Time for another BXing installment! I'm going to go ahead and apologise in advance for any typos, grammar mistakes or silliness, this is my first day off after a really difficult week and a half of work, I have finally got a promotion after much discussion between my managers manager (he's on my side, rally nice guy) and HR, and now can expect another two rises between now and September as I get signed off on more stuff, anyway they have put me straight onto 12 hour day and night shifts aswell as normal days (9 till 5:30) and as some staff are still furloughed, we are all doing extra. So i'm having a pre-dinner beer whilst I write this up, with a bottle of red getting to temperature in the kitchen for dinner, this particular bottle we bought on the Citroen Challenge I went on in 2017 (i think!). What was I saying? Oh yeah, tired + beer = likely frivolity. If you can;t be arsed, I won;t blame you from skipping to the pictures, there is an AWFUL LOT of words here, so apologies, but if you have ever had a conversation with me you will know that I can go on a bit!
I had until 2pm today to tinker, so had an extra large coffee and walked the dog extra early so I could get up to the GT and tinker away! However my extra effort, and let me just emphasise that it IS an effort, of waking up earlier than I usually would on a day off was mostly ruined by having to queue to AGES in PetsatHome, the dog is due worming and de-fleaing and whilst the vets are still only open for emergencies we've resorted to a more retail outfit - my sisters discount helps matters too

Tulip has a sister arriving on July 1st, so we want to have her porperly wormed and klingon free by the time the baby Sprocker spaniel 'Sprout' arrives (oh god, what have we let ourselves into...).
So that out of the way (we have a less than happy dog just now "Daddy this cheese has got yucky lumps innit") I got to the BX's for just gone 9 to tinker away. I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to get up to today, so decided to remove the rest of the engine bay a/c stuff from the TRS (i'm not putting off taking the dash apart AT ALL). I brought extra tools, coolant and oil draining apparatus, lunch, water, sweets and a wee-bottle, we all know you've gotta go when you've got to go! I'm sure the farm cows wouldn't mind hedge-watering, but the farmers might! It was quite a good tinkering session really, I can't for the life of me find my BX HBOL (haynes book of lies) so actually had to think and look at what I was doing, I do try and avoid thinking
too much on my days off, but hey, it needed doing.
I was expecting to have to swap the GT and TRS radiators around, as the twin fan setup will be needed on the GT for the a/c, so to avoid starting messing around with coolant draining I had a go at the blower motor/fans first. As i'm sure most of you know, a/c cars have an additional blower fan, It was quite fiddly to get it all out, after struggling to get the last bolts out I gave in and took the windscreen wiper arm and scuttle panel off, which is necessary to remove the blower unit anyway, so really I shouldn't've been so lazy and just removed it in the first place! This is good, as the GT's wiper arm has shed the majority of its paint which has been bothering me for quite some time! It is one of those little jobs that will get sorted 'one day', but now the wiper is off I can actually get on and do it. Satin black should do the trick I think.

You can see where the additional blower fits onto the cutout in the standard (larger, on the right) motor.

Recirculation flaps, clean ones (top and far left) from Alex should work lovely, TRS units (bottom right and middle left) didn't work on the car but whos knows what electrical fuckwittery is going on.
Waaaay back when I was hunting down individual a/c components I bought some stuff from a lovely guy in Germany (Alex, BX 14 GT on here) who had converted his standard fuel injected MK2 14 to have a MK1 dash, he wanted to also have a/c but the car ended up being very rusty so was to be scrapped, IIRC he found a way to get the BX welded affordably after he sold me all his a/c parts

The point being I have a choice of additional blower motors and recirculation flaps, Alex cleaned up the ones he had and tested them, so if the TRS ones don't work, I have these nice clean ones to use.
What filth! Lots of crud under here! Blower motors removed, but recirc flaps in place still, interestingly both the recirc flaps and blower motors seem to be wired in series, so creating an extension of the GT's wiring (at least for the blower motors) shouldn't be too difficult. Another interesting point (keep you socks up folks), the airflow in the GT (one blower fan) feels about the same that in the TRS (two blower fans), maybe even better! There are lots of factors that could influence this, including the GT (non a/c) haveing a 1, 2 or 3 fan speed settign whereas the TRS (a/c) has a continuously variable slider for the fan speed - i'm hoping it is just dirty contacts or something but we'll see whan it is all cleaned up and transferred to the GT.

