1973 Citroen SM lemons car

I'm kind of late to start a build thread, and I might not update it much soon as we are in thrash mode to get the car done in time for the race at Thompson August 7-9, but thought I'd share what was going on to date.

Our team (3 Pedal Mafia), was sad that we hadn't done anything interesting enough to win IOE since the Rolls Royce in 2013, so last fall we found a $900 non running 1973 Citroen SM on Craigslist in Rhode Island.

Here it is as we found it:

From what we could tell by a quick look and what we found in the glove box, the car had last been on the road in 1991. It has 38k miles showing. It has been in some sort of front end collision that was partially repaired, and there are some crispy wires and plenty of hack looking repairs.

How hard could it be?

We got it home and it basically sat in the yard for a long time, as we were working on winning class C in the Boat for a few races (we did), and then got involved in house projects and the long cold winter. The spring went by pretty quickly with other things and several other races and we only really started working on it a few weeks ago.

We started off by putting in the roll cage, that means we are committed!

The car has these giant flat sills that made doing base plates really easy. This cage was one of our best for fitment, the hoop and a pillar bars really follow the body lines nicely. We didn't do X bars or nascar bars on the doors as we plan on this being a one-and done car shooting for the IOE, so we want it safe, but not too much effort.

Pick up about 2 weeks ago when I finally had the parts to get it running. Some parts in the distributor were totally fried, and the funky distributor is only in these and Maserati Merack's, and a new cap was about $250, new points were $225, and then you still have points. I got in touch with a guy named John Titus who is one of the real gurus on these cars, and he has been very very helpful. He sells a kit he makes to adapt a Buick V6 distributor cap and rotor with a pertronix ignitor to the original Marchal distributor housing. I bought this from John, and he has been very helpful with other questions.

Once the distributor was on, I hooked up a new starter solenoid with a button (stock wiring for this is problematic), a gas bottle and cleaned up some grounds and got it to turn over, eventually fire and run!
Video: Video on the book of faces

Once we had it running a bit, even though it was pig rich, timed only by guess, and running oil from who knows when, we found that the suspension even pumped itself up!

Since then, I've been struggling with so much wiring, trying to get anything to work. Every bit has been taking it all apart, cleaning up every electrical connection and ground that I can find, and gradually bringing it back to life, things like brake lights, gauges, warning lights, etc. It's been a battle and pretty frustrating at times, especially as the wiring diagrams I have are not great (the OEM ones), and much of the documentation I have is in French, which I barely speak anymore. The car does seem to go into both drive and reverse, and the power steering seems to work, but the brakes do not, they need bleeding. The suspension spheres are also discharged after so many years, so I got some replacements from Europe and California, that just arrived the other day.

This past weekend we did get a lot done, we got the seat, belts, killswitch all in. We got tow points on and marked, ducting to the radiator, cooling system flushed, fans put back on, brake ducts, etc. We replaced the completely rotten and strange looking exhaust with a pair of glass packs and bends out the sides in front of the rear wheels for true dual exhaust that sounds pretty crappy for an italian V6, but it gets the exhaust out.

This weekend we have a lot to do: Install all 5 new spheres, bleed the brakes, re-center and bleed the steering (which is self centering by power and 2 turns lock to lock), set timing, install a new facet fuel pump and new lines, figure out how to get the windows down, maybe install a new tach as the stock one is dead, tension the timing chains, rebuild the 3 Weber 42DNCFs if the gaskets get here in time, numbers, and work on theming. The theme for this race with this car, a Citroen SM? S&M. The Civic and TR are Doms, the SM is the sub. The whole team plans to wear some S&M gear for much of the weekend, which will be nice in the hot weather with assless chaps.

Anyway, I'll get more posted after this weekend. This is an amazing car in many ways, so ahead of its time and unique, and what makes it wonderful also makes it a real PITA for this sort of thing. I just hope it holds together enough to turn some laps. We have a week left.

Whaaaaaaaa?????

How do you like that clitoris the French call a brake pedal?

I've always hated these cars.

But I expect to love, love, love this thread! I am rooting for you guys. I may even have to make the trek to Thompson to see how this turns out.

