I'm very proud to present my "dream car"
I bought this car in November 1997 in the north of France, near to Valenciennes.
The former owner, a retired French teacher, changed the engine-oil, filled up the gas tank, and then I drove the 340 km back to Luxembourg.
The interesting thing is, that the car was not driven for the last 10 years
My travel-speed was ~110 km/h and except that I lost the exhaust muffler .....there is nothing else to report.
Now the rebuild to the original shape will start
Tasks performed from "day 1" until now
First of all, I changed the exhaust muffler. It's amazing to know, that once, during my lunchtime, I read a newspaper and saw that somebody was selling a brand-new (!) muffler for my car! I bought it 1 month before I decided to buy the car.
Replacement of the brake switch. The old one was dead due to water intrusion.
The next step was the addition of an electrical fuel pump. The reason for this change was,
that the mechanical one was not working after a period of a few days, and that because the membrane is probably? to old. I will be in February at the "Retromobile" show in Paris, and then I will buy all the needed spare and replacement parts.
The following change was a personal wish, but first, I want to say that
I'm trying to let the car in his original configuration.
I changed the electrical scheme from the direction indicators, that means:
I added 2 relays, so that the lamps are blinking now. First, it's really safer and it's also funny...
I want to precise, that all the electrical changes, relays and the wiring are absolutely hidden.
In the same style ,I changed also the original fuses to modern ones.
If somebody is interested to do the same, I 'll send him a detailed description and also
an electrical schematic about the required changes.
The 203 has 2 glove-boxes: one in the middle and one on the right side from dashboard.
I modified the right one :
I took the original (paper) body, shortened it, fixed a new wooden back panel with 3 switches for the electrical fuel pump, the ignition and the hazard (warning) lights .(That means that the 2 direction indicators will come out and the lamps are blinking).
In addition to that, there are a temperature gage, a RPM meter and a control lamp for the hazard lights.
Byclosing now the glove-box the car is in his original look.
When I worked on the electric, it was really bad to disconnect at each time the battery and so
I fixed a electric main switch between the ignition coil and the brake fluid recipient, of course with no additional holes.
February 1998
February was a very important month for me.
First I was at the RETROMOBILE Auto Show in Paris.
The main reason to go there was to get all the required spare parts and
I ‘ve got a lot of them:
2 new head lamps
1 complete set of engine gaskets, including cylinder head gasket
1 fuel pump and 1 carburetor repair kit
1 new distribution rotor and cap
2 new position lights (those fixed on the “C” panel , near to the direction lights)
Back at home I performed the following:
The change of the head lamps was not easy at all:
This, because the old bulbs had a “flat” plug compared to the normal one with the 3 contacts on the new lamp.
I was forced to modify the lamp-holder .
I cut a hole from approx. 5 cm in the back, took an (empty) mushroom box and soldered it above the hole....complicated?
The wires were also to short, so I added 10 cm of special high temperature cable (because there is the possibility to touch the hot surface from the lamp)
Again work for a whole Saturday!
The next step was the replacement of all the gaskets from the carburetor.(easy)
The position lights where 1.5mm bigger in diameter, but it was easy to fix that.
After a “wash and polish treatment” I went to the federal car registration and technical control.
Everything was O.K., except they remarked (correctly!) that my brake-lines and hoses where quite old....this will be the next thing to change.
MARCH - APRIL 1998
In less than a week I'll be at the Lomme-meeting and my car is not running yet.
The problem was a totally rusty fuel tank!!
When I installed, a few month ago, the electrical fuel pump (see at the beginning of the story) I fitted also a big fuel filter, one of these used with the modern fuel injection systems. This filter has a big size and it took around 300km to fill it up completely with rust coming from the tank...so it was possible to drive, and after a few km's theengine stalled because the inlet site from the pump was not able to "suck" enough.
Today I'll get my repaired tank back and I'll reinstall it.
The only thing that I will need after that is sunshine and up to Lomme.
The next week I'll be back on Tuesday and I promise too update my site with all what happened in Lomme.
LOMME 25-26 April 1998
The Lomme event was really fantastic!
So many 203's (and also other nice cars, see the Lomme site)
But, let's start with the beginning. After the re-installation of my fuel tank the car was running pretty good. The next step was to adjust the ignition timing. It was not so easy, because I hasn't the correct values. So my idea was to ask the correct values in Lomme and for now I let let the car run with no advance, the correction to more advance was possible with the manual timing correction.
Thursday, before the event, the car was ready and I started the clean up. Then I remarked that the rear left tire was wet, not from water, but from brake-oil!
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After a quick inspection I saw the disaster: The wheel brake cylinder was leaking. The whole brake was full with oil. (Pictures will follow)
So, the only remaining things to do was
1. phone to Neo Retro and order a whole new brake system (what I will get at Lomme.... expensive)
2. phone to the organisator of the Lomme event, Mr. Jean-Claude Lefebvre and tell him that it was not possible to be there with my 203. He was really shocked, because , it's what he told me, I was the only representative from Luxembourg, that he did a lot of advertisement (concerning me...) ,that he prepared a Luxembourgish flag for the "Defile"( car presentation by driving in a convoy through Lomme) and much more.
Saturday I reached Lomme (rain during the whole day ) with my daily car.
Then we drove to the event area and I started to do pictures and also a video
(if somebody is interested to get this VHS-PAL-Videotape from ~25 minutes please E-mail me)