A Brief History:
The Ax Sport was a LHD spec car only. It visually looks like the GT, sharing the same bodykit, but came with steel wheels as standard, and did not have electric windows or central locking.
The engine was the TU24 series, with a capacity of 1294cc. (Bore of 75mm stroke 73.2mm) In addition it had twin Solex carbs (Yes Solex, unlike the 205 rallye, which used Webbers as apparently the Webbers were too tall and wouldn't fit under the bonnet!).
As a result the standard engine was very revvy making 95bhp at the flywheel at 6800rpm. (The engine actually started life as a modified version of the TU3S version, and was designed in house.
The head from the sport is an entirely different casting than that of the GT. It has much bigger valves 31mm and 39mm compared to 29.4mm and 36.8mm, and has a specific cam and exhaust system.
The gearbox was also different to the already low ratio GT box. The final drive was changed from 18/82 to the 14/60 ratio as later used in the S1 106 rallye.
Combined with a very light weight model of the ax (715kg) this made for lively performance. Top speed was 186km/h and 0-60 the same as the 205 GTi 1.6! At 8.8 secs.
The only original colour was white, later red, black and grey were introduced, along with 14" GT alloys, which incidentally required narrower tyres than the original 13" wheels which the sport was using.
An AX Sport
In 1987 Citroen together with TOTAL and MICHELIN created the 'Challenge Citroen-Michelin-Total Championship'. This would select three drivers for the factory team in the World Rally Championship in 1988.
Now I know that of these 3 cars, one was piloted by Dimi Mavropolous, and I know that car is no more, As a friend has half of it! The rot was excessive, and the car was crushed. Not before he'd managed to get some bits off it first though! This would be around 2000/2001.
It is one of these 3 cars that is my yellow ax sport, the other car is probably out there somewhere in France I should imagine.
And so it began..
So in early 2006, a friend manage to track this 3rd ax sport down, sat in Derbyshire, about to broken. By the time he get down there he found the front suspension had already been sold, and the car is in bits. It had been resprayed recently in yellow, with smooth blue kit. It sat in full Forest spec, despite the car having spent most of its life in tarmac rallies. The shell looks to be in very good condition with absolutely no rust anywhere! There's never been any underseal on the car either so that was a pleasant find! The interior was rough! The paint was shoddy and looked like it had been daubed on with a brush, and possibley was dulex one coat white emulsion! The dash was shattered in many places, the electrics were lying everywhere.
The Pic doesnt do it justice, to just how nasty the paint was
If you look carefully the dash is bowing in the middle under its own weight! It was completley shattered beyond belief!
There would be a lot of work, but the car showed massive potential with a full weld in multipoint cage, seam welding through out, and a good solid shell, with bronze tint Perspex windows already in place!
My car in the Rally Sunseeker - its last event
And so 1 week later a shell arrives outside my friends house, and his bank manager phones up to ask what the hell is going on with his bank balance.. lol
Mid dismantling
Now at this point I should point out that my friend had another full race spec ax GTi outside hishouse. This car was prepped by him but would be stripped for parts to build the Sport up.
The Rebuild
The shell as a bit if a tip
The rebuild initially, like all good projects, started with a complete strip down! The interior was pulled out, all wires, switches, etc, all removed to leave just a blank shell.
Now many will argue the point that what he did next was wrong. The car had never seen undersealed, sod that! A can of underseal weighs roughly 1KG, and one can live with that to prevent this car from rusting! So that was painted on all over, apart from the boot area (This area got resprayed white) This shell was absolutely solid! Without a hint of rust anywhere!
The original paint was flatted out, or totally removed using a blow torch where it was too rough to do anything else with.
This was then all masked up and resprayed in celly EWT alpine white. This may not be the exact paint code for the sport, but is for the GT.. so it will do.
Primer
The top coat
The engine bay had the same treatment. There was a lot of staining here, so it took a long time to clean back to the metal in places.
