c5 rear suspention leak

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colin machin
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c5 rear suspention leak

Post by colin machin »

2006 c5 i have a leak on a rear suspension ram the car does not sit down but i have a leak on the ram where the rubber gaiter fits to the ram and it is leaking from there i am going to replace the ram seals ,the thing i was thinking about is the ram as a leak of pipe back to the reservoir and should in theory not leak past the gater but returned to the reservoir its leaking past where the retaining cir clip is and dripping on to the floor ,is the return pipe just open ended and the leak forces the returned oil back to reservoir .do the rams leak much when there in good condition .hope i have explained it ok .i have ordered the ram seals of the main agent and they say that they can only get them in large numbers and i have to buy 10 of one seal 5 of another and 4 of another seal at £32 pounds as they wont split them . in total i only need 3 seals but have to buy the lot which come tomorrow .
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Re: c5 rear suspention leak

Post by RichardW »

I thought there were only 2 seals in the ram (the third may be the sphere seal I guess). The first is the 'main' seal and this sits just in from the end of the ram housing. This is holding the suspension pressure back. Any leakage past here should be taken back to the tank via the first leak off pipe via a hole in side of the ram. Then there is the dust seal on the end of the ram which should prevent any low pressure leakage into the gaiter itself. Downsteam of this is the second vent hose, and this is only routed into the subframe to allow the gaiter to breathe as the suspension flexes. It's possible that the level of seal leakage past the main seal is normal, and it's just the gaiter is split or not seated properly, or the hose is detached, causing the leak off to weep on to floor.
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Re: c5 rear suspention leak

Post by demag »

I had a similar problem on an Xm which was a split gaitor and very leaky ram. Replaced both.

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colin machin
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Re: c5 rear suspention leak

Post by colin machin »

hi Richard yes on the seals there is only two but the pressure seal is in two parts one sits in side the other and when you buy them they come separate .if you look at a previous thread you will see i had a bad leak on the same ram and the car sat down over night i striped the ram down and found a score on the piston in the ram i removed the score mark with wet and dry and fitted new seals that was about 3years ago and the cars been fine since then when i had this leak it failed its mot ,so knowing its past history i assumed the ram was leaking so i am going to renew the seals i have striped it down and the seals look very good and the car was staying up all night with out loosing any hight so i will put new seals in whilst its striped down ,looking at the rubber gaitor it looks good and yes it was leaking past the circlip on the gaitor i am refitting the gaitor as it looks good and will be fitting a new cerclip .when i saw it eaking on the ramp at the mot garage it was leaking quite bad ,how much should leak past a seal ,i could not have been to bad as the car would have sat down over night ,at the end of the day it could have just been a leak past the end of the gaitor .does the return pipe use the pressure from the leak to take the oil back to the reservoir .sorry for the long reply.
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Re: c5 rear suspention leak

Post by lexi »

Other dealers will sell you the seals singly or whatever. Try a few of the ebay dealers who are main agents.
Check that you don't have too much fluid in the reservoir. This, and jacking the car up at strange angles and not doing that on high, can cause fluid to come out of a ram. So don't jump in till you have checked that.
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colin machin
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Re: c5 rear suspention leak

Post by colin machin »

up date i have renewed the seals this morning and every things ok it annoying to have to buy to many seals one was
£1,19 and i had to buy 10 one £3.01 i had to buy 2 one £1.78 i had to buy 5 and one circlip was £8.40 witch on ebay £2.00 its main dealer rip 0ff it was a mot fail so i was in a hurry to do the job .wont be using them again .i normally price thing out be for doing a job but this time i was in a hurry to get it done
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