Citroen rally project

Some of you might be interested in my winters project. One of my things I have always wanted to do was rallying when I was younger, but work drinking and having fun is where all my money was spent.
Now I have a bit more time to build things I thought I would try and achieve the dream and do some historical rallying.
However the choice of car came down to what my body could realistically take in the pounding on the ruff stuff, so after some research the old Citroen Ds in the day won most of the events, so I am now in the process of building one, I have started and it is a very complex car and it is going to be quite a challenge but it’s underway and hopefully should look like the end photo in the end.

Thats a big comfy chair infront of the steering wheel.
Was in Belgium last weekend, they had a good turnout for Historic class cars.

The comfy chair is the same as sitting on a sofa, I think that might be a bit to compliant on a rally.
Historical rallying is becoming pretty big, probably because of all the old blokes like me wanting to get involved, look at the values of the 70/80 rallying cars going through actions.
The historical rallying around the world is big, I have a few on my bucket list, the la jog here, then down to the Citroen hart land for rallying Marocco, then if I am still in one peace as well as the car, Monte Carlo.
Maybe I am mad I am not going to win as with all this sort of thing the old professionals still take part I’m doing it for fun and the adventure, if you’re interested I will be looking for support team and co drivers.
First challenge is to build the car and get it back on the road for July as it’s 100 years of Citroen, it won’t have any rally stuff in it by then just those comfy seats, and a shake down, then the rest of the summer kitting it out properly roll cage, rally seats the full Monty, the roof comes off so you can install all the stuff, you’re rallying chaps could come in handy for advice by then.

Wow, thats a really interesting choice.

I love these big Citroens. I remenber back in the early 1970s, i was a member of a motor club on Tyneside. I used to marshall on local road rallies. The local Citroen dealer & Weber dealer - Peter Dalkin rallied a DS. He decided to chop it in half & shorten it like the works cars of the time. The rear doors were chopped & welded shut, similar to the car in your photo ( this was years before Audi did it with the UR quattro) To begin with, he mustn't of got the strenghening right. He arrived at a control that i was manning one night. The car was flexing so much that the rear window had fallen out & his navigator had lost some maps. I know he persevered with it and had some local success but it was a steep learning curve. It was fantastic to see it in action though. Good luck with the project.

Yes I am going to short wheelbase it, it’s the only way to get the Wt down and obviously improved handling, there will be a as much strengthening as possible the way they are built it shouldn’t be that hard. Just welding the doors shut would not add rigidity to the car because of the way they are constructed.
I love the look of them and on the ruff it should be pretty amazing, I might get a smoking jacket and pipe while am at it.
The engine looks basic but it’s not that bad hemi head massive inlet valves a tad under 50mm so should get a good power to Wt for the era, the cars got down to 1,100kg all up hp I think was about 150/60, but from what I have read there winning was down to reliability over long distance and less crew fatigue. Apart from cleaning up the sharp edges in the ports you can’t do any thing as the FIA regs have the outlet di listed and they are at that, but they are pretty good shape and size any way.

[BIG_MVS]

Looking good, what you really need though is a spare front bumper.

Sorry mate I will probably have a set up for sale myself as that is extra Wt on the car, and it will compensate for the extra Wt of the A/C that will be fitted, at my age with all that adrenaline rush I will need to keep cool.

you are a glutton for punishment!

This makes an alpine look simple, I am at the worst stage every things in bits and it’s a lot of bits, you do get the wobbles. On the plus side you can get everything there is no shortage of bits, however what I am doing to the car is not in any book and apart from pictures of the original short wheelbase cars, there is no information and there is no information on the suspension set up, a lot of talk about fitting Cx and Sm parts, but what I have learned from doing mods on cars a lot is totally wrong. Part of the fun to me is finding out by driving and trying different things.
Also this is my last big project, getting to old after this for this sort of major project cut and shut ect, fitting body kits is simple compared to this.

Well I’ve been doing loads of cleaning and polishing of old metal and a lot of time on the head all new valves guides ect and just got all the bits back from the balancer. Every time I’ve had an engine balanced it is amazing how bad the old engines were and how they didn’t vibrate more. This will also apply to the Alpine engines as well, so if you have got an engine apart it’s worth the extra money.
If you zoom in on the pictures you can see the amount of metal that has been removed from some of the Conrod caps to give you an idea, a fair bit of metal has been taken of the balance Wt on the crank as well.

looking good Stuart.

Thanks mate it’s been a long winter of welding 8 weeks averaging 4/5hr a day as proper work got in the way to do the full 8hr.
The car is now complete in its new size and shape and rust busted and sound, all new metal work and strengthening work done, and then it took its first trip to have the cage put in before shot blasting and painting I think it looks pretty good, but it doesn’t look like I’ve done that amount of hrs in work on it to me.

[stephendell]

Do the body panels all just bolt on afterwards?

Yes none of the panels are structural you can fit the lot in about 40min, that’s why the tub has to be super strong with no rust. I was thinking of having 2 sets one for rallying so not worried about dents and things and one for the road events ect.

[johnb]

Was looking through one of my Alpine books yesterday (Renault Alpine Gold Portfolio). The book is a collection of road tests, rally reports, driving impressions, etc of all the Alpine models. In it is a Motor magazine report of the 1963 Coupe des Alpes in which A110s took the first three places.

The photo of the shortened DS21 caught my eye.