That thing looks almost to nice to race. I'm impressed that you are running the Citroën (Maserati?) engine and hydrosuperfantastic suspension.

Please change the rubber hoses to the calipers. One of them is going to lock up. This is one of those items that yes will cost you lots of time chasing issues and some of that fluid that no one will believe can be that expensive. There are going to be flex hoses at the rear on the trailing arms.

If the system provides clamping pressure at the wheels that will not release when you are not on the brake button, the rubber in the lines have become a one way valve.

I hope you saved or sold those seats for the cost of the car. Everything about this car is so cool and such a PITA. They say that you have to be a left handed to easily work on these cars, is it true?

Is it wrong I sort of want this as a dd?

In reply to mndsm:

Bet it rides like a dream

Thanks guys. There is pretty much no way to get rid of th stock systems unless you got rid of ALL of them and basically completely re engineered the car, they are all quite integrated. So that means keeping the fragile Maserati 3.0 V6, Borg Warner 35 automatic (sadly not a 5speed), all hydropneumatique suspension/brakes/steering, including the inboard front brakes, tiny little brake button with 1" of travel, backwards mounted engine (front is at the firewall, this is mid engined) and all that goes with it. It really all together makes up the character of this car.

Good news on the rubber hose front, it has very few thanks to the inboard brakes.

The ride should be spectacular once we put the all new suspension spheres on.

Awesome.

Any chance you can add a pedal that does something silly like closes the throttle when you press it? Call it the 'engine protection pedal' or something like that? That way you can stay true to your namesake.

Those old Citroens are so amazing and I wish more of them survived in my general area. They are cool and weird in equal doses, and the cool might only be for people like us.

Little surprised you can get new-to-you suspension spheres and still make it into a LeMons-level budget. Are these cars really common enough to have cheap wrecker parts?

Run it with the (french) sub theme and just point everyone by on the first lap while waving a white flag?

In reply to johndej:

Yes, if you wave a white Subway flag and point by with baguettes.

Also paint the helmets like mimes, and Scotch tape berets to them.

Holy crap. Even I am not brave enough to try to drag a French/Italian car to LeMons! Good on ya!

I'd paint the thing like one of those loaves of French bread, then dress everyone in mime outfits.

I like the mime idea, but the mimes should be yelling offensive things at one another through the duration of the event

Lots more work done last weekend.
I cleaned and re-gasketed the carbs, all 3 Weber 42DNCFs, then made a poor attempt to tune them

We found some wildlife remnants in the nest of hydraulic lines, and here you an also see the front suspension, it looks strange with no brakes out there!

Chrissy worked on buffing out the original paint, which turned out fairly well!

Dan and Jim worked on wiring and plumbing in the new facet fuel pump

And we had these hella sweet race tires mounted. These were the best thing I could find in a 15" tire anywhere close to 26" overall diameter. At least they are V rated and listed as an "High Performance All Season" tire with Tire Rack. At $58 each, we can wipe them out and I'm not all that upset.

Among other things we don't have pictures of, we got a lot of theming done, re-centered the steering, bled out all the brakes and steering, tuned the carbs a bit and set the timing, though it still doesn't seem right. We found that one side of the steering rack wasn't bolted down at all, so we fixed that. We have a persistent exhaust leak at the end of the downpipes where they mate with the mid pipes, the stock connection kind of sucks but changing it would be quite hard as the downpipes are really thick and hard to get to to weld anything else on there, we'll see how it goes.

I also found that it seems there is an internal leak in the transmission, as fluid from the trans (Borg Warner 35) seems to be making its way into the differential, so tonight I'll change the diff fluid out and put in a bottle of Lucas trans fix in the transmission to see how that goes.

We took it for a half mile test drive around the block, and the trans is definitely funny, but that might be from the lack of fluid. I tightened up the bands and combined with the fluid change we'll see how that goes.

Lots of stuff continues to start to work randomly, like the fuel gauge and low fuel warning light, now suddenly working. Who knew.

I think the engine and trans are going to have a race to see which can blow up first. Amazing with only 38k miles.

Costumes for the weekend are coming together quite well...pics to follow after the event to not spoil the surprise.

How much can you take off the budget if you get EPA funding for providing an effective habitat for indigenous wildlife?