1977 GS 1220 Pallas

[Nitephyre]

Subarus are reliable?

[PXL265]

When you don't drive them they are.....

[AxGT]

Work continues...
Now that the car is down at my place, I've got some new tyres on, been getting on with the body work, and working on fixing some hydraulic return leaks.

The factory tyres for the GS's were Michelin X radials, at 145SR15, which roughly translates to 145/80 R15. As you can imagine, choices are somewhat limited, but Nakang do make a CX-668, which comes in the right size, and get reasonable reviews.

I grabbed 5 of them from Tyroola, pulled the front wheels (and my two spare wheels) off the car, and sent them off to the local tyre shop.
Turns out that 3 of the 4 rims had tubes in them, due to corrosion on the wheels, and the tyre guy recommended I clean up the rims. He stripped off the existing tyres, and I took them home and started stripping them.

The following picture shows them in various stages of repair. You'll notice that one of the wheels (the stripped one) is a different structure. It is for a different trim level GS - I'll use that one as my spare tyre.


Ive been using Josco and Norton polymer stripping discs on my angle grinder - they work really well, but they're ~$25 each, and the panels really chew through them.
After a short amount of time, they lose their edges, so its a real pain getting into the corners. I did some looking around on ebay, and found some purple polymer stripping discs that are available through a bunch of different vendors - so they're all coming out of a factory in china somehow. Xnke mentioned on discord that he'd found them really good, so I bought a pack of 5 for $39.

They work great, and seem to last a bit longer than the more expensive discs - so win win.



After I'd primered and sanded the wheels back, I sprayed them in Citroen AC89 (Gris Met), which is one of the factory colours for the wheels.


They came up pretty well - most of it is going to be hidden behind wheel trims anyway, but its nice to know that they're done.

I dropped them down to the tyre guy, and he fitted up the Nakangs without any issues.



And fitted to the car.



Panels that need more than a respray are the:

• Bonnet
• Front left/right guards
• Front left/right doors
• Back Left door
• Scuttle
• Roof

I'd already stabilised the right hand guard, it needs more work, but will do for the roadworthy. The left side guard had a small dint at the front, and a crack.
I welded up the crack, and started stripping pain where I noticed bubbling - I found some bog on the outside where it had taken a hit, so started the repair.


After a bit of sanding and a few more coats, it was good enough for spray putty to bring it up to the same level as the existing paint


I put a coat of primer surfacer on the sanded spray putty, and that will suffice until I get a real spray gun (been using cans so far)

After this, the scuttle got some work. There were no dints, but there was a bit of surface rust forming near the edges, and inside the vents


Stripping discs dealt with most of it, with the finger sander needed for some tight corners, and a dremel with a fairly fine cutter worked for getting the rust inside the vents dealt with.
After that, the same spray putty treatment as the guard.



I've also repaired the battery tray - there was a pinhole which I've bogged, and I've dealt with the rust I could see.



With some colour, it looks alright - I'm going to have to do the bay at some stage down the line, but this will do for now.



Lastly, I've been fixing some hydraulic leaks in the return system.
The return lines from the suspension, braking system, and the pressure regulators all eventually come into a 5 way junction, which has a larger hose that feeds back into the system reservior. This can be seen (a bit) below - look for the hose clamp


All of the individual return tubes are 4mm internal diameter, but the union is 6 or 7mm. Some of the Citroen part suppliers make up joiners to suit,
so I ordered a bag (amongst other things). The following shows one of the pipes, looking in from the larger end.


This is all well and good, but the suppliers pipes were a really loose fit on the union, i measured, and they were almost 2mm too large. So, leaks continued.
To fix this, I modelled up some internal sleeves in Onshape, and printed them out of TPU (which is flexible, and fuel/hydraulic fluid safe).


These are an earlier iteration on the printer. They were not quite big enough (both external diameter, and lengthwise.


After using these on the fitting, leaks seem to have stopped. Fingers crossed.

So, now we're up to date. Next steps are to continue the panel work (put colour on the scuttle, and then still have the doors, bonnet, and roof to go), get the panels back on the car, and then get the front valance, and headlights installed. Hopefully we're closer to roadworthy.

[9triton]

good update

got link for the purple disks?

[AxGT]

good update

got link for the purple disks?

Cheers,
Here is the 5 pack I got.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/5-x-125m...72.m2749.l2649
Same seller also has a 10 pack for $59.95