So a friend of dad's contacted us as he needed to get rid of a 2cv that he had kicking around in a wood as a potential pembleton donor car. It'd been sat there since 2004 and hadn't been taxed or on the road since before 1998. Went to look at it 2 weekends ago, told him I'd have it during that week and picked it up last weekend.
It's a total state to the point where I'm not actually 100% sure whether it's worth the time and panels it needs even just for getting through an MOT. Regardless, it is a complete car and the gearbox worked and there are ample spares to sell/keep if it does end up just getting broken for parts.
I would much rather actually get it on the road but it does need a shit raft of welding doing, plus a new chassis and rebuilt engine so time will tell as I plod through the jobs and dismantling to see how bad it actually is
Pulling it out the wood proved surprisingly easy, considering it was quite steep with a little access track to the farmhouse where we loaded it onto the trailer. The engine was completely seized and wouldn't budge in the slightest, the brakes didn't work at all and the handbrake wasn't attached but as we dragged it to the track and out the bushes, I put it in gear and lifted the clutch which actually worked so I just ended up freewheeling down the hill using the engine as a brake (crawling as didn't want to unseize the engine for it to start bending rods with cylinders full of shit etcetc and the chassis has collapesed so was dragging along the ground all the way down).
What it looked like before removing it:
All loaded up:
Spent the afternoon last weekend removing all the leaves, acorns, cobwebs, soil etcetc and taking the front end apart so I could start to see the extent of the 15 years of neglect and bring the engine back to Uni to start stripping that down and seeing how badly seized it is
A few pics of the body:
Chassis leg seen better days:
N/S floor and chassis very much collapsed with front end sat on the floor
Left it in dad's garage so will hopefully dry out properly over the next month or so. Was a serious struggle getting the doors closed as body had slowly sagged more and more as I'd been removing all the crap that was inside it..!
Engine dismatling took place on Wednesday evening. Everything actually went swimmingly and everything came apart nicely (apart from 2 screws for the bloody head cowlings that got ground off) until we got to the O/S barrel... The piston is seriously stuck in there so I just left it with loads of oil inside the barrel and hope that it seeps down somehow and helps loosen it.... Anyone got any tips for removing this before I take apart the block and get the piston and barrel under a hydraulic press.....?? (Assuming it doesn't come with a good soaking anyway)
Seized piston/barrel
The rest of the engine didn't look too bad, carb was covered by airbox so looked ok, rockers etc in both heads looked fine (unsure about cylinder side of heads as pretty filthy so fingers crossed not too pitted or damaged) and the other barrel should be ok with a hone...!
I'm not 100% sure what I'd be looking for in terms of damaged or overly worn parts that aren't obvious things, and even then I wouldn't really know if they were too bad to be reused or fine with a good clean up etc so any help/tips would be great...!
Complete album can be be found
here
