Your Letters

C1 CARE

I am interested to see that you had acquired a Peugeot 107, as I have a 2009 Citroen C1 Splash (3-cylinder petrol, manual gearbox). This is in addition to my 1985 Talbot Alpine – I have been using Alpines as my daily driver for the last 27 years – I’m also currently restoring an Alpine GLS and a Talbot Solara – but that’s another story!

I bought the C1 in April 2017 to replace my wife Pam’s ageing Fiesta, but I like it so much it is usually me who drives it!

The garage I bought it off conducted a ‘service’ and new MOT, but I don’t know how much that involved and there was no service record to speak of. Mileage was 54,000 miles. Over the next few months I added several accessories – rubber floor mats, glovebox lid, rear mudflaps with Citroen chevrons to stick on and I could not resist buying and fitting the cute tachometer which sticks out on a stalk from the speedo. The original wheel trims had been replaced with a cheap set, so I bought some I liked off eBay, again with Citroen chevrons to stick in the centres.

Finally, being a great believer in winter tyres, I sent for a set of new steel wheels off eBay with winter tyres already fitted and I use these from about December to March. A new battery was fitted in December 2018. In February 2019 there was a recall from Citroen regarding the tailgate hinges – this was checked at our local Citroen dealer and found to be OK.

One problem from the start was difficult gearchanging. I know now that this is a common problem with this model. Earlier models (not mine but possibly yours, being a couple of years older) had a smaller diameter clutch -these can be replaced with the Yaris-type clutch as fitted to later cars.

I joined the CityBugClub.co.uk which covers advice and spares for the C1, 107 and Aygo. This is free and I also paid a one-off £10 for access to further advice and procedures for specific jobs.

They recommend their Exedy clutch kit for a complete fix to the gearchange problem, so I sent for one plus all I needed for a full service -oil, filter, gearbox oil, air filter, pollen filter, plugs and a new reverse light switch, which I thought I would renew during the stripdown as it is normally quite inaccessible.

Removal of the gearbox was reasonably straightforward, although everything was packed in tight as you would expect with such a compact car and a lot of dismantling was involved. I found several horrors – the clutch plate itself was not badly worn but was not sliding very well on the splines and the release bearing was in