The engine from his old race car was then stripped down and rebuilt in this shell. The bare block had new bearings, and a full rebuild and was then installed to an overhauled GT gearbox. Unfortunately funds hadn't stretched to a LSD at this point.
Note the excessive cut out throught the bulkhead to create a huge airbox space for the side draught carbs.
Note also the engine mounts used. He opted for solid engine mounts from the ax sport competition car. However a note of warning! The car had pulled out of the sunseeker due to the rear engine mount snapping! This was because they were running solid engine mounts all round! Which you are not supposed to do! There was simply no give, and the rear mount broke. So he'd gone for an uprated rubber rear mount on a lengthened bracket to angle the engine slightly...
Ignore the cam pulley, its since been replaced!
Gearbox side mount.. note the battery tray modifications.
With the engine bay cleaned and painted he started on cleaning and building the twin adjustable pedal box. This is in car controlled. The brake lines are stainless braided all throughout out the car, and obviously run on a front / rear split. He prefered doing it like this rather than running a combination of copper line and stainless flexies.
Pedal box - yes I know the mc's are upside down, but it was just trial run
The steering rack was cleaned up and thus set about the suspension. Up front there are Leda 2 1/4 inch fully adjustables with eccentric top mounts, and negative camber fully adjustable wishbones, with the special Citroen sport wishbone mounts with built in bracketry for the sump guard.
Ledas in place - you can see the fresh underseal and note the small alloy plates over the wishbone mounts.
The rose jointed wishbones
The track rod ends were further modified to use rose joints in the inner joint.
At the rear he rebuilt the Dimi Mavropolous rear beam using a new tube axle (as the original was showing signs of wear). This incorporates solid alloy mounting bushes, 23mm Torsion bars, and a one off custom 26mm Anti Roll bar. The original beam used AP rear callipers and discs. He retained a set of these, but frankly they are an over kill, so the car is currently running VTS rear callipers and discs.
The rear beam showing the Tony Law exhaust and the tank guard
The fuel tank is a standard AX10E item and is foam filled, with twin Facet Red Top fuel pumps. The filler neck is guarded as is the tank itself, and all fuel lines run internally and are stainless steel braided items.
The exhaust is a Tony Law custom built item with single re packable back box. The system is brought up into the recesses of the car, so if used for forest rallying its not the lowest point on the car.
The Exhaust off the car - note the easy spring clip joins
Back to the interior!
Inside after the respray the car needed a replacement LHD dash! There happened to be one on ebay, so that was bought. Fortunatley, he managed to get one from France from a Mk1! Which is a rare thing. Mainly because of the policy the Europeans have on scrap yards. (ie, you squash a car instantly! Hence no AX's, let alone MK1's!)
Another problem lies in that the sun in France being that bit hotter, any of the remaining dash have split due to the heat and are very fragile and brittle.
He modified the dash to fit round the roll cage best he could and set about refitting the myriad of wiring loom from the sport. This loom was all bespoke to the car, and is not standard in any way, and with no way of knowing what goes where this took some time!
The dash in and tackling the wiring loom
Fabrication of a number of panels was in order to make the switch gear. This was all done in thin 0.5mm alloy to good effect, and is just screwed in place. He mounted the fuses and relays in easy access areas, so they can be replaced whilst driving, well that'ss the idea anyway.
Switch gear panels in place
Chequerplate was cut to fit in the footwells, as paint last the whole of 5mins when you have shuffling feet syndrome with your passengers! This was just bolted through the floor in a few places. The passenger footwell was cut in to two pieces as eventually he intended to run a navigators footrest with the plumbed in extinguisher underneath.
The gear linkage is a combination of the Peugeot Sport rose joint linkage with the TAS quickshift, with extended rod length. This is way over the top, as the synchro's would last all of 10 minutes. This was to be changed by removing to TAS quickshift and just retaining the Peugeot Sport linkage.
Peugeot Sport rose jointed shift
At this point, Handbrake and gauges/dials were still on list of things to do.
