Last week I got myself a BX 1.4 RE in a pretty good shape. Let me show you along with the car's biggest fan:
Here's the backstory: originally I'm from the Netherlands but I have been living abroad for the past 15 years. Now that I have a family, I think it's important that they get to spend time with grandma and learn Dutch. Therefore we are spending more time here and I found myself a job. It's nice to have a car when we are here. But when we move back, I don't want to pay taxes for a car I don't use. That was main the reason for buying an old car which is almost tax-exempt.
My parents owned a BX when I was little, followed by another one until I was ten years old. It was the coolest car to my memory, especially, of course, the suspension. I've owned and worked on old cars before. And if you have to fix your car often, it better not be a boring. Today I've worked the whole day on the BX and it was a day well spent.
Now the car itself has an interesting story. It was bought in 1987 by a Mr. Snijders, who owned it all the way to 2015. He was a very meticulous man, who kept a maintenance logbook in which he noted down in different colours all the maintenance, mileage and costs for each year. The mileage goes down and his handwriting goes frail towards the end. In all likelihood he died in 2015.
The subsequent owner either inherited the car or got it at a bargain price. A near perfect BX with only 65k miles. He did not appreciate it a much as he should, as I shall demonstrate. When issues arose after 25k miles, he sold the BX to a small car dealer. He made it roadworthy again and sold it to me. It came with almost complete history including the original purchase invoice.
In honour of the first owner this BX shall henceforth be known as Mr. Snijders.
Now Mr. Snijders looked pretty good at first glance. Starts well, lifts up good, drives well. No rust on the bottom nor in the wheel arches. I installed a radio and now I need to clean and paint the wheels, put on a new set of tires. Clean the engine bay, work on some scratches, polish and wax it, few spots of rust. New rubber for the sun roof. Perhaps refurbish the carb.
Today I decided to investigate one thing that bothered me: a blower that is too weak. We intend to go to Spain next month, without air conditioning it's important to at least have a good fan. It also emits horrible squeaking noises even at low speeds. So a worn bearing I suppose. At the same time the blower/wiper compartment was extremely dirty, credit to the last owner. It looked like he kept it under a pine tree, and I just had to clean it. So glad that I did:
Rusted through to the wheels! Can be fixed of course. I also need to take off the side panels as well (next week) see how much dirt is hiding in there.
Now on to the fan motor. This is how far I got:
How do I take the propeller off? There was a clip on top, which I removed, but it won't come still. Do I need to use force or did I overlook something?
Thanks and cheers!
