Repairs & Maintenance

If you drive through this country, you’ll notice these things. Now, sure they’re the average looking termite mound, but these ones are a little bit special. They’re called a magnetic termite mound. And the termites inside can actually build their nest using the magnetic fields of the earth.

So they’ll actually build their nest to capture the sun’s rays. So the sun obviously, east-west, and the mound, its thinnest point will run north, south. So you can imagine if you were lost in the bush, and you were running’ through this country. You’re lost. You’ve got no compass. You could actually use this termite mound to give you direction. I’ve just got a compass here, and I’m just going to do a bit of a check, so that’s magnetic north there, and that’s the thinnest part of the mound. (more…)

This week I have a great tip for making homemade hardwood floor cleaner using a few simple ingredients you probably already have around the house. That’s what we’re talking about on this week’s tidbit.

I love my hardwood floors to be shiny and clean but I find a lot of the store bought products leave them looking dull and they don’t get them really clean. And if it’s one thing I absolutely cannot stand, it’s spending money on products that are subpar; especially when I can get better results making them myself. You will need 2 cups of water (or warm water) a 3rd of a cup of white vinegar & a quarter cup of rubbing alcohol. (more…)

Today I’m going to explain how to keep your furniture from scratching your hardwood floors. If you’re in a situation where you’re moving into a house or just rearranging a room. You have hardwood floors then you’re going to need to think about how to protect those hardwood floors from the furniture and how to prevent the furniture from scratching the hardwood floors.

Basically there’s one surefire way to do this and it is a felt pad. Basically when you have a piece of furniture and you have hardwood floors you have to figure out where the furniture touches the hardwood floors. That point is going to be what you want to protect and the size of that point is going to determine the size of the felt pad that you choose. Basically felt pads come in a couple of different sizes. (more…)

This was a question that recently was sent in to me, and I covered it a bit in the article that I wrote about removing the Citroen D Model fuel tank, but I will go into greater depth here. What I will be explaining here is the removal of a fastener from your vintage Citroen . Most of these fasteners will be 25 plus years old, and you are perhaps removing them for the first time since the Citroen was new.

Depending on the location and the vintage, and of course where a fastener has spent it’s life, can have a great deal to do with how difficult it might be to remove when you want to take it apart. When I say location, I mean if the fastener is located under the dash of your Citroen or holding the front bumper on will make a great deal of difference as to how you want to approach removal.

If the Citroen was ever run in the winter on salty streets, or for that matter lived in the  humid eastern part of the U.S. or the drier western part will also make a huge difference. If the fastener is located inside the Citroen interior and did not see any corrosive damage, it should be relatively easy to remove. But, if it spent it’s life on the outside, (more…)

Recently we have gotten several questions about Citroen CX brakes. Most often it is a case of the person replacing the pads on their front brakes, but not having replaced the rotors.

Here is the situation with this and any other modern car out in the real world when getting brake work done today. If you don’t want your brakes to pulse or chatter after you replace the pads, you have to replace the rotors also.

The manufacturers really don’t give you much tolerance to work with to turn or resurface the brakes anymore, so this is the best thing to do if you want to eliminate the chance of brake pulsing after you go to the work of replacing the pads.

This issue sort of popped it’s head with the late U.S. speced Citroen DS cars. Brake squeal and pad glazing was a problem, so the pads were made out of a harder and more aggressive compound, and the rotors were made from a softer metal. This got rid of the squeal and glazing for the most part, but it meant that rotors wore out much faster. This problem continues with the Citorën CX models that are in this country. (more…)