New Xantia!

[white exec]

Find a bit of clean tube, connect, and blow down the return port into the reservoir. Should offer little/no resistance.

[KennyW]

Greame,

I would of thought the fuel pipe clips are strong enough and tight enough to hold the pipe in place. I know what its like when green blood goes everywhere. It happened to me after a pinion change on the steering rack. Had to get a full lift from the recovery company.

Good luck

Kenny

[aerodynamica]

Hi Chris I did that already (and before the thing blew off twice) but anyway I fitted a new clip that goes proper tight and took it for a good spin just this evening and all good. Topped up the LHM. That's it now had 2x LHM changes!!

Thanks for the help folks.

So now the silver sinker is in storage until I decide what's to happen to it. Plan A was to remove all the Mk1 Sinker specific things and others that are hard to source such as ABS sensors, HP pump, PRV and FDV as well as the window regulators and the 4 new disk brakes and refurbished calipers (one front is new) and of course rescure my modified height corrector cradles that work so well. Was also thinking of keeping the Peugeot 406 alloys and refurb them for the gold car some time in the future.

However, before that I was thinking of offering the Silver Hornet up for grabs on here and maybe ebay etc.
It's a 1993 Mk1 Sinker 1.9 TD SX with 152K miles, a bit scruffy body and a clutch that judders at low speed.
Has had: timing belt, water pump and one tensioner, full brake rebuild, oil, filter, coolant flushed and replaced, new glowplugs, battery positive lead and terminal. earths all cleaned up, underbody inspection, clean and two layers of underseal, wiper blades, 4 speakers, new lock barrel in door, air horn fitted, fuel filter and air filter. New front spheres and main accumulator, rears tested on sphere tester. Diesel leak-offs and remote locking receiver replaced. All electric windows, mirrors and sunroof work. There's also an aftermarket turbo boost gauge fitted. Clutch is juddery and not as ligt as it ought to be but has a new clutch clip and the clutch pedal pivot bolt was replaced and is easy to remove now (i.e its in the right way now! unlike standard)

It goes very well, Oddly, it's faster than my new Xantia, not sure why as they have the same engine and gearbox maybe the turbo boosts better I'm not sure. No water leaks (cleaned and resealed rear lights) lots of new bulbs. Has the clear lights from the Mk2 Xantia. So has had a lot of attention in the last 10 months. It has 3 months MOT left (September it's due) but it will need tyres and one little bit of rust I found on the lower rear wheel arch.

If anyone is interested PM me, the Xantia is in storage here in Glasgow but would drive anywhere in the UK.

[aerodynamica]

The photo is from a few months back - the front wing seen in the picture has had a rubbish repair done by a previous owner and has body filler repair from where the missing mudflap had corroded the lower wing. It's not dreadful but it is visible if you know it's there. The front bumper has a crack in it that aso affects the 'chrome' insert that had been touched up with silver paint (prev. owner).

Also has new front and rear number plates, flywheel sensor and repair to the driver window 'one touch' switch.

Open to offers!

[aerodynamica]

Have had some interest in the silver hornet - thanks.

So back to the gold Xantia, it's going from strength to strength and is beginning to look a lot better now that I'm on the third application of black trim restorer. The side trims had been especially sun bleached.

Hydractive II.
It is all working very well and I'm quite happy with it (apart from its few eccentricities...) but I have a question for the citroen elders. The owners handbook has an addena added in stating ".. vehicles with Hydractive suspension: the function of the warning lamp in the dashboard has changed. The lamp no longer lights (to test) but the lamp still exists within the dashboard..." or something to that effect. True enough the hydractive light doesn't light up for a few seconds with ignition on like on my previous two XMs (hydractive I and II each). My question is why? If they decided to change it what was the reason and was there a batch of even earlier Xantias made where the lamp does light up?

On the XM the light cames up for a few seconds as you start, flashes apparently if it has a fault code recorded, and (on hydractive I at least) lights up with 'Sport' selected.

Anyone know what was happening re this?

