Turbo charged 

2 CV`s????

ANY QUESTIONS?

Our last project car made the news in "Cars & Conversions" back in 1998, and these are the words of Journalist  Dave Walker, when he wrote about two very special 2CV`s, 

Photography by 

Anthony Butler.

Read about these first, then be strap your self in at our current venture

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A Turbo 2CV! The reaction was pretty universal- open mouth/wide eyed, followed by a big grin and then the inevitable question. WHY?? well why not, and come to that , why not race a 2CV? 2CV owners cab get a little bit touchy about their cars, they get pretty fed up with people taking the mickey: clockwork car, froggy snail, etc The trouble seems to be that no one takes them too seriously, except the people racing them. That's a mistake!

Alan Bradford runs a company called: Kent Citroën and he's now so involved in 2CV racing to the extent that he fancied a really fast road going one. Over a period of three years Alan prepped a new chassis, built a modified body, roll cage, race seats and topped it all off with a turbo conversion running full engine management. 

The suspension was modified along the same lines as the racers- but with  stock springs for the time being. The race car belongs to  Tim Evans and Dave Wise. It has been built to pretty tight regulations and while it isn't a front running first row of the grid device, it regularly finishes in the top dozen places from a grid of up to 30 cars. The engine is as tuned as the "regs" will allow and while performance isn't blistering it's all relative to the car next to you on the grid -  which is certainly going to be another 2CV

ENGINES
The two engines look similar, but Alan's turbo is a later 650cc aluminium barrel job with compression lowered to under 7:1. The turbo car features one-off fabricated inlet and exhaust plumbing - all in stainless steel. Racers must run a standard cam, but the turbo has a one off grind with more duration but less overlap than stock ( which is next to nothing anyway)

The induction is via two Kawasaki throttle bodies with Kawasaki injectors and the throttle operated by a twin cable motorcycle-system. The management was a one off special reading the stock 2CV sensors and sensing load via an in built vacuum/pressure sensor. This turned out to be a bit of a nightmare because the 2 CV engine generates very little vacuum, even on idle, and goes to full throttle almost as soon as you touch the pedal. Karl at Emerald had to zero the load reading in on all all the available vacuum to get any part load settings at all. The turbo gives boost from about 3,000 rpm but it doesn't really build until 3,750rpm when the waste gate limits boost to 13 psi ( almost 1 bar)

RACER

The race engine is built to strict regulations using the standard carb and inlet manifold, plus cast iron exhaust manifold, although the system is free. Regulations limit combustion chamber volume, and barrel-to-barrel dimensions are also limited to keep compression down. the standard cam is compulsory and in order to gain a fraction more power a switch is fitted to cut out the alternator. Ignition is standard clockwork and points.

Suspension

Both cars feature full roll cages and lowered suspension. At one time all you could do was lower the race cars, but these days you can cut the front arms and rotate them to reduce the massive castor angles that result from lowering. The suspension is about as basic as it gets. You have a simple swing arm that carries a king pin. Springs operate via a bell-crank directly off the arm onto a canister containing the suspension springs. As the arms move up,  the castor angle increases, so lowering by  massive amounts results in massive castor. The answer is to cut the arm and rotate the king pin section to regain some sensible castor angle. The Turbo runs roll bars but the racer doesn't. Both have adjustable damper units with the racer being lowered to the regulation limit while the Turbo sits a touch higher to cope with speed ramps ( a pain in the whatsit but  a fact of life these days).

The Racer runs a standard  four speed gearbox and brakes while the Turbo car has a  four cylinder Citroën GSA five speeder with GSA brakes. The chassis had to be cut and lengthened a couple of inches to make it all fit, but the cars looks standard from the outside - no bodywork lengthening at all.