Recirc flaps gone, I had forgotten I will need to drill and cut the GT's bulkhead for these. I'll also need to drill a hole for the dryer and in the bulkhead for the hoses to attach to the expansion valve on th interior. The dryer could probably be mounted without drilling a big hole in the inner wing to be honest.
TRS
GT
TRS
GT
In the absence of recirc flaps, the GT seems to have an exterior air exclusion flap - this is what can be heard closing I think when you move the fan control lever to '0', or to the left of 1 at least. I also removed the GT's single blower unit, the scuttle panel and wiper blade too of course.
Next, onto the condenser! I was a bit anxious about this, I was really hoping not to have to find and purchase a new one of these as the cost of this a/c project is ramping up - not that I expected it to be cheap, especially having bought and imported a whole BX for the purpose! Thankfully, it looks ok, there are no crystals or obvious evidece of a leak, but then with a/c refirdgerant baing a gas I don't expect there to be much to see if there was a leak. The condenser slots between the radiator and coolant fans, it has lugs that sit in a lower support panel and is held in place by the top radiator panel, so once the top panel and fans are off it just lifts out, simples! I likes simples.
Two top panels are the same = good. Do I go the whole hog and paint this? Maybe, it'd be nice.
Twin fans and top mounting bracket easily removed, the most difficult bit is unplugging them! Silly electrical connectors are behind/underneath the passenger headlight (RHD) with all sorts in the way, I was reluctant to give them a good tug because french electrics.
Fans removed gives surprisingly good acccess to the condenser.
Dirty, but looks ok (I think!)
Condenser bottom support panel, needed to swap over the rubber bungs as the TRS ones had an extra slot in them for this panel.
The extra fan upper (1st image) and lower (2nd image) mounting brackets are very sensibly bolted onto the car, whereas the original ones are welded or bonded, this makes swapping over nice and easy.
HOWEVER, how on earth do you install captive nuts in panels or box sections where there is no access? I think I will have to drill holes in the slam panel and the cross member underneath the radiator to allow me to secure these mounts. Is this going to be a structural integrity issue? Being ignorant, I would hope that drilling two lower (under radiator crossmember) and one upper (slam panel) 10-15mm hole would be ok?
Where the slam panel hole would need to be, drilling though the top to allow a nut to go inside this section above where my finger is. Not sure what the triangle is all about, it was under the yellow sticker I peeled back! Here a new sticker could go over the top of the hole, making it neat and tidy. I'm sure I sawa new set of enginebay stickers on ebay recently, must investigate.
It seems that MK1's used a set of two single fans, I was expecting them to both be in a single unit. The TRS' fans are the top two and the GT's the bottom one here. I wonder if MK2's used the same?
I stole the TRS' relay mounting bracket, it has 6 relays whereas the GT has 1! I have a few wiring diagrams/technical bulltiins so I can hopefully figure out what relays I need and where, but that can wait till I get into the dash and need to think about all the wiring requirements, i'm not looking forward to that tbh. For the TRS I'm thinking a relay or two for the radiator fans, one for the compressor and one for the air blower motors, maybe one for the autobox too?
I realised that after I removed the a/c hoses, I didn't label or photograph them to know which go where! A very nice man, and a proper BX'er has offered to make me up some new a/c hoses at cost, so I have these at home ready to be sent off now I have a record of which goes where!
There are a couple of things i need to do next before any more BX a/c stuff happens, research and purchasing etc.
-Buy new a/c belt, GOOD NEWS! The a/c belt is the same width/pattern as the GT's non-a/c belt, that means I don't have to swap alternators and crank pulley's about, thank goodness
-Buy new dryer/receiver
-Buy new sump gasket x 2, one for the normal sump and one for the alloy a/c sump
-Buy a load more 10mm bolts and nuts, I seem to be very good at losing these and what remains are quite rusty
-Think about short-nosed bonnets, would it be at all possible to cut the existing bonnet? It'd make things much simpler (paint/colour, GT badge etc)
-Think about radiator fan switches, I know the GT's works but I don't think the TRS' works, i'd be happier with a new twin-fan switch
Next job is the oil sump, unfortunately I have read that some poeple have had flywheel clearance issues. Let's see what happens here, I really hope this isn't going to be an issue, it seems the options are to replace the flywheel with a smaller unit or grind down the sump - neither are ideal! But I would probably go with modifying the sump for ease and lesser expense, we'll see.
Laters.