[CitroJim]

That's how Xantias are Graeme, none I know of have ever flashed the Hydractive light as the XMs do...

Goodness knows why, I always thought it was an excellent idea on the XM.

Sounds like it's all coming along a treat. Excellent news

[aerodynamica]

It's bonkers Jim, I mean why fit the lamp to the dashboard in the first place!

[CitroJim]

There is no lamp on the dash Graeme, the only one is in the switch!

Maybe that's the reason the deleted the fault warning in the Xantia?

[Stickyfinger]

Strange man......wanting more electrics in a Citroen


(or any car)

[Mandrake]

Hydractive II.
It is all working very well and I'm quite happy with it (apart from its few eccentricities...)

Curious to know what you think these eccentricities are, or whether there is still something that needs fixing ?

[aerodynamica]

Hydractive II.
It is all working very well and I'm quite happy with it (apart from its few eccentricities...)

Curious to know what you think these eccentricities are, or whether there is still something that needs fixing ?

Ha, well that's the thing, it is physically all good but not had an ELIT interrogation on the ECU to check and clear any fault codes so it might be defaulted to the 'safety' parameters I understand HII goes to if fault codes are recorded. This was the case on my XM and when cleared (by Mr. CitroJim) it rode beautifully in both modes.

No, the eccentricities I note are the way it behaves when I pull away fron stand still, Eg. from traffic lights. The change to stiff mode with the accelerator movement to stop squat at the rear and lift at the front has the side effect of running on stiff suspension over bad terrain (like lots of roads locally) so it jiggles quite a bit for a couple of seconds. The second quirk is connected to the first, that is, switching to stiff springs on pulling away, but on smooth terrain it exhibits a tendency to firm up as it pulls away then switch to soft mode while still under the reactive torque from the front axle whereupon the back end drops noticibly as the softer springs switching in squat easily against the torque.So basically the anti-squat' is really only delayed squat. My 1994 XM did exactly the same thing (even more in fact as it was an auto and so the drive torque was held constantly through acceleration from standing) but perhaps it's more pronounced on the diesel models I don't know. But most of the time it's sumptuous and is much softer than the silver hornet Xantia without Hydractive.

The third quirk is the switching to stiff mode when going over speed bumps. If I travel over them at anything over 25 mph the front anti roll bar sensor switches to stiff mode as it detects the large movement of the front axle - the rear is then stiff as it takes the speed bump. If i travel at 10-20 it stays soft and absolutely floats over the bump almost like my old CXs but is sort of negates the Citroen ability to ignore speed bumps on my CX I could travel along the street where my sister lives and take the full count of speed humps at an easy 30 with barely a twitch in the to the CX body. But then again the CX has terrifying body roll so horses for courses

I love the Hydractive on the Xantia, I expected it to be even better than on the XM and it certainly is, I can forgive its shortcomings because I'm just so darn fascinated with the mechanism of it all

[aerodynamica]

Strange man......wanting more electrics in a Citroen


(or any car)

hahaha true! but if I made them myself maybe I'd trust them more? haha maybe not. But if you think that's bad wait till you hear what my modification to the Hydractive II would be....

... it would be a sort of Hydractive 2.5. Basically, I loved the Hydractive 1 on my XM petrol Turbo (once I got it working) and still prefer it to Hydractive 2 in most respects. I liked that 'sport' mode was fully locked in stiff mode at all times until the speed dropped to under 25mph where it clicked back to soft suspension. This was especially sensational after I'd been dri ving the 'twisties' near where my parents live with it set to sport mode and had traveled 8 miles of twisty stuff with stiff suspension. There is one T junction after this and it was pulling up to there that saw the suspension go from perma stiff to suddenly like blancmange floating to the stop I loved that weird split personality abut the Hydractive 1.

The modification then would be Hydractive 2 with normal and sport settings and would have a third setting that set it to fully stiff springing. I can think of a way to do it but it's crude so I'll probably leave it but it's nice to dream

[Mandrake]

Ha, well that's the thing, it is physically all good but not had an ELIT interrogation on the ECU to check and clear any fault codes so it might be defaulted to the 'safety' parameters I understand HII goes to if fault codes are recorded. This was the case on my XM and when cleared (by Mr. CitroJim) it rode beautifully in both modes.

