HI everyone, I know some you will know me from 2CVGB, but I thought I'd introduce myself anyway. I owned a few 2CVs many years ago but then joined the RAF and cars had to take a back seat (excuse the pun). 18 years later and I found myself looking around for a restoration project to keep me occupied through the winter as I have a well equipped motor club at my disposal and live away from home during the week.

I was looking for a car that needed some work instead of something that was already on the road and found Belinda on ebay. I'd always heard of Bedouins, but had never seen one and thought it'd be different so I went to have a look at her. When I did I managed to ignore what the vendor was telling me (very clean underneath, all the hard work done, just needs wiring) and see it as a body-off restoration and offered him a silly price if he'd deliver it. Having got the car here I assumed the worst when I got the car up on the ramp and wasn't disappointed so immediately decided to replace the chassis as it resembled a patchwork quilt. I wasn't too keen on the GS engine either as it seemed the previous owner had attempt all sorts of bodges in order to make it work (including some "Desperate Dan" bracing to the chassis and some butchering of the bulkhead) so I decided rightly or wrongly to fit a 602 unit. I know that other Bedouins had twinpot units, but mine is slightly heavier, so I might find that performance is more like a 2cv4.

So where am I at the moment? Well the chassis has been replaced and body put back on. I'm currently in the middle of repairing the floors and bulkhead, having already replaced the outer & inner lower bulkheads and welded up some of the butchering carried out during the GS engine installation.

Since buying Belinda, I 've found out that there were probably only around 35-40 ever made and 2 of those were campers, of which Belinda is one so I'm convinced that saving her was worth it.

If anyone has any information on Belinda or Bedouins in general (apart from the stuff I've googled) it would be much appreciated.

Hey Bertie! Nice to have you here. Belinda is certainly coming on nicely now - looking forward to seeing her out n about!

Hi Neil, I think once I've done the rear tie-rods and got the floors in, things will certainly speed up

Its a good looking car that bedouin, serious, i like it.

Will be great to see it out on the road bertie

I just thought I'd post an update of where I'm at.

The engine and gearbox have been in for a couple of weeks now having been partially stripped, cleaned and checked over as I’m not aware of the history, other than it’s been run for around 62,000 miles. As I’ve got an “interesting” desert theme in mind for the bodywork, I thought it would be fun to paint the heat exchangers and cooling ducts before fitting to the engine. Once weight was back on the front of the chassis, I could turn my attention to the ride height.

Part of what has been holding me lately was the fact that the rear tie-rods had been chopped, shortened by around 30mm and welded back up, something that I didn't like at all, let alone the MOT man. As well as trying to work out why this had been done, I had to find some suitable length rods to use. After a bit of investigative work aided by Ken Hanna, it seems that Belinda has a van rear axle with extended knife-edge points. It just so happened that the chopped rods are the same length as those on the front so I’ve used a pair of those. Having cut the suspension tubes in order to check the condition of the springs and replace the rear tie-rods, I welded them back up again & painted with black hammerite.

Now the suspension has been re-assembled along brand new shock absorbers, I’ve been able to think about getting the floors back in. As the Bedouin has a shorter, squarer floorpan as opposed to the narrowing setup of a standard 2CV, I have had to fabricate my own. I was lucky enough to obtain a large metal locker which I reckon is made with thicker gauge metal than Citroen stuff as well as having some thin strengthening ribs already spot welded along the length. In addition to this, Ken made me up some galvanised outrigger in order to maximise the potential to carry more “rotund” passengers.

So that’s the score so far. I’m in the middle of finally prepping the floor panels with mounting holes and holes for plug welding so hopefully I might be able to at least get them tacked in tonight.

I’ll post some pics at the weekend when I’m on my own PC.

Heres two just so you can see how much effort bertie has put into his car.





I'll leave the rest to bertie.

sigs done bertie.

Blimey Max, that's brilliant!!

Well as promised, here some more pics of Belinda's restoration so far:

looking real nice, Bertie! The tin ware on your engine is especially tidy! It's nice to see a Bedouin getting this kind of attention - definitely worth the graft, i reckon!

The latest stage of the retoration has been to get some floors back in. As the Bedouin has square floor panels as opposed to the tapered standard ones, I've had to make these myself. In the spirit of recycling (and because I'm a tight git) I noticed that there were a few metal lockers being thrown out at work one day so I decided to dismantle one of them as the sides were pretty straight and the metal was good as the lockers had been inside. I even reckon the metal is slightly thicker than the original Citroen stuff, which can't be that hard really



Having measured the dimensions, I cut the sides to size



This close up shows the edge which I decided to use for the chassis bolts which I strengthened by folding it over on itself. You can also see what were mounting points for the shelves which make excellent strengthening ribs



Having laid in the blank panel and marked from underneath a couple of chassis mounting holes with a scriber I managed to take measurements and work out where all the other chassis & seat mounting holes had to be drilled. As some parts of the panel will be inaccessible from underneath once fitted, I treated the underside to a couple of coats of stonechip. The holes round the edge are for plug welding which I reckon will be adequate as the spacing is quite tight and it'll hopefully look better than seam welding



Once that had dried, I bolted the panel in using pre-fabricated outriggers that Ken Hanna kindly supplied.





Hopefully this pic shows how I managed to sandwich the panel between the lower edge of the sill and the seatbelt mounting point to make it stronger