First of all guys i am wishing you all the best for the 2012 ( i know it is late for wishes but ...).

I have promised myself and sean that i would post some pictures of the 2cv.
I would like to apoliogise for my english, and i hope you ll get a meaning from what i am writing.
I dont know if this is the right place for this kind of thread but i didn't know where to post, after all the most of the photos are technical stuff.

As already some of you know i am from greece. Greece is suffering every summer from big fires. On 2009 another fire on the Penteliko Mountain started . We had our 2cv out next to some big pines ( it was standing there for more than 4 years ) .

On the day of the fire before everybody else leave the house i asked my brother to help me move the 2cv away pines. I promised myself at that moment that if it would survive the fire i would restore it .

As you can see the 2cv survived . Two months after that i asked a friend of mine to help me start the engine. So with a battery and some gasoline straight on the carbyrater it started right away.

So i decided that the time has come.

I want to make clear two things. First of i wanted this car to just be able to run and take me to work or take the kids to school. I didn't care then and i dont care at this moment for the aesthetic ( my work is an iterior designer) . I just believe in this car because of the superior simplicity it is made of. So i think it is cheap car with no cost for maintenance. The secod is that i dont have any technical knowledge and when i ve started to work with the cars i did't even have any tools.

The restore took me a while, almost 2 years. The reason for that is that i had it outside so when it was rraining, blowing or was cold i couldn't work. This ws the reosen for making some work like sand blasting or griding twice.

Through the resotration progreess i even moved the whole car to another spot cause my family did't wanted it here. That took me a month back. They just did't believed that i wpuld restore it and there was enough times that i keep the car from giving for recycilng.

Something else that bothered me a lot was the money. Since 2010 i was without a job. So it may be fun for some guys out there but some times i didn't have even 50 euros to buy materials paints or tools. So i had to wait till some funds came in.

Finally i own a big thank to my wife for be patient and believed in me. It wasn't easy for her either to keep 4 kids the most of the days cause when i wass home i was to the car working.

These are some photos of the situation that the car was in.







After cleaning all of these spots i try to figure out what to do to repair them. I am familiar with the arc welding but i didn't have a welder which can weld so thin sheet. On the other hand i knew that with a tig machine i could do my job but i didn't know how to weld with a tig welder. So the solution ( actually it was a educational game for me) was on carbon fiber.

I decided to repair all of these spots with carbon fiber . The reasons for that was that i didnt have the tools for welding and the carbon looked much easier for me plus i knew that i could add additional sheets of carbon at the future any time i would need to.

Going to point i ordered some square meters of carbon fiber shhet of 400gr/m² and 200gr/m² and some epoxy with hardener of 24 hours.

Now the question was if i had to put a primer first or to put the carbon on the bare metal. I did both. On some spots i paint with epoxy primer ( expensive 20€ per 1 spray botttle) and on some other spots i put the sheet on the metal without primer.

The whole proccedure was quite slow cause i had to wait till the first layer dry to aplly another layer on the top of it.

The whole proceddure took a lot of time ( some months ) but i ve leraned enough things. The first i ve learned was that the carbon is a diode for electricity and there for it is forbidden to apply it on the bare metal cause of the electrolysis phenomenon. After that i order some fiberglass sheet to apply the first layer to cut the electrolysis phenomenon through carbon and metal. The second was that the 400gr carbon was quite difficult to work woith cause you had to apply enough epoxy to fill all of the fiber . In any other case the sheet was ok but if you would apply some strength on it you could take it out . Meaning that if you want all of the materials ( carbon, metal, and fiberglass) to behave as one you should put a tone of epoxy. The catalyst wass something that even now i cxant decide which is best. Meaning that a catalyst with cure time less than 5 hours isnt workable for enough time ( during summer) . So on the one hand the catalyst that i used took a lot time to cure, but on the other hand i could work with it enough time ( it's specs are 55min on 23celcious.)

The results was quite impressive. On the back of the cabin ( the spot that the licence plate is going ) the sheet that suport the lights was totaly apart from the cabin. After two layers of carbon i could lift the whole cabin from there.

Here i am again . Although i got lost a lot of photos i think you can get the meanng.


One layer of the light fiber.

Here i put one big layer on the insdie and 2 on the outside. Here you can see only the first layer on the outside. I think it was the light one.

The inside one

Here i removed the rusty sheet cause it would take much more time to clean it for the carbon, so i cut it spot weld a .8mm sheet and then i put the fiberglass and carbon sheet.
Here the first layer that you can see on the photo below the metal sheet burned the same time i made my first spot yeld. So as you can see one step forward and two backward.

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Now here it wqas the most difficult part. These sheets are the lights one. i put more than 3 layesrs on the outside hoping that at the end i would took a nice nad flat surfase. The poiint is that the 400g/m was enough difficult to take a flat form . The right procedure is to sand it and then again put another layer and then sand it and etc. But this solution is too expensive. Anyway at the end you couldnt see metal at all . It was all coverede bey carbon.

Fooling myself

Wrapping the tube with a second layer trying to figure out how i can form it well. Later i found that a paper tape could do the job as long it was a dry from epoxy spot for the tape to glue. In this spot i finally cut the sheet that was flying and attach a new one in the corner.

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Here is probably the most powerfull carbon on the car. I put so many sheets after the first two i was talking about before that even the sheet will completely rusted into dust i thing that the carbon will do more thatn its job.


I ll post some photos again tommorow
I hope all that will help somebody

Pavlos_K,

I've moved your post - it seems to fit better in this section.

Glad the 2CV survived the fire & is now receiving the attention it deserves. Great work so far!

By the way; Your English is excellent!

Just sat and read this. Great story, show us more as it progresses!

Ok lets post some photos and some progress.

I ve found some of the photos i had lost.

This is the first layer of carbon on the outside . I installed another two . This is the light sheet of the two that i had but if i am rembering i put only the last sheet of the heavy carbon. On this photo it is hard to see but i ve installed some fiberglass sheet before the carbons.


This is the most difficult installation that i ve did untill then . The problem is that i removed all of the floor panel at that point and try to build it on the galvanized sheet from the beggining.


And here is the point that the belt is going . That took two layers of carbon and one of fiberglass.



From that time ( meaning some months ago ) i didn't work wioth carbon again through the difficulty of the curing time. I am trying to say that the 2cv was on the road doing the kids transportation so there wasn't time ( the catalyst that i had needed 24 hours of curiong) for repairs.
This week i finally managed to buy a catalyst of 12 hours. So the first thing that had to be done was the driver's door.




The reason that i bought the fast catalyst is the same that made me stop working on the car.

It is called Hydrogen





Three days ago i ve did my first ride. I am very happy though it is soon as i am a new to this chapter and there are a lot to come but the 2cv since that day is working with hho .

The first change that i ve seen is that the hydrogen probably cleaned my carb ( problems with accelerator pump on another topic, solved ) .

Untill the next writing be well guys.