Depends what the fault is, but in my experience temporary faults of most of the sensors don't require clearing any fault codes - as soon as the fault goes away and the key is cycled the system goes back to normal operation, although the code itself will remain in memory for a while. At least it does for less important sensors such as the throttle position. The road speed sensor is considered a critical sensor and will put it into permanent hard mode if determined to be faulty.

No, the eccentricities I note are the way it behaves when I pull away fron stand still, Eg. from traffic lights. The change to stiff mode with the accelerator movement to stop squat at the rear and lift at the front has the side effect of running on stiff suspension over bad terrain (like lots of roads locally) so it jiggles quite a bit for a couple of seconds.

Ah yes that... as Microsoft would say "it's not a bug its a feature!". Yes, I dislike that behaviour too. I see why they did it, but it's annoying because unlike hard mode switching based on throttle during driving where you have to move the throttle somewhat quickly to trigger it, (especially in "normal" mode) it will always switch to hard mode for a fixed 2.5 seconds (3.0 in sport I think) after you start accelerating from a standstill, pretty much no matter how gently you accelerate - even if you pull away from the lights like your grandma...

And as you say on broken road surfaces this leads to a rather jiggly ride at the rear which has already been compressed from the acceleration. There are a couple of spots near me where the road is badly broken at a junction where the jiggly hard mode ride during takeoff is quite embarrassing to say the least.

I'm not sure what their alternative would have been though - the rear suspension in soft mode is ridiculously soft for squat, such that not only do they do the hard mode switch, they also have progressive bump stops that start gently arresting the compression of the rear suspension very early. They're stiff enough to arrest the squat without compressing, but soft enough to compress when a bump is hit. Without them the rear would fully bottom during acceleration giving an even worse bumpy ride. (Check your bump stops on the rear arms aren't rotted - if they are it can make the ride a lot worse during takeoff as it allows the suspension to bottom! They're of a different design to non-Hydractive models)

If you think the rear squat is bad on a 1.9TD see what it would be like on a 194HP V6 if it didn't switch to hard mode.

If the switch to hard mode every time you start off does bother you, you can actually disconnect the throttle position sensor. The connector is half way up behind the back of the throttle pedal arm and although it's fiddly to reach its possible to simply unplug it without any dismantling.

Of course this sets a fault code but the throttle position sensor is considered a non-essential sensor - it doesn't light any warning lights or put it into any sort of limp mode - the only thing that changes is that switches to hard mode that would have previously been triggered by moving the throttle no longer happen - both at takeoff and during driving.

This makes the sport mode a little bit less useful as sport mode normally aggressively switches to hard mode with the slightest throttle movement, but you may prefer that. It will still switch to hard mode under breaking, (brake pressure sensor and road speed sensor) fast cornering (steering wheel sensor) and large road undulations. (Body movement sensor on the front roll bar)

I actually ran my first Xantia VSX with the throttle position sensor unplugged for several months for exactly the reason you describe, and while it did solve the bumpy ride on takeoff I eventually decided that I preferred the throttle position sensor functioning, as the squat while accelerating when driving was a bit silly sometimes.

The second quirk is connected to the first, that is, switching to stiff springs on pulling away, but on smooth terrain it exhibits a tendency to firm up as it pulls away then switch to soft mode while still under the reactive torque from the front axle whereupon the back end drops noticibly as the softer springs switching in squat easily against the torque.So basically the anti-squat' is really only delayed squat. My 1994 XM did exactly the same thing (even more in fact as it was an auto and so the drive torque was held constantly through acceleration from standing) but perhaps it's more pronounced on the diesel models I don't know.

Nah, try it on a V6 As you say, it only delays the squat, reducing it into two separate movements, but if you watch for it you feel the second movement when it lets go. I don't think it's related to a diesel as I see the same thing on 2 litre and 3 litre petrols. I think the rear suspension of the Xantia is just that much softer than an XM.

