Painting the bulkhead, boot and fitting body panels

The end of the metal work and painting is in sight. Because the inner wings at the back of the car were very scrubby and no cleaner could help me get them looking right, I decided to paint them as well, and I also covered the spare wheel floor. The color number (Fiat/Lancia – Ivorio Dolomite) I got from the paint shop doesn't match the original paint, but it comes close. My intention for this car is not to restore it to a showroom original state, so I decided to accept the color difference.

The bulkhead of the car was once painted over, I think during the restauration back in France in the early 2000's. I found that to be a bit sad, because they just painted over some nice original Citroen stamps and stickers. The only thing I could do was sand the black paint down and repaint the part in the creamy color that almost matches the rest of the cars paint. In the second picture below, it's really obvious the color isn't right. Maybe I will correct that someday, but now I am eager to go to the next part of the restaurion which is the drive train.

Because this is an old 2CV, it has so called suicide doors that can be slid in place just like the rear doors of a 2CV. I cleaned up the doors, but didn't do any derusting, sanding or painting on them. I wil touch up a few nasty spots, but it seem a good idea not to do to much to them except small corrections and rust proofing them. After the doors on the right side were fitted, it started to look like a car again even more so than before.

The cherry on the cake for this day was test fitting the new old stock pedal I bought at the Dutch 2CV club. I fitted nicely. It is a different model that was originally fitted to this car. The pedal that should be fitted slides in a curly shaped part that is welded onto the botton bulkhead panel. But for the new reproduction parts they thought "well, just fit the pedal mount of the later models, it will be fine". So I now have a pedal that uses a piece of hard rubber in the pedal that clicks onto a piece of metal on the bulkhead. It can pivot on the bottom rubber insert part when you use the gaspedal. When the piece of rubber is worn, you can replace it, so I guess that was the improvement Citroen had in mind when they changed from the old metal-on-metal system to this solution.