Yes, we are going to keep her ''original" except upgrading motor and gear box the green Ami 6 which has Ami 8 gear in it.
I'm just about to start work on the green beast. Most of the green Ami has been butchered. It is sitting on Acadiane chassis. Not so much rust around except the ''normal'' places but it looks like a typical french car, heaps of dents everywhere.
Our red Ami has no door window rails left, all are rotten and all sliding windows are failing down in to the door. Maybe the green Ami has some usable bits I can use.

I got the Ami home yesterday after 6 months of laying idle in my shed o'shite. It looks more like a barn find now, it filthy, there's loads of little problems I'd forgotten about and plenty of bigger ones I hadn't.



This evening I got a very expensive but quite small box from ECAS and got cracking. First job was to either remove the seized lengthened tie rod shackles or failing that, get the cans off and replace the rear tie rods. I managed to get one side undone but it took the best part of an hour and a half, a can of gas on the blowlamp (useless) some mole grips (almost useless), Stilsons (quite handy) and a Grinder with a cutting disc on (ideal) before I could finally remove the seized tie rod. The new one went on fine though, with a copious lashings of copperslip on the thread. TomorrowI'm going to have a go at the other side, and I think I'm going to go straight in with the grinder and save a bit of time!



The list of jobs before CZ are as follows:

Rear tie rods/shackles
Refit front inner wings
Service
Adjust and bleed brakes
Bonnet catch assembly
Fit radio/cd player
Fit 135s
New rear shock absorbers (and maybe shock mounts, depending how hard it is to get Ami shocks?)
Wash+polish
MoT.

Now that's gonna be a sweet ride to the big ol CZ. Good luck!

Tonights progress:



New Knife edge shackle on both sides at the rear, raised it up to offroad level (sorry Neil, I really am very sorry!) and changed the rear shocks. It's amazing to drive now, been thrashing it around the bumpy lanes which are usually off limits to me round here, and it's got that lovely 60's A-series ride back, that you just do not get on later cars.



The shockers were a stroke of luck for me, not so for old man Higgs though. Yesterday he found the front shock mounting plate had broken free as the lugs which it's secured to had snapped off his passenger side front arm. I took the arm to work and welded it back together again, but when he came to refit it this evening he noticed that the shock was stopping the arm drooping onto the stop, and was clearly too long. I suggested that it may have been a rear shock absorber fitted to the front. We did a bit of swapping around and found that all four shocks on his AKS400 were the same, apparently rears. You can see where this is going can't you? Instead of me having to buy a pair of Ami6 rear shocks tomorrow Dad now has to buy a pair of fronts! Guess where his surplus 'rear' shocks have gone?

reZult!! poor old monsieur Higgs!

Haha, yeah, I said I'd go halves with him on a new pair though.

Are you gonna get Andy to print you out a receipt for double the actual amount?!

Hi Russ

just reading through your suspension gubbins - i noticed you said 'shockers for an Ami' - does this mean that all A Series are different - or in other words, when it comes to replacing on mine, am i going to have to trawl ebay.fr or will ECAS do them off the shelf?

it's all getting quite exciting in Ami World - what with Viking breaking one and other Norwegian / German Amis coming about

how about an Ami section of the forum?

all the best with your's

Will

Right, I'm quite tired and confused but I'll give it my best shot:

My Ami6 has a 14mm stud for the rear shocks, and a 12mm stud for the fronts, My Ami8 had 14mm studs all round, my dads AKS400 has 14mm studs all round too. Standard 2cvs like my Bamboo and drummer are 12mm studs all round. Rear shocks are longer than front shocks when fully extended (ie, the car is close to the ground) which is why my dads van which had a full set of rear shocks all round broke its suspension arm.

In answer to your question, as long as you know what size studs your car's fitted withfront and rear, you will be able to ring ECAS and they will have the right shocks on the shelf.




maybe when the forum has grown and we have a load of different members with different cars, Dyane, Ami etc, we might think about it, but I think it'd thin the forum out too much at the moment. Dunno what the others think though!

We do seem to have a high concentration of Ami6 estates though dont we!

good point about the forum, i was sort of being lazy. alot of Ami 6 breaks though, yeah!! i wish we weren't all hundreds of miles from each other....

thanks for suspension advice - that makes sense...cheers

Will