The third quirk is the switching to stiff mode when going over speed bumps. If I travel over them at anything over 25 mph the front anti roll bar sensor switches to stiff mode as it detects the large movement of the front axle - the rear is then stiff as it takes the speed bump. If i travel at 10-20 it stays soft and absolutely floats over the bump almost like my old CXs but is sort of negates the Citroen ability to ignore speed bumps on my CX I could travel along the street where my sister lives and take the full count of speed humps at an easy 30 with barely a twitch in the to the CX body. But then again the CX has terrifying body roll so horses for courses

Yep, again, its a feature not a bug... I used to do exactly the same in my CX, but keep in mind that the CX has a lot more suspension travel in the front than a Xantia - nearly 50% more. (It's something crazy like about 8 inches before compressing bump stops, a Xantia is more like 5 inches)

But again what's the alternative - if you come up on a hump back bridge or a sudden rise in the road and it stayed in soft mode the suspension would bottom and bounce off the limit stop rubbers - not a good situation as it could lead to a loss of control if you were cornering at the same time. Switching to hard mode prevents the suspension bottoming and makes the car much safer in those conditions. As a sudden rise in the road can compress the suspension really fast it doesn't get much time to react - so it goes more on the velocity of the suspension movement than the amount that it moves so that it can "anticipate" a very fast movement that is likely to bottom the suspension before the suspension has moved too far.

Unfortunately that means a very sudden yet small bump like a sharp speed bump will also trigger the system as it is anticipating that it will turn out to be a much larger bump that is going to bottom the suspension. It does annoy me that going over speed bumps past a certain speed triggers a switch to hard mode, but on the other hand I love the fact that every time I hit an unexpected rise in the road at high speed that could have been a bit iffy in soft mode it seemingly instantly switches to hard mode and handles the event with poise and strong rebound damping, where many cars would have bottomed their suspension and flailed about (if softly sprung) or just hit the rise really harshly. (If hard sprung)

I love the Hydractive on the Xantia, I expected it to be even better than on the XM and it certainly is, I can forgive its shortcomings because I'm just so darn fascinated with the mechanism of it all

Sounds like you have the exact same observations as me - all the things you mention are the same foibles that I find with the system, but I have come to accept them for the greater good of good ride and handling most of the rest of the time. One other peeve I have is that it will switch to hard mode even at parking manoeuvring speeds like 5mph if you turn the steering wheel far enough - for example when I turn into my driveway even though I'm doing well under 5mph the large steering wheel angle will trigger it to switch to hard mode just before the wheel goes over the curb - completely unnecessarily IMO.

I think the system could have done with 3 stages of damping - hard, medium and soft, allowing anti-squat to only switch to "medium" mode and reserving hard for genuine hard cornering and braking, but that would have increased the complexity of the system greatly as it would have required two additional spheres and control blocks using the current technology at the time.

[aerodynamica]

Yes so true but for it's foibles it's still such fun to drive - for a Citroen nerd like me I'm often thinking about what it's doing in different road conditions

[white exec]

Hi Graeme, Simon

I think last few posts pretty well sum up Hydractive II. We know it's superb (when everything's working as it should), and provides a quality of comfort and roadholding you will find on few other cars. It does come with its 'characteristics', though.

Having suffered a couple of years ago from periodic rear-end crashiness on our 2.5 XM, and sorted it, what we have now is a suspension system working good-as-new (so far as I can remember it, 20 years back). A few mods have been installed (protection diodes, electrovalve tell-tale dash LEDs, and an accelerator pedal potentiometer defeat), but the hydraulics and sphere specs are all original and as-per-book. All spheres have regassing valves. I agree with Simon that the car's suspension should work well in standard form without the need to resort to alternative spheres or modified damping, and that when trying to diagnose faults, it is best to do this on a standard set up, rather than working with a significantly modified one.

I agree with you both about things the system doesn't deal with perfectly, though.

