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Chrispy
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Post by Chrispy »

Ahhh! I see.... You're right, whenever I press the brake, there's a click. Also, if I drop the suspension to the floor the clicking remains at the same speed. Sounds to me like that sphere is shot if all this is the case. I want to lube up my struts too so I'll look for that breather pipe..... Any ideas where to look?
jeremy
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Post by jeremy »

Does your ticking slow if you raise the car fully? When at full height the height correctors are open so the suspension spheres function as accumulators!
Some professionals will source regassed spheres as replacements - and these can rupture. As you will see from this board regassed spheres are loved by a few and regarded as a waste of money in the UK where new are less than £20. (That should get a response!)
I'd sort out your problems one at a time. Get the ticking/accumulator issue resolved that have a look at your front struts. Chances are that if they are creaky they will need to be replaced. I know that new ones on my BX have made a world of difference.
Jeremy
Chrispy
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Post by Chrispy »

Not sure about the full height thingy. IIRC the ticking stopped whilst the car was rising, then went mental as it hit the top, slowly going down to the usual 5 second interval. I was just concerned that a massive internal leak in the front struts was causing the massive ticking, but on minimum height there's no fluid in them anyway and the ticking remains the same. I'm learning! Slowly but surely....
Also, the sit in the boot test proved negative....not even a single raise. When the guy at the garage had a look at it this morning he said it was the accumulator sphere. He knealed on the front of the engine bay causing the front to drop, then as the height corrector sorted it out the ticking went mental before settling down to 5 seconds again. I'll be changing the acc sphere myself at it's easy, and I can guarantee it's put on correctly. Also, I can look for the ball bearings in there if there's no change. If I still have trouble then those will be my next targets. Worst comes to the worst it's a new PR. Trouble is there's 2 listed on GSF at different prices. Not sure which it'll be.
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Mandrake
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Post by Mandrake »

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Chrispy</i>

Bloody hell...no ramps! You nutter....even if I do it with the suspension up, the ramps are still going under it!<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I agree - DON'T do it from underneath, without the car being up on ramps, that is just plain dangerous, especially with a car with a known suspension problem. Don't take any chances.
I found that it was only possible to get a proper swing on the sphere with the tool from underneath, which pretty much makes ramps or stands mandatory for safe changing of the accumulator on the Xantia.
Also, even though its an officially mentioned procedure, I would NOT recommend trying to turn the sphere with the pressure on the system. VERY dangerous if you did it wrong, also the pressure makes an already tight sphere extra tight to undo.
The only reason for this procedure is for use on cylinders that are free floating and rely on the pressure to hold them against their brackets - and on the Xantia this is only the rear suspension cylinders... If they are fully depressurized they will flop around, and there is a small chance of shearing the inlet pipe off if you try to turn the sphere while the cylinders are loose.
However on the front suspension and the pressure regulator, there is no such flopping around of the cylinder you're screwing the sphere onto, so there is NO reason to try and undo it with pressure present, and every reason not to. (Safety, ease of undoing)
Also, take the advice given of only doing the new one up hand tight - dip the new square section o-ring in LHM oil for lubrication, then fit it into the square recess in the pressure regulator housing (don't slip it over the sphere neck) then screw on the sphere, and do it up as tight as you can with two bare hands and no tool. That is plenty tight enough.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
The 'new' sphere that was fitted the other week seemed to last about 5 minutes and now as I say, the ticking is even worse at about 4 seconds.
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I wonder if it was in fact a re-gassed sphere, or just a very old one that had been sitting on the shelf for years and lost most of its pressure ?
The pressure regulator sphere is under the most strain of all the spheres on the car, as it has the full system pressure of 170 bars (2400psi) on it whenever the car is running.
I've seen re-gassed accumulator spheres which failed within minutes of fitting and pressurizing - including one that we regassed ourself. There was a loud "plop" a couple of minutes after pressurizing the system and after removal we found the diaphram had indeed punctured, so the sphere was full of oil...
The general rule is if a sphere has dropped to lower than half its normal pressure and has been in regular use, its not worth regassing, as it seems to cause damage to the diaphram that means that after regassing it will either leak gas a lot more quickly (weeks or months instead of years) or will fail suddenly with a diaphram puncture.
So it is possible (although uncommon) for that sphere to fail within a few minutes if it wasn't a new sphere.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
My front struts are still jerky when rising and someone mentioned pouring LHM into them via a hole.....what hole is this? Can you avoid the 'jam jar' method like this?
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The pouring into the hole appears to be for the BX - when I tried to do this on a Xantia I found nowhere to pour it into [;)]
I greased the struts on my father Xantia recently and it made a big improvement to the smoothness of the rising/lowering, and the ride, and also because when he bought it, both rubber gaters had detached at the top and filled with dirt/water/stones.
Here's what to do:
If you have some drive on stands, drive the front up onto the stands, as it will make the work easier, as it will be at a more accessible height. (I used stands)
Lift the suspension fully up and then BLOCK UP or put a jack under each side near the front at a jacking point and put a bit of pressure on the jacks to MAKE SURE that the car is secure and fully supported if the suspension pressure failed. Also block the back wheels to prevent rolling.
As you will be putting your arms into the wheel arch its critical that the car is supported to prevent a suspension fault crushing your arms, ESPECIALLY when the car has known suspension problems. Don't say I didn't warn you ! [:D]
Then simply pull down the stretchy rubber/plastic gator at the top to reveal the shiny steel shaft. If the car has spent time with them having fallen down of their own accord its likely that there is dirt/water/stones etc in the gator, so you need to clean everything out and also make sure the strut ram is clean. (But obviously don't put water on it...)
At this point inspect the shaft to make sure its nice and smooth and free of rust. Now give the shiny shaft a good coating of grease, (I used Lithium L2) and wipe off any excess from areas other than the shaft.
After you've done both sides, remove the jacks/front blocking and set the suspension fully down, to allow the grease to be pushed up into the strut housing, then lift the car right up again and reblock it with the blocks or jacks.
At this point you'll notice that 90% of the grease has been pushed off the shaft onto the bottom piece (which is part of the lower bump stop) as only a small amount of grease will have made it through the close tolerance between the shaft and it's bush.
If the struts are particularly sticky I'd repeat this grease then lower then lift procedure a couple more times - I did it 3 times in total, although I don't know whether one or two times would have done the job ok.
When you're ready to reasemble it, clean off excess grease from the lower bump stop and any grease that might have got onto the gator.
Although the gators are supposed to clip onto a lip at the top by themselves, I found that the one on Dad's car simply would not stay on, (which is no doubt why they were both off when he got the car) so I'd highly recommend securing them with a narrow, long plastic zip strap. (Or you guys might call them cable ties [:D] They have notches all the way along, and you thread the end through a plastic ratchet)
If you go that way, the easiest way to do it is to first detach the bottom before trying to put the zip strap on the top, otherwise the gator is fully stretched, and trying to come off all the time.
After detaching the bottom, carefully slip the gator into place at the top, and sometimes its a good idea to rotate it 360 degrees to make sure its in the right groove all the way around. When it is, thread the zip strap around the top groove of the gator and pull it nice and tight with a pair of pliers, and snip off the excess.
Check by pulling that you can stretch the gator right down to where it needs to connect to without any sign of it coming loose. Assuming thats ok, reattach it to the bottom.
Unblock the car, set the suspension to normal and drive off the stands... Voila, done. A few more up-down sessions probably wouldn't hurt to help work the grease around inside the strut too.
Regards,
Simon
alan s
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Post by alan s »

