Citroen XM Forum

I will write a little about my early motoring years.

A 1939 Ford prefect was my first car in '56, I was earning about £5.00 per week, giving £2.50 to my mother, £1.50 hire purchase on the car, leaving the grand sum of one pound per week to run it - including petrol, so if anything went wrong I had to fix it myself, there started nearly a lifetime of car maintenance.

In '59 I did my first diesel conversion, Perkins were at the time making a whole range of kits to fit the 4/99 engine in a whole range of cars, Ford Consul and Zephyr, Austin Cambridge, Morris Oxford, Vauxhall Wyvern, Velox and Cresta to name but a few, the kits were comprehensive and used your existing gearbox, cooling and exhaust systems. The car I fitted mine to was an E model Velox of '56 vintage and had mechanically driven wipers, there was even a drive from the camshaft for those!

This engine had an output of 43 bhp, I know this sounds puny but the 2.2 litre straight six originally fitted only produced 60.5 bhp, it was though to say the least underpowered and over geared, a great deal of clutch slipping was required to pull away on the gentlest of slopes, the performance may have been embarrasing but the economy was amazing. The whole kit cost over £200.00 a great deal of money in those days but as the TV trade was in its infacy and engineers in great demand - it paid well, in fact the few teenagers that owned a car in those days were likely to be TV engineers.

I have done a whole string of conversions since then, mainly using the later and slightly more powerful 4/108 engine which I fitted in vehicles ranging from a Vauxhall Viva to a granada estate.

The main problem with the early manufactured diesel cars was noise, apart from the fact that the engines themselves were noisey and in car insulation had hardly been invented then, because of the relativly low power output they had to be very low geared, so you were doing about 60 mph at the maximum revs of 4000, ear defenders should have been part of the standard equipment.

I was driving down the motorway one day with my engine screaming when I was passed by a lorry that seemed to be purring along, I got to thinking about this, how could a vehicle with an even worse power to weight ratio than mine be so unstressed?
Gearing, was of course the answer, they had such a large selection that under low load conditions the engine could be turning much more slowly, this lead me to my 'standard' conversion for the rest of my cars.

I would buy a scrap Bedford van, specifically because the bell housing would accept a vauxhall overdrive gearbox, I rumaged at the breakers for old Ventora's, VX 490s and anything else that used the o/d box, I modified the inhibiter circuit so that I could get overdrive on all four gears but not in reverse, as its very bad for them . The petrol vehicles I was converting usually had a much larger petrol engine and therefore taller gearing, this was all working out very well until I put it to the test, the Vauxhall boxes having come from what was regarded then as a sprightly vehicle had gear ratios that were much to close, making 1st far to high to pull away with dignity, the answer was lying in my scrap Bedfords - the comercial wide ratio gearbox.

I set about dismantling both boxes and transferring the gear set to the overdrive box, I now had a low enough gear to pull away but large spaces between the ratios, these were neatly filled in by switching in the overdrive, the switch for which was conveniently located on the top of the gearstick, so changes were relatively seamless.

So there you are, I ran these modified vehicles for about 25 years, if you want to know why I stopped converting them, just ask, but I expect you have already had more than you can stomach.

Peter

Very interesting Peter, Thanks for sharing that. People have a different mind set now than they did back then. With cars now being white goods and throw away items.

Peter.N. wrote: In '59 I did my first diesel conversion, Perkins were at the time making a whole range of kits to fit the 4/99 engine in a whole range of cars, Ford Consul and Zephyr, Austin Cambridge, Morris Oxford, Vauxhall Wyvern, Velox and Cresta to name but a few,

The first diesel car I ever went in was an Austin Cambridge that had been converted. I was only about six but knew then that is was different..

Peter.N. wrote: So there you are, I ran these modified vehicles for about 25 years, if you want to know why I stopped converting them, just ask,
Peter

My guess says that manufacturer produced diesel cars came along so it became unnecessary to convert them anymore...maybe even a CX diesel..

You'r right, once I drove a CX it was so far removed from everything that went before I never looked back. I used one or two of those BMC engines in conversions before I new better, I think it has the distinction of producing less torque than the starter motor! Not bad in its day though.

Peter

A very interesting read ,the earliest deisels I can remember where the hard to start and very noisy morris oxfords,probably 1970 ish,move on a few years to the arrival of the Peugot 309 and people never looked back.the speed of progress with the diesels and turbo deisels has been amazing,once driven most people said goodbye to petrol engines.
Thanks for your very warm welcome and fault finding help with my car today Peter,you are indeed a Gentleman.
I will soon have those cooling fans working,many thanks,
Gary.

Being a relative young kid, the first diesel in our household was a 1.9 Non Turbo Diesel Xantia in 1993. The first diesel and first new car ever we had. That lasted 9 months until it was written off, then he got a turbo diesel Xantia. That was much quicker. I remember my uncle having a 205 Diesel as well, that was a great car.

Hi Garry

Yes, those early diesels were hard to start in the very cold weather, and where I used to live in Kent - it was cold! The fuel would literally set so couldnt be pumped through, I used to put a gallon of petrol in with a tankful, that improved it a lot. It wasn't unusual to see a lorry with a fire lit under the engine in order to get it to start.

The cold start provisions of the day were interesting, this was before the days of glow plugs, the Perkins used a 'thermostart' unit, it fitted in the inlet manifold and had a heating element which when hot opened a thermostatic valve which allowed diesel to flow into it from a reservoir, when the engine was cranked it would burst into flames like a blowlamp, the theory being that it would heat the incoming air to promote combustion - it sometimes worked!

I still have several of these units in a draw in the garage, and a gear lever top overdrive switch

Peter

Hi Peter,

That's great. I never realised that conversions were sold on a 'proper' basis. More info on this aspect would be nice if you have the time?

My earliest experience with diesels was Mk1 Transit vans where you had to set the cold start lever under the bonnet before starting it up, once it started you had to catch it at about half throttle or after revving like crazy it would just die. The smoke generated was horrific, it used to literally stop traffic until it cleared. I don't think it would have passed an emissions test.

I started driving diesels on a regular basis in 1988 when I passed my test whilst working for a company that had a few diesel Astras on the fleet. The amount of miles they clocked up with just normal dealer maintenance (oil and filter every 4500 miles, proper service every 9000) was amazing, driven hard daily with usually a substantial load.

Please keep it coming.

Steve.

I think I had literature for all the conversions at one time but lost it on our move down here 40 years ago, but here is one I managed to lift from the net.

Wow, I bet that Consul flew. I had a Consul once: 1.7 litres of raw petrol power...