Speed humps

Quite possibly these were not part of the original XM/HAII development tests. Few of them existed on public roads back then; my experience of them, in the UK, was on a few private estates. In London, some of the first appeared in Richmond Park. There is a good bit of Citroen footage about showing track and road testing, and in this you can see cobbles, pave, undulations, pot-holes, and even spine-breaking repeated transverse ribbing. But what I've not noticed are examples of the single, short, domed speed ridge - and the more elongated 'platform' version. It's the first of these - the brief ridge - that seems to cause a rear-end thud, if taken too quickly.

Think we are agreed on why the back end (and not the front end) crashes in the way it does: above a certain speed, the suspension stiffens just in time for the rear wheels to meet the object, and thud for a second time as it comes off. Nasty, but predicatable; dropping speed sorts it.

Rough roads

Accelerate hard up a well-tarmac'd slope, and all is well. Suspension stiffens (throttle pedal sensor) and there is minimal squat. But, if that acceleration is done on a rough-surface road, then the ride can be somewhat unpleasant. Coming out of our house, if I turn right, I have to take an uphill 360m length of poorly concreted track, with an average gradient of 1 in 7, and in second gear. My dash LEDs tell me that if I gentle the throttle, I can keep things soft, but in practice, if I want to make decent progress, I need to open the throttle wider - so out out go the LEDs, and the ride firms up.

Was never too pleased with this, so looked at the possibility doing something about the throttle position sensor. Actually never thought just to disconnect it (reckoned it would induce an unhelpful ECU fault - now put right on this), so I added a dash switch and small engine-bay relay, which would switch the suspension ECU accelerator sensor input away from the pedal pot, and to ground via a 2k2 resistor, thus not leaving the ECU input floating but providing the sort of resistance the ECU would expect to see. Probably unnecessary precautions.

This mod sorted the uphill sprint, and I didn't notice any squat. It enabled the accelerator to be opened as widely and suddenly as you liked, without upsetting the ride. These days, I use the facility only now and again - see below.

Rear-end corner spheres

The XM is a sizable beast, and with a lot of engine weight over the front wheels (particularly the DK5). As such, the front end suspension behaves itself rather well. At the back, unless loaded up, the weight on the wheels is a lot less, and this throws additional demands for ‘flexibility’ on to rear-end the suspension, if bodywork is not to be jolted.

In Firm mode, the XM is very much that – and very controlled. When running in soft mode, the ride should be sublime. A ‘bounce’ test (engine running, car stationary) is often used to assess the state of the suspension, but this only really checks the resilience of the centre Hydractive spheres. If all looks good, out on the road the ride may be fine until the car goes firm on a less-than-flat road surface. Then the complaints can come in.

I’ve been caught with this myself – but caught out. Rear corner spheres had been replaced (genuine Citroen, new, but to which I had fitted Valprex) less than a year back, and so I discounted these as a source of the problem. Looked at lots of other things, but couldn’t get rid of the very knobbly Firm ride, which was even causing the rear end to ‘buck’ and oscillate when meeting an undulating motorway surface, on a curve, at 100km/h, which it was taking (those LEDs again) in Firm mode.

Eventually, I removed the new-ish rear corner spheres, and checked their pressure: a bit less than 20bar. Bit surprised that pressure loss had been so rapid, so I thought I would check the snugness of the Valprex valves, and at that point noticed that the supplied O-rings for the Valprex (same size as Citroen item under the OE plug) were virtually the same thickness as the annular groove in which they sit – so very little gas-sealing squash. I obtained some Viton O-rings of slightly greater thickness, and fitted these, silicone greased, and regassed to spec.

Transformation! Firm ride now a subtle shift from Soft, and no whacking about on bumpy concrete or the undulating motorway curve. Even possible to take some speed bumps with a little more gusto.

This perfect performance has remained that way for over a year now. What it has taught me is to pay decent attention to the rear corner spheres. These are not, iirc, triple membrane (slow leakage), which seems to be reserved for the hotter engine bay locations. And, for Valprex users, maybe choose a better O-ring*.

* https://www.polymax.co.uk/o-ring-9-19mm ... ton-75-sha