John Dragon Man's Citroen BX Diesel Estate

[rutter123]

Rover 200 lump, interesting, will it fit without adapting the subframe? also how/where do you plan to mount the hyd pump and how will you drive the pump? I guess being a PAS engine its a a pretty standard lump certainly looks similar to a bx engine tho i suspect the rear engine mount may need some heath robinson bracket made up. Will you be using the Rover gearbox or sticking with the BE3? I know the Rover 418 uses the same XUD7TE but wasn't aware the 200 utilises a similar block, so i assume its a 2 litre you have there, should bode well in a BX.

[Dragon Man]

the engine was sold as the 1769.. it is the standard XUD block.. they all are. i am just changing the brackets around that hold the alternator on. the bottom mount is identical to the BX's one.

ill be sticking with the standard BX gearbox.. i wont have to mess with adapting gear linkages then. though it would be nice to find out if a 6 speed box would fit it.. if one for the diesel exists.. wonder if the HDI uses the same bell housing bolts..

just bought 4 new glow plugs for it too. may as well change them!

[Tim Leech]

Ok but what about the cam driven HP pump?

[Dragon Man]

i'm buying a BX cam shaft from a 1.9. then the pump can just go on the gearbox and be belt driven.

[Dragon Man]

i had the sump gasket come through the post yesterday.. i am still waiting for the crank shaft seals and engine paint though guhh
i am also going to take in the jetwash again and jet the engine clean.

i also think amazon failed to deliver my 2 brake calipers. yet it says someone signed for them. that kinda sux. i know i do not have them as i have looked everywhere!

anyway, here is the next video:
enjoy!

[youtube][/youtube]

[rutter123]

I have a pair of front bendix calipers if you need them, will need a clean up but they are ok.

[Dragon Man]

hmm almost a month since my last post!

yeah not much has happened. amazon delivered my brake calipers along with.. something else i forgot what it was now.

the engine is still out, i jetwashed the replacement engine, took the gearbox off the original engine and jetwashed that too.
also jetwashed the ports too and its cleaned up the EGR crust quite well. that was after letting them bathe in petrol for 2 weeks while i went down to Cornwall

the plan is to take as much off the old engine as i can and put it on the new engine.
things such as the oil pump maybe going as far as checking the ware on the crank bearings/ big end shells /oil pump chain and swapping them over too. i am replacing the sump gasket anyway so while i am inside...

i have not yet replaced the crank oil seals as i may be taking the crank out!


i had a bit of an issue sadly and broke of an auxiliary belt idler pulley.. i tried to get inside it to re-grease the bearing and sadly snapped off a chunk of the inner bearing race. naturally this part is now discontinued and being a BX with aircon it is going to be impossible to find.. but i think i can just make another one using a larger bearing and loads of washers cut to the right size to stop it moving around on a replacement bolt.




damn it..

also just some pictures of the standard BX air conditioning compressor showing refrigerant, oil type and rear pipe and charge points.





ordered 10 litres of LHM too.. i am expecting the hydraulic system to be a damn pain in the backside. (after all, why are there not may Citroens with hydraulic systems about now)

Ideally i would change ALL of the bad looking pipe, but i just cant justify paying £155 for a flare tool, then and extra £45 to £60 (times 3!) per length of the 3 pipe diameters i need then all the seals and unions. thats close to a months pay for me right there!

anyway at some point i will paint the block Red and maybe the head. i am on the lookout for another Bosch fuel pump as i have been told that the one i have (with it being half ECU) wont work. (too much save the planet stuff built into it.. though i must admit, AFC.. Auto Fuel Cutoff would be nice when coasting.) sadly these pumps are quite rare.. after loads of people coming back to me on the 306 D turbo group on facebook telling me that they are everywhere... i cant find one! and as soon as one comes up for sale, its instantly bought! sigh.. good thing i am not on a time limit for this.. but i would like it finished by the new year!

