What a ripper topic! it is good to see people have passion about such things...

I can say that on raid with Viking in Oz there where a few cars that he needed to adjusted the tappets on even after the owners insisted it was already done b4 hand, once set to factory spec all was well...

Are people more conservative about there 2cv's here in Australia??? bloody oath they are, factory spec all the way! This is due to the cost of cars and part here and also the need for reliability, also consider the few numbers of 2cv's we have...

I have no doubt there is room for improvement in a lot of areas of the 2cv, tappet clearance one of them, but is it necessary for 80% of people driving them, I doubt it, see Pareto's Principal. Citroen did know what they where doing with these litol rippers after all.

Any performance (even efficiency) increase comes at a cost to durability etc, we all know that. the 2cv is built to be robust and reliable, people always say that these little motors are already highly strung...

If you want reliability stick with the factory specs, if you want performance, play around with them or pay others to do it for you.

If you want real performance upgrades fit a Visa engine - convert it to EFI - add a small Blower - get some Lighten pistons machined - add twin spark - lighten the flywheel - increase the Oil cooler. The list goes on I'm only half way there atm

But yeah, a punch on somewhere isolated late one night in the middle of a raid would be the best way to sort this one out;)

Harley

Now here is an old wife's tale. The 2cv was built as cheaply as possible to be transport for the poor masses. Tolerances on the engines were not exactly a major priority as long as the car started at the end of the production line. That's why every car performs differently.

Whilst we might loves these cars, lets not all get gooey eyed about how well they were built. If you want to see how much care and attention was taken during their build in the factory watch one of the production line videos on Youtube.

But they never showed the engine building part. Wonder if the 0.20 tappet setting was to give the grumpy Algerian worker ( later surly Portugese) as wide a window of error as possible whilst keeping the probability of it starting at the end of the production line

Haha, point taken 602, i withdraw my comment

Harley