I don't think color coding was their big mistake. You got it wrong, by the way. Red is their LHS, where the S stands for 'synthetic'.
In my eyes, the big mistakes with the DS' introduction were non available training and information to the dealerships and a hydraulic fluid that ate its gaskets.
After all a DS is quite straight forward to maintain, it's just different than other cars. Had the dealers and their mechanics understood the difference, it would've been quite a bit easier...
Gene S. Park ( snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :
Well, quite.
Just remind me when it was that the US stopped insisting on sealed beam lights and started accepting that maybe a *bulb* might actually work... A perfectly normal, bog standard bulb just like the rest of the world had been using almost exclusively for *decades*...
OTOH, it's not like the europeans used to have common sense in their regulations - it's just that Citroëns are built to european specs, so it's not that noticeable.
Look at how american cars had to be butchered to comply with european regulations. I remember that in the 94 or 95 the third brake light was a no-no. In 98 or so it was a requirement.
Even Citroëns had their trouble with regulations: the DS was built without rear brakes, but the french 'inspection des mines' didn't approve until brakes were added. Consequently the engineers added brakes that would seize up in two years from not being used and everybody was happy ;)
I remember having to throw a couple of bags of mortar mix into the trunk of my DS every year to get it to exert enough braking force to pass my state inspection's "drive it up here and step-on-'em" brake tester gizmo.
I think the sealed beam vs. bulb thing was more a matter of petrified old-line thinking that failed to accept the improvement in quartz-iodine lamp technology and bulb-alignment over the old tungsten filament bulbs which would dim and corrode and get out of alignment since that is what the sealed beams, though also tungsten filaments, had been developed and legislated into a requirement to replace. AFAIK our government still doesn't trust us to adjust our headlights for load leveling from inside the car - from what I've seen with most drivers here in the states, that may well be a good thing! What I wish they would do is arrange to require something that would shut off fog lights when it's clear or daytime and would turn on headlights when the wipers are on (there are a lot of idiots out there). There is one very tiny benefit to sealed beams left - when the headlight burns out, the replacement is an entire new unit - you never have to worry about how to re-silver the reflectors.
It used to be fun to 'confuse' the various state inspection bubbas and their testing devices after having switched various vehicles over to quartz-iodine headlamps from the sealed beam units - despite head scratching, nobody ever failed me for the lights being too bright or for the pattern being to well defined either for that matter.
The last time I used a D for a regular driver was in the late '70's and early to mid '80's in New York City - there was never a problem with acceleration from lights or staying with traffic in the D - mostly due to the fact that there was so much traffic and so little opportunity to accelerate. I don't think I'd be all that happy about putting a D into the cut and thrust "no, me first" type of urban commuting that I have to put up with around Washington, DC - which more and more seems to require the quick off the line foot to the floor get to the front of the pack before the next guy and slip into the slot between and before the other guy can get there type of driving that these rice-burner pocket racers seem to be suited for - disposable cars for disposable people. I'd be happy to use the D daily in a more relaxed smaller town, country driving or less 'strident' urban envrionment - but not for the current commute - I wouldn't do it to the D.
LHS is vegetable base. The French were big on veg fluids and greases:Peugeots used a veg based heavy oil in their rear ends for a long time. They colored it red for, well, no good reason. The problem is there was already the existing standard, which designated vegetable fluids blue.
LHM they therefore dyed green to differentiate it. I guess that's better than blue or purple.
LHM is used in other cars and in some ag equipment: IH Case dealers carry it. However, 5606 works fine as a substitute. So does Dexron as long as it is changed out regularly and the car not operated in very cold weather. Everyone panics because "it has friction modifiers". It does, but they don't affect rubber on polished steel: they affect clutch surfaces. Dexron works fine in unpowered aircraft brake cylinders too, (they are mineral base) unless they get extremely cold, then they are sluggish.
Oddly enough I saw a Studillac at the parking lot car show yesterday- a Studebaker with a Cadillac engine. The owner did it just recently with a kit still available. That was a popular swap in the Eisenhower era.
Oh, it might well be "synthetic" in the lexicon, but none the less Cit red fluid is alcohol-plant oil. Since regular DOT brake fluid is a semiacceptable sunstitute probably castor bean oil.
No. That was originally a RAF standard adoped by aviation worldwide and then by most of the hydraulic business. Exceptions are ag and specialized applications like food grade and high dielectric-powerline cherry picker-applications.
Because....the rest of the world does it that way and it makes sense?
Yes, although a larger percentage of cars are slushbox because of the high amount of traffic jam commuting, which is tough on clutches. And leg muscles. All my toys have been manual shift: most of my daily drivers automatic because they were cheap when I got them.
And for french cars. Which in 1950s US certainly qualified as specialized application :-)
Nobody in the rest of the world put hydraulic fluid in their car's suspensions. One would think that, if you are the first to do something, that it doesn't need to make sense to anybody else.
Well, if cars were the major user of active hydraulics then they could set the standard. One may as well say having green wires on positive and red on negative wouild be OK.
You are a religious defender of Citroen, not a rational thinker.
Course I like my DS a lot, it's in my view one of the best and prettiest cars in the world. If one insists on driving a forty year old car, one doesn't qualify as rational.
I still fail to see the tragic in coloring fluid in another way than aircraft hydraulics has it as standard. Standardize where it makes sense (it does make a bunch of sense in airplanes), but if you don't expect your average Boeing mechanic to drain or top off your car, where's the benefit?
It says in big fat letters on the reservoir and in the owner's manual what goes in there. Your Citroën dealer and roadside assistance know what to do. So what?
( snipped-for-privacy@cbgb.net) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :
In what way?
6v/12v? Positive earth, negative earth? Certainly no commonality in wiring colours.
Probably because it was technically very, very different to every other car in production at the time. You really think that the fact the hydraulic fluid was a different colour was the biggest difference between the D and a Ford?
You don't think the fact that it was the first production car with disk brakes might have not helped, even before the very presence of hydraulics running at a pressure unseen in any other automotive application until the recent advent of common rail diesels?
In what way?
Why is one needed in a closed system?
Cobblers. Drop it flat, remove and empty the tank. The system's self bleeding, apart from the brakes which are easier to bleed than a normal car.
So what?
Don't be so ridiculous. We're about to do 3,000 miles round Scandinavia in a 2cv. A few years ago, we did 3,500 miles across the US from Boston to Sacramento in a 2cv that'd just done Sacramento to Boston. Not one problem on that trip, and I don't expect any on this trip.
Actually compared to boats....they were commonly 6, 12, 18, 24 or 32, and not rarely 110v DC. You can still get custom alternators for those and more odd voltages.
No. Believe it or not in the 50s the biggest difference is that you never heard of a wheel coming off a Ford at 60-80 mph. Cits lost wheels until some change was made, around '60 or so. I don't remember the exact fix but I remember a car in the shop that lost a wheel and did a fair amount of sheet metal damage. The owner was a woman and she would never drive it again. We sold it for her to a male hairdresser who was the first really blatantly swish guy I had ever met in my young life. I must have been five or six.
The hydraulic fluid colors were not by any means the #1 problem. The car was very hard to work on in the sense of access until you learned you could get the front fenders off. Cit hobbyists think it's all in fun but in a working shop things like stovebolt heads are a real issue.
There was also the little matter that small hydraulic leaks could kill you. The smaller the leak the more dangerous. That's true of diesel injection systems too. Most US diesels had the HP sections internal to the engine. The long Bosch pumps had long steel lines and they could leak a high pressure jet that would inject you with diesel fuel (bad) or air (worse).
Hydraulics were used in commercial vehicles, and all manner of industrial and stationary apps at higher pressure than the Cit system, which as I remember is 2000 or 3000 psi. Even in 1955 that was not terribly adventurous pressurewise. The regular old Bosch diesel system works at those pressures.
A mule is a hydraulic pump on a cart or stand you patch in so the system can be thoroughly tested. Most also incorporate high level filters as well.
Because....the metal and rubber parts wear and send the particles through the system, causing more wear?
Drop it flat? That's the problem. There's no dump valve.
Well, you can't find them anywhere. In 1955, there were several standard fitting lines available. Most of them still are.
In the Midwest, high winds could flip it over. And a modest collision even in a VW Beetle, could be fatal.
I drove a Dafodil recently. It was fine. The problems were when the belt drive wasn't set up right. I really liked the little buggers, of course, they were underpowered.
Remember, I saw every oddball car to come through the US-and most all European cars did before '67 or so when US emissions cert became a bother, keeping marginal lines out- from about '57 or 58, when I was old enough to know one from another, until the early 70s. When the import car business became mostly Japanese we got out for several reasons. Where we did well was on the oddball stuff. Japanese cars were competitive enough you couldn't charge a premium over regular cars anymore. The dealers back then would work on them cheaper than the import shops.
( snipped-for-privacy@cbgb.net) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :
That'll be the move from centre-fix wheels to five-stud, probably.
Never ever heard of a centre-fix coming off a D.
It's true of any high-pressure hydraulic system. And?
Hell, you lot don't even get common-rail diesels, which run at about
2,500 bar compared to Citroen's 70 bar...
So why not just spin the system pump up either with the engine or via a belt to an external power source, like an electric drill?
...which is why there's an (often neglected) change interval - especially on LHS cars, where the fluid's hygroscopic. Shame your DoT actively banned LHM for two years after Citroen had switched the rest of the world's Ds over.
Of course there is.
Just select full-flat, then crack the screw on the pressure regulator open a turn or so. Bingo. RTFM.
Oh, ffs... They'd have been available through the importers and dealer chain, and still are through Cit specialists.
Go and drive one, then come back when you have a clue.
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