[Dragon Man]

ahh so i have done a bit more work on the BX.

so the engine now has had the oil pump swapped over (for the slightly lower miles one). i am not sure if i should have, but i made a gasket for the oil pump chain cover too.








its a bit mucky inside with some oily buildup, i cleaned it out the best i could but when i have built it all up and running i will run some cheap oil through it with some engine flush.



anyway. the replacement BX cam shaft has been installed, the 4 shaft oil seals have been renewed (crank and cam), the oil sump from the original engine has been swapped over to the replacement engine, the cam cover oil seal and sump oil seals have been renewed, the water pump has been changed, new Bosch glow plugs installed, and the engine has had a bit of a quick lick of paint just to see how it's going to look.. and boy does it look nice!





i will be painting the whole engine red plus the gearbox, pumps and alternator. agricultural/marine style.



i then started to remove the drivers side wing, the wing skins (both sides) themselves are in fantastic condition. ok the paint has gone a little thin but dent and rust wise, there's none!
under the skins on the shell its another story. though not bad (given the age of the car) we do have a little rust. i knocked out as much as i could and even got the jet wash in there to clean it up a little more.





i also took all of the brakes apart too as i am replacing all of the brakes.. the fluid in the brake pipes.. did not look like LHM :/

i also found this nice pipe with a few good splits in it, the one on the other side was completely split with a section of the 2 pipes missing!




now for the other side to be removed.. and.... oh my! it looks good in here!


just a little bit here..

... and a bit more..


but as it goes.. better than the other side. nothing i cant fix!

aaand of course.. here is another video log (4th one) for you guys to watch:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4NITc ... CgTEygva7A[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4NITc ... CgTEygva7A

till next time!

[mat_fenwick]

Ideally i would change ALL of the bad looking pipe, but i just cant justify paying £155 for a flare tool, then and extra £45 to £60 (times 3!) per length of the 3 pipe diameters i need then all the seals and unions. thats close to a months pay for me right there!

Why not pay under £20 per length of pipe for ones already cut to length, flared and complete with unions? From Pliades(sp)...I got the 4 front to rears for under £80 delivered.

[Dragon Man]

heh i wonder if they would do me a discount if i asked them to make me a complete pipe set.. yeah i know it will still cost me an insane amount of money.. but i want this car to last me a damn long time...

[Dragon Man]

i have rang them up and they are going to email me an estimate.
the guy was like, which one do you want.. and i just said all of them haha apparently 13 pipes in total for the BX diesel estate with ABS.

i expect it to cost a lot.. but what this car needs.. its going to get..

[rutter123]

Personally i wouldn't waste money replacing all the pipes, front to rear pipes yes and all the metal pipes feeding the brakes yes as these can corrode quite badly and maybe a few on the rear beam but all the steel pipes around the front subframe should survive quite well due to oil leaks, i would certainly replace all the seals tho.

[Dragon Man]

well for the price and peace of mind, i think its a good idea.. as you say, all of them are cut with unions and flares.. i am not sure if they come with seals but i can get them from somewhere.
thing is, if i replace them all with this new stuff they will last the life time of the car.. or longer! if something happens to the car, i can take them off it and use them on my next one (as i would buy another)

here is the price list of all the pipes (for a Citroen BX Diesel Estate with ABS) from Pleiades:

[Dragon Man]

righty ho!

so today i have been pulling most of the returns out of the engine bay, they are a pretty sorry state with multiple splits laddering all the way up the pipes. needless to say i will be replacing the lot with nylon "air tubing" pipe. i have had great success with this stuff before using it to transfer oil on the waste oil burners i have built for my workshop (even used it as petrol fuel line on my old panda!).

so i have uncovered "The Octopus". i am not going to say how i feel about this thing other than wanting to nominate the designer for a great design award.

with most things broken i decided to take it apart.. as i will make my own haha.

so here we have it as i took it off the car.



splits n all


so i found out what all of the pipes do and what pipe connects to what... and i found out that the octopus is in 3 parts.



and where i have cut it, there are no internal pipes



as seen:






so that said, it looks like this thing would be quite easy to make out of simple T pieces and say 6mm push fit tubing (which is rated at a 10 bar connection! 16 bar for the other kind!)

