Citroën 2cv AZ 1964
© Copyright: J.Cats.
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A friend knew about this 1964 AZ for sale in France.
He had rebuilt it a few years ago and then sold it.
Another friend contacted us that he was interested in such a car. So first we picked up the car in France.
At home we checked it to see the work which would be needed.
18hp engine and original dash. New Specification:
Taking out the original engine and gearbox.
builting the new gearbox. The original brakelines are used. The original brake cylinders are rebuilt and fitted in the modern gearbox.
Engine and gearbox fitted in the car. Engine and gearbox fitting gives 2 problems. On these early chassis the front engine mount holes are closer together then on lter chassis, therefor a hole is drilled right outside one of the original mounting holes. This means the engine is sitting slightly off-center (about 7mm) but this is very hard to spot and does not have any negative effects. The other problem is that the new engien gearbox combination is slightly longer then the original one. For this the spacer tubes on the rear of the gearbox are cut in half. This gives no space problems or other negative effects.
Fitting modern driveshafts. A small modification has to be made to fit the modern driveshafts. The original driveshafts have a big splines, the modern ones have much finer splines on the wheel end. So the original hub / wheel carrier is removed and a modern one fitted. The other dimensions are identical so this is a straight swap. So much for the easy bit, now the interesting and more difficult bit starts.
Fitting the clutch cable. The clutch cable used is one from a GS/GSA. This is very long, exits under the gearbox on the wrong side, goes over the gearbox, and into the standard clutch cable position. We had to modify the cable a bit and make up a spacing tube to get it all to work properly.
Making the expansion box. Because of the master cylinder position, the exhaust has to exit the engine bay on the right side of the car. For this the expansion box is modified, the 2 entering tubes are cutt of as is the mounting bracket. The box is turned around and everything is welded back on. We used flexible exhaust bits to prevent any alignment nightmares during fitting.
The exhaust fitted. The rest of the exhaust has to be cut and welded to make it into a mirror image of the normal exhaust.
Mechanical side all done. The conversion to 12V electrics after all this is pretty simple. The only small modification needed is the + feed to the regulator. On the original this is a straight feed from the battery, on the modern system this has to come from the ignition lock. If this feed is not turned off when the engine is not disconnected when the engine is not running, the battery will drain. A new battery takes one day to go empty this way...
Adding some more new bits.
Canada here we come.
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