Preparing the 2CV to receive the BMW engine

by Mark

1988 CITROEN 2CV

Now we have an engine ready and a pile of bits to fit, we need to prepare the 2CV to fit the engine and this means removing the old engine. On a 2CV this is very easy as access is excellent. This is what the car looks like with the bonnet removed...

The next step is to remove the wings, bumper and light bar. We can now see the engine, gearbox, driveshafts, brakes and so on...

We can now remove a lot of the ancillaries in preparation for lifting the engine out. We can take the fan that bolted to the crank off along with the alternator that was connected to the crank by a belt. The exhaust is disconnected and we can remove the heat exchangers. I'm leaving the manifold in place so that I don't have to crack the very rusty bolts and we can remove the air filter and carb. We can also disconnect the loom as it connects to the engine.

The engine and the gearbox are bolted to the chassis and all that remains is to connect an engine hoist the the engine, undo the bolts and lift it our. On my last 2cv (when I was a lot younger) we lifted the engine out by hand to change the clutch but I'm not sure I fancy the consequences of trying that these days. What we're left with is the bare chassis. You can see the driveshafts laid on the suspension arms and the gearbox mount in the middle of the cross-suspension member. The state of the chassis here is excellent as at some point the original was replaced with a galvanised chassis.