Xantia hydractive or non-hydractive?

[Thunderbird]

How do these two suspensions compare in terms of:
- comfort by type of road?
- handling? breaking distances?
- reliability and maintenance costs?

[np]

Mine is Hydractive.
Fast A roads/motorways,smooth & comfy,
Around town,mostly ok,though can be a bit hard over bumps etc,
Rolls a bit if you "press on" on country roads.By pressing the switch for "hard",the ride becomes harsher.You feel all the bumps etc more,although body roll is slightly reduced.The hard mode is good for towing or carrying weight,as the rear(on my est)has less tendancy to bounce/wallow around.
Breaking is pretty much normal,although the front doesn`t dive so much compaired to my dads old non hyd active Xantia.I think i read on this forum that under hard breaking it automacticly goes into hard mode.
Apart from a few extra things,they are pretty much the same as a non hyd active Xantia i think.They have 2 extra spheres than a normal model,which are the hyd active spheres.Apart from a new rear h/corrector and accum sphere,thats all mine has needed in 35 odd k miles.
Maybe somebody can compare that to a non hyd active car.Someone like Anders can proberly tell you more on the technical front of things.

[RichardW]

The switch in hydractive cars is a bit misleading - it only alters the amount of input required to get the car to switch into hard mode - it goes into hard mode if you push it anyway, even if the switch is 'off'.
You get an extra 2 spheres, plus the hydractive blocks, which can develop internal leaks and cause the car to drop within a couple of minutes of switching off. The handling should be much improved over a 'conventional' Xantia as the hydractive isolates the left and right spheres, thus helping to reduce body roll, plus stiffening up the suspension when pressing on. Reportedly this comes at the epxense of low speed ride, but I can't imagine it's much worse than a Focus say! Surprisingly there have not been too many reliability issues with the myriad of sensors or the ECU, but then I guess it's a bit difficult to tell if it's working properly or not!

[Homer]

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

The switch in hydractive cars is a bit misleading - it only alters the amount of input required to get the car to switch into hard mode - it goes into hard mode if you push it anyway, even if the switch is 'off'.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Yep, the switch is 90% placebo effect. It's helpful when you first start driving one because it gives you more confidence to chuck it around but once you know what the car can do it can be pretty much left off.

[Thunderbird]

According to technical information, body-roll measures like this:
- Hydractive soft: 3 degrees
- Hydractive hard: 2.5 degrees
- Activa: Less than 0.5 degrees.
So, there is in fact a slight reduction between soft and hard modes.
Still, I'm starting to believe that the electronics complication and aditional mechanical and pneumatic elements of the Hydractive suspension make it a less interesting option than the non-hydractive version, in the long-run.

[Homer]

The confusion is that the dashboard (or centre console on early models) switch does not switch between soft and hard (unlike the XM).
Having the switch on just means the computer needs less provocation to switch into hard mode.
Believe me, it makes more difference than a slight reduction in body roll, when it kicks in the whole car feels taughter and more sporting. It kind of wills you to press on even harder.