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Chrispy</i>


<b>Trouble is there's 2 listed on GSF at different prices.</b> Not sure which it'll be.
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If you look, you'll see one is genuine, the other non genuine, the genuine one being about double the price of the non genuine.
Some reckon only the best will do (ie) the genuine one, but personally I have some doubts as I understand Citroen source them from different manufacturers so in some cases you may be paying for the fancy box.
Alan S
jeremy
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Post by jeremy »

There being no difference between the ticking rate with the car at max or minimum height convinces me that the problem is one of the ball bearing valves and the reason I suggested the one under the pressure relief screw in the first place was because someone had presumably used this when changing the accumulator sphere.
My reasoning is:
The problem lies between the reservoir and the height correctors. The components are reservoir, hose connecting to the pump (can cause problems by admitting air), pump - presumably OK as able to make enough pressure to cause the regulator to cycle, regulator, safety valve, front brake element of the doseur (brake) valve and the 2 height correctors (which must shut properly if the car didn't rise.)
The safety valve doesn't give problems - if it did it would leak - and could via its return pipe. The doseur is generally a reliable component often unfairly blamed - again we would be talking of an internal leak.
This leaves the pump feed hose - which may perish or have bad or loose end connections. The problem is that its under vacuum and so tends to let air in and not let LHM out which makes things difficult to detect. However it also feeds the power steering element of the pump and from what you say there is nothing strange with the steering.
Air can cause all manner of problems as the whole system works without rubber seals for its internal operating components. In fact it releies on the viscosity of the LHM - and of course air will behave differently and in fact pass through many of the valves. However if you have substantial air in the system I'm sure other things would be affected - but one check is to look in the reservoir with the pump running and see if it looks milky (I suppose some of the mint flavoured alcopops would be a better analogy)
So really I come to the regulator/accumulator and its valves. If you look through the postings you will see that a replacement regulator is seldom if ever recommended since the re-seating of the non-return valve was discovered.
Jeremy
Chrispy
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Post by Chrispy »

Sorry, I was wrong, the ticking does slow down a great deal with the car on full height. In fact I couldn't actually hear it..... but then I was in a rush to set off this morning! I pick up the new sphere today and it's only £20 so it's no real loss either way. As for other symptoms like steering etc, there's nothing to speak of other than my power steering hisses a lot when you turn the wheel, and the brake valve makes a funny moaning noise when you first press the pedal occasionally (I've already removed the silly spring) and thats about it. After that I'm turning my attention to the PR. I remember seeing the guy who replaced the sphere using a b ig pair of grips to put it on with, so if he's damaged it's surface or something, it could have leaked all its gas out pretty fast.
I picked up a strap wrench type thing yesterday to do it with. It's like a socket with a braided strap on it so I'm hoping that will do the trick. Basically I think it has to be this acc sphere or something close to it, as before it was replaced, my ticking was every 12 seconds. Ever since it's at 5 seconds.
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Post by jeremy »

Hissing steering and moaning from the rest could well be air. Maybe the reservoir - tank hose was removed to prevent syphoning - and hasn't been replaced properly or its end is knackered. Well worth a look. (This is a favorite of Anders who will no doubt suggest for test purposes you fit a length of clean garden hose and see if there is any difference!)
Ticking slowing on full height does suggest accumulator and regulator valves are OK.
jeremy
samtronic
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Post by samtronic »

Shouldn't it be ticking slowly on full height even with a flat accumulator?
Søren
jeremy
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Post by jeremy »

he said it was! - post 15/6, 10.03
jeremy
samtronic
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Post by samtronic »

Sorry, I misread your post, jeremy. (Read 'that' two words to early).
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