Sorry, nothing pretty to show you, I was wondering if anyone's ever seen anything. In a similar vein to the ball joint conversions to replace the kingpins.

It bugs me to pay £60 for a track rod end lever/steering arm, when 'normal' cars have a ball joint that can cost less than a tenner. Which led to me trying to work out a way of using a ball joint from something else or a rose joint.

It would be relatively simple to attach it to the rod from the steering rack, but I don't think I feel comfortable welding a different fitting onto the end of the steering arm, I must be getting cautious in my old age, and the MOT man won't like it.

Pre tensioned nylon ball joints...about 5 yrs for pattern ones , citroen type 25yrs+

nope but then you could get some of the plastic cups that come up now and again and then its just the cups that need replacing , they do need new( very good) steering arms. though.

Sean

An M14 rod end would be ideal and cheap to replace. Ideally, you'd just chop the ball of the arm and then drill and tap. Unfortunately the arm is very slender and the track rod adjusters are an odd very fine metric thread (finer than standard metric fine) - I've tried to find a rod end with this thread but can't.

You'd need to fab a new arm in 10mm plate (stainless would be nice) - laser cut and then bent to end up in the correct place. You'd need a new track rod adjuster with the Citroen thread at the inboard end and a standard M14 thread at the other (of course, one would be LH thread and the other RH so it could be adjusted) A grade 8 bolt and a nyloc would retain the rod end bearing. These bearings are available from McGill Motorsports for £8 each - at that price you could renew them every couple of years!

I could set all this up for an investment of my money of about £1000 and then knock out a kit consisting of laser cut arms, rod ends, retaining bolts and stainless track rod adjusters for £150 but the chances of recovering that initial investment are minimal. 2CV enthusiasts like to talk about what they'd do but then are very slow in actually spending money.

I recently made up an adapter to put an HS SU carb straight on to a standard 2CV intake manifold. Consists of 2 laser cut thick plate flanges and a mandril bent tube to connect the two. It's all tig welded and then plated. Lots of interest when I said I would make it - then when I wanted £50 for it everyone told me me they could make one themselves or I was profiteering off the back of innocent 2CV enthusiasts. Several people told me that if the car would run better with an SU on it then Citroen would have put it on as original equipment.

I actually spent £250 in getting it to that stage and lots of time ensuring it would fit both standard cars and the widest variety of 2CV based kit cars. Sold one in the last 6 months.

(BTW Photo below shows one of the many necessary trial ones mocked up by me - the others were sent out for tigging and plating).

Nice job, blackjack. What differences do you notice?

My own car uses an HIF44 on a custom manifold that entirely replaces the original Citroen one. It is very mildly tuned with a lightened flywheel, a 2 into 1 exhaust, some port work and twin coil ignitions. This gives 36BHP at the wheels. I may skim 1mm off the end of the barrels and up the compression ratio - but I'm happy with the way it's performing and I value the reliability of the current set up.

I have used the above manifold on a standard 2CV and, like any car on SUs, it idles nicely, pulls well once you sort out the needle profile (it's usually one either side of a particular needle) and has better economy than the standard car. It could be tuned for more power but I guess that you'd need to alter a whole lot of other things to get a really big increase.

The real purpose of it is that it is vastly cheaper than a replacement Solex and you can refurbish SU carbs again and again at reasonable cost. The HS 1 1/4" SU is the one that all the Mini guys ditch - so it is cheap to buy. I recently bought a job lot of three useable ones on eBay for £20. It is also easier to tune/fiddle with as there are hundreds of different needles available and it's not too difficult to profile your own. I know that a well known 2CV parts supplier claims that the Solex is "eminently tuneable" - maybe, but not on this planet. Like a lot of French stuff, the Solex is not made to be messed with or repaired.

Also on the plus side, it looks nice with a K&N cone filter on and allows you to tidy up the engine bay and ditch the huge standard air cleaner.

I suppose that twin Bings or Dellortos shout performance a bit louder but I can honestly say that they don't give you noticeably more power but they do noticeably reduce fuel economy and reliability - and they cost more.

I'm a bit of an SU fan really and, rather than fit the classic tri-power on to the Pontiac in my 1921 Model T, I'd like to fit a pair of HD8's or 4 HS6's. We'll see - I need to finish the thing and get it on the road before I start messing about with it.

BTW - lots of 2CV bits on this hot rod......

Rose joints are easy to get in whatever size you wanted, (except the current thread which size escapes me) I guess keeping the threaded end of the TRE and machining the other down to take a standard threaded rose joint? could you not get a pair of new steering arms made on a water jet or something?

Thanks, blackjack. I remember SUs from my Triumph days... Yes, such a classic design.

the best solution ( if you know somebody with a lathe) is to make a couple of nylon/delrin cups to replace the hardened steel cups in the original steering arms.
the ones on my 2cv have been in use for 300.000 km, with no visible wear so far.
the combo of soft steel ball and hardened steel cups is pretty stupid , the original design had bronze cups, but those probably turned out to be too expensive