. It's called the 'Breakdown Bag'. If I've just put a car back together, I sling it in the boot and should the worst happen, I stand a chance of repairing it roadside. Luckily, I've never needed it, and this was especially lucky as it was in bloody London, not in the workshop! Logic dictates I should probably have collected it first, being that if the AX broke down....well, you can fill in the gaps. But, I did it on the way home, and the AX behaved well again all the way to London. In fact, the afternoon went so well, that I didn't end up paying on the Dartford crossing! Mind you, I can't remember which way you normally pay....
So, bag collected, London mostly looked like this:
(That Seat was mightly impressive. He managed to cut me up on three separate occasions, two of which were at the same junction. Special kind of special!)
I made a hasty (average speed of about 7 mph) retreat from the capital and headed for the A3. The fuel light began flickering around Guildford, and being that a full tank is about 40 litres, I was pretty happy with the misery approach to fuel consumption the AX had adopted. I continued onwards wondering if I could time my hills and bends sufficiently to keep the light extinguished for the remainder of the journey (even something as simple as a right-hand bend can give you an additional 1/4 of a tank!)
I approached the Hindhead Tunnel. "Awesome! A tunnel!" thinks I. No, wait......
So, tunnel exited (in 5th gear, with the feeling that I was probably frowning) and fuel topped up (yeah, ok - I bottled it) I decided to stop and grab a shot of the AX on the side of the A3, just to prove it got that far should everything goes arse over tit now, regards my progress:
It also gave me a chance to eat my Yorkie. I love Yorkies.
When I filled up, I took this picture of the receipt, and the odo for future mpg workings out:
(The odo reads 340 miles, and the pump clicked three times. Go ahead and work it out - I shat a brick!)
In the end, the day went almost perfectly. I really enjoyed my day out with the little AX, far more so than I would have done if I was in 1993 and just driving somewhere in my daily driver. To do trips like these, even in something easily capable of doing it (read, pretty much anything from 1980 onwards) is good fun. You create memories that last a lifetime, and even if you forget the details, you'll see a picture one night on your PC that reminds you what you did on a particular day, in a particular part of your life. Cars can provide memories in spades
So where now for the AX? Well, the next day a somewhat anti-climactic trip to Iceland (don't get excited, I went to buy milk) and Monday morning it was back to work. It's been used daily since and will probably continue to do so for the immediate future. Still have some kinks to iron out, and plenty of work still be done. One thing I do know I'll be doing, is a trip to Wrexham in October. It's the 30th birthday bash for the AX, which translates as a piss-up I'm assuming!
Thanks for humouring me this far
* Million being about 56, possibly 71. I didn't count.
Edited by Kitchski on Thursday 14th July 00:16
Onwards to 300k...
The AX is one car I simply cannot fit in to. Being tall, my legs smash against the dash. No matter how far I put the seat back - it simply just doesn't work.
I think the XM's are having a bit of a revival. Few and far between here in Australia - but there is one at my local train station which I wouldn't mind leaving a "Are you for sale?" note on!
The AX is one car I simply cannot fit in to. Being tall, my legs smash against the dash. No matter how far I put the seat back - it simply just doesn't work.
I think the XM's are having a bit of a revival. Few and far between here in Australia - but there is one at my local train station which I wouldn't mind leaving a "Are you for sale?" note on!
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff