Pretty, please . . .

My last post was about cleaning. This post is about going from beast to beauty, making it pretty. For a time, whenever I worked on the car, even coming in to the garage just to look or to contemplate my next move, I got oil streaks on my clothes. Very annoying! I finally broke down and purchased some black mechanic's overall. They arrived just in time for the next step; painting the engine room and front suspension arms.

The dark hole where time began, my engine room before pressure washing.

After I had pressure washed the engine room, a process in which you move dirt and grime from the object to the subject, I cleaned off oil residue with lacquer thinner. Then I dulled the surface with 320 grit wet sand. The H-frame was welded with my newly acquired MIG welder. Unfortunately, I had a malfunctioning welding helmet and I was not friends with the gas regulator. In addition, I was too eager to go live, so instead of doing some practice beads, I did my first weld live on the frame. So the welds will not win any beauty contest, but they got done. Surprisingly, the before pictures did not show any visible cracks here, despite David Hume's insisting that I look again.

H-frame detail before welding. No visible cracks, despite vigorous wire brush work. What you can see though is the moon sliver shaped void between the plate and the weld (below the weld). I guess they had lazy robots back then.

David also told me to check the tightness of the bolts holding the suspension. In his experience the higher the mileage of the car the looser the suspension bolts. A low mileage car will allow 1.5-2 full revolution tightening of these bolts. I could only manage 1/2 to 3/4 turns.

One of my clutsy welds with my new MIG. Note my masking technique, using aluminum foil, around complicated parts. It actually worked very well and was a whole lot easier to deal with than masking tape both in application and removal.

The few spots of bare metal spots were then primed with weld through primer. Now it was time to make decisions about paints. Strangely, I could not find information about the the original grey color of the frame legs. Not even folks on the Sports Maserati List knew. David suggested Grey Dupli-Color DA 1610, medium grey. From a sample it seemed a good match. But, I wanted a durable finish, so I searched the internet and happened upon Stephane Palumbo's site for his SM renovations http://stephane.patchou.com/. There, Stephane suggested AC 092 was the color for the frame. In an email he, said he found it on a Swiss Citroen restorers web site, http://www.citrothello.net/. It look good and I took a chance and ordered some LIMCO (made by BASF) from my local auto paint supplier. It is a hardener type paint, which is exactly what I wanted for durability. Below you can see a sample put on the frame leg to check the match. I figured that the paint had faded a little in the 38 years since it was painted , so I was satisfied.

Paint sample of AC092 on top of the original 38 year old paint.

I also had the black paint used on all small metal parts matched. but, when I started to paint the suspension arms, I realized it was too grey and I found a better match at Ace Hardware, a black semigloss in a spray can. Of course I lost the benefit of the hardener, but c'est la vie.

On Citrothello's site I also saw how they blended the body color with the frame color. It looked odd and cheap but David Hume confirmed this to be the factory practice.

Correct paint blending from factory. Courtesy of Citrothello.net. Note the blend line, right behind the rear transverse engine support member.

My original paint color was a green metallic, AC 527 Vert Argenté Métallisé. In fact all my cars were the same color, so I'm guessing it was a popular choice in 1972. To nurture the dream of rebuilding my SM, I had long had a Dutch picture of an SM as a computer background. Maybe it was love at first sight or just familiarity but I wanted my car to be that color. Again, I searched all over the internet and finally identified the color on a French site, AC 640 Bleu Delta Métallisé. Incidentally, I love this picture with the Citroen as the only colored object, the teed off house wife having to share the park bench withe two drunk down-and-outs. It's the typical bold Citroen take on advertising!

One of my favorite Citroen SM pictures and my Computer background for the last 5 years.

Above My engine room after painting Correct blending of frame color with body color AC 640 Bleu Delta Métallisé. Below, my engine before painting for comparison.