so to be a little colourful i am going to buy a 30m reel of lime green 6mm air line, a load of push fit connectors and renew all of the return pipes. just wish you could do the same for the high pressure stuff.. sigh.

i will of course have to use some rubber (fuel line) pipe for connecting to metal returns, but that is stuff i can keep an eye on more easy than the whole lot!

while i was under the car i also changed the drivers side steering rack boot/gator. nice and easy on that side! the pass side looks a little more hard.. i take it that i have to unbolt the hydraulic actuator arm from the rack to fit the boot over it? i will have a go at it tomorrow!
before i put it all back together, i will replace the ball joint dust covers and give them a little more grease too. i am shocked that none have any play in them! then again, all the dust covers are in pretty good condition!
even the anti roll bar bushes do not seem to have any play or even ware in them! makes a nice change to be fair..

all of these pipes though.. its giving me a little bit of bewilderment.. i just hope i can figure out where they all go!
i did see a nice picture of the top of an LHM tank and it was labelled as to where all of the pipes came from. if i follow that, i should be OK. the best bit about using this air line is you can just cut a pipe anywhere and use a connector on it. really, if you have never used this stuff before, i recommend it! (i have even used it on model steam engines!)

i will report back tomorrow on the success/failure of fitting the pass side steering rack boot/gator.

[Dragon Man]

hmm guess i forgot to reply back to this.. anyway.. one week later.. ahem..

the gator has not been done yet.. heh i have some universal ones that i have used on the drivers side and was going to use on the pass side. however i find that they do not "fold" small enough. the gator gets sort of crushed when on full lock to the point where it actually folds in on its self!

it looks like it would happen on the hard side to replace them on too. so i went out and bought from ebay, a pretty expensive gator.. and found that it will do the same thing as the cheap universal one. sigh



i also painted the rest of the engine.. making sure i got the paint everywhere on all of the pulleys (not intentional). i am not too fussed about that as it will be under the plastic covers. i will scrape off the paint for the manifold gaskets.



i managed to get hold of a none ECU controlled bosh fuel pump! ... and painted that red too.. along with the bracket



the gearbox has also been painted red. this enamel paint has got to be the best paint i have ever used!

i also managed to rip out the cars original alarm (i assume a dealership fitted alarm). i have no remote fobs for this so it is pretty useless. it was however all tied into the original engines fuel pump so i assume it had a built in immobiliser.
i will be fitting a different alarm in its place, something along the lines of a Toad ai-606 alarm. i quite like them, all of my other cars have them fitted (they are easy to pull out of scrap cars) it wont be something i'd do till i got the car parked on the drive at home.
the thing was also wired into the front fog lights.. maybe as night time illumination lighting? sadly theres not much info on this alarm!
the tow bar wiring is a bit crazy as its involved with the alternator AND blue glow plug relay box thing.. ill have to dig around that a bit to see how its wired in.. my guess is its some kind of system where it only gives power to the rear socket ONLY when the engine is running.. the tow bar electronics look dealership fitted. (different to the alarm). also wow so many wires behind the glove box! cant wait till i get to have a play in all that lot (i am one of the very few people that love auto electronics and wiring its nice to have a car that has more than 20 wires for once!)



not started running the pipes yet.. and not yet bought the new replacement high pressure stuff.

i need to replace the heater tap which i have had come through the post... can the heater matrix and tap be replaced as one? or does the heater matrix and tap have to be separate while installing/removing? i may as well stick the tap to the brand new heater matrix and install them both as one, if i can?

after the replacement high pressure pipes, the only thing i need to buy next would be a VNT turbo and that should be all of the big spending done!

i know i need pretty much ALL of the rubber pipes that the XUD engine uses. that includes oil pipes, breathers and some coolant pipes. i dono where i am going to find them.. sadly every pipe i took off split.. on both engines!

well it will be next Thursday till i get a chance to do any more playing with the car. (i can only get to work on it every Thursday and Friday