The rest
The engine was completed using a standard GT top end with standard carb. This was really to just ensure the car would be driveable first time, and also to help it pass the emissions test come MOT time the first time round.
A set of aircraft 6point Sabelt 3" harnesses were fitted and a set of Corbeau buckets were also fitted.
A hand held extingusher was also been fitted to the drivers foot well.
Wheels Sourced
The car was then fitted with a set of 15" Compomotive MO's. These are to try and cover the Brembo 4pots up front. But they were not doing it!
The compomotive MO's were the wrong offset as they came off a 106 supercup car. They will fit but require a 8mm spacer.... however he managed to source a set of OZ Superleggeras, which JUST fit over the brembos. The lead balence weights just skim them.
Ignore the rusty brakes discs - they were new but thats what a week in the rain does for them!
You can slide a rizler paper through there if your careful.
The brakes were all bled up and worked superbly. With no servo it did require some serious leg exercise, but the feedback was awsome, and once your used to it, its a big improvement.
Cooling
Managed to fit a 106 diesel rad... its sitting behind the panel as the original set up. Space to the alternator is limited but not worrying. About a centimeter at worst. He left space to mount the original 106 fan on (would need to be reversed though). But eventually just left the standard ax fan mounted vertically to prevent fouling the 4 branch manifold.
He quickly sprayed the surround black so the white didnt stand out for when he fitted his black GT bodykit
Morrettes fitted and 106 Diesel radiator fitted.
He couldnt be bothered spending 50 odd quid on an expansion tank so got a brass one instead.
After some time...
He finally got the loom sorted using yet another RHD GT dash loom. It took 3 attempts but he eventually sorted it!
Funny moment with the rear lights as with it being a RHD loom on a LHD car it seemed to recognise the left hand indicator as the right one and vice versa
... That was soon sorted though.
Everything was plumbed in and working. Made some new dash plates... again. Simplicity it seems was everything!
Only issue was the front indicators on one side! With a multimeter it read roughly 8volts. Earth was ok, Electric sockets are ok, But the indicators on the front left werent working! Checked the bulbs/earth/connections/etc.... couldn't see what was wrong! Ran out of ideas on this one.
January 2007..
Electrics were all completed & working.. Finally... !
He took the sport for a test drive and was pretty impressed! It was r unning very flat and not pulling like it should, but it idled fine so it sounds like a carb & dirt problem in a jet somewhere, but he dont care too much because it was all coming off after the MOT emissions test to fit the race head/cam/carbs anyway.
So its was set to be off to be MOT'd soon with some luck before the end of Jan. Then February was set to finish some final tidying up of bits and fitting the race stuff with some track work being penciled into my calender for coming year.
Pictures - Jan 2007'
May 2007' - Makeover
Well with my friend hardly ever doing anything on the sport, and not really liking it, He thought he'd better either finish it, or sell it. Having had a few offers for breaking and even taking it as a whole but all falling through in the end for one reason or another - it left him with two options.
- One: advertise it properly on ebay/Pistonheads/here
- Two: sort it out and keep it.
So like anybody faced in this situation he had one or two beers.. A combination of bordom and car tinkering motivation took hold and he found himself outside, and had a good look round it, curosity got the best of him and found himself idly picking a sponser sticker.... then another.... and another.... eventually he found he'd had ripped the bodykit off it - spoiler, bumpers, bonnet vents, wing mirrors, all the stickers and graphic work. The lot !
..
So he then got himself some Sikaflax 212FC (as this perticular sport has no clips/mounts for the bodykit like the normal 'road going' sports did) and dug out a black GT kit he had knocking about. Have to say I personally think this was a good move, but some of you may diasgree.
It had taken on quite a transformation and doesnt look like the car it did previously. It now looks a lot more mundaine and not so much in your face.
Not the best pics due to shadow, work in progress and lack of polish!
He also added a Laguna front splitter and tinted the side repeaters.
Some slightly better pics "mid clean". Just needed a rear bumper & black roof strips. along with some black Metro vents (which were originally blue when the shell was purchased)