Xantia Front Suspension Bush - Purchase

[gadgetgricey]

My Xantia has failed its MOT on welding and a front suspension arm bush, but the garage can only get the bush with the fromt suspension arm attached....

Anyone know if you can obtain the bush on its own, and where from.

Thanks again

- Dave -

[elma]

Yes you can, gsf, euro car parts or eBay all have a them. Here's an example from ebay
If you're paying for labour though control arm probably makes more sense.

[Hell Razor5543]

You can get the bushes from GSF, but it is much quicker (and less likely to fail) to replace the entire wishbone. If it is the 'P' bush that has failed, unless the replacement is accurately fitted it will fail in a few years, and (from what I have read and been told) it can take a couple of hours to remove the old bush and properly fit the new one.

[sparksie]

You can get the bushes from GSF, but it is much quicker (and less likely to fail) to replace the entire wishbone. If it is the 'P' bush that has failed, unless the replacement if accurately fitted it will fail in a few years, and (from what I have read and been told) it can take a couple of hours to remove the old bus and properly fit the new one.

Yup, I'll second that.
The "P" bush is devilishly tricky, even with a proper press.
It twists out of alignment as it goes on the last 5mm.
I had mine off and on several times, before accepting "near enough is good enough", even though the professional in me knows full well it's not!
I'll be getting a full arm next time, though to be fair, I've put nearly 20,000 miles on them and they've just passed another test, so they can't have been too bad.
I bought mine in the local motor factor, but it wasn't entirely trouble free.
The "P" bushes are handed and I kept getting bushes for the same side of the car, despite the packaging having the required part no.s on it. A whole batch had been mislabeled and I must have had half of them before I got the right one.
One other tip. I broke a much valued S-P ball joint splitter, trying unsuccessfully to break the taper in the bottom ball joint. I succeeded with a 2 legged 10 tonne hydraulic puller. If you can borrow one of these before you start, it will make the job very easy.

[Hell Razor5543]

When we replaced the wishbones on Gracie Malcolm (citronut) showed me a very useful tip on separating the ball joint from the wishbone. If you take a look at the front of the wishbone (where it connects to the ball joint) you will see a protuberance (there may also be one on the back of it). Undo the securing nut (but not all the way, as you don't want to damage the threads). Jack the hub up a bit, so that the only thing holding the wishbone on the ball joint is friction, and then smack that protuberance with a decent hammer a few times. It should cause the wishbone to separate from the ball joint (well it did on Gracie after a few clouts!).

[Dommo]

You can get just the two bushes from Citroen.

I found that if you choose Xantia II and put in no sillouette or body style it shows you those bushes.

As you can see here:

http://gyazo.com/27dbb8cedd14da15fe8fca1b61f31ce2

[c.morewood]

If you get the alignment wrong or buy cheap bushes .. they can last as little as 2 or 300 miles as I found out. If you haven't got the tools to fit them, it's easier and a lot less hassle to buy the wishbones complete.

[isisalar]

I had to get mine done last year and did quite a bit of research on the subject. Indeed the complete arms are the cheapest and easiest option and if not doing it that way lining up the p bushes correctly is crucial and quite difficult without some sort of alignment aid.
With a lot of reports of early failure and having to pay dearly for labour I was keen to get it right first time. The well respected Citroen specialists BL autos do a lot of my work and they had fitted some of the complete arms, which can be bought for about £70, and had them fail in about a year so I wasn't keen to go down that route, the p bushes available online and from GSF sometimes for less than a tenner obviously can't be that good quality and are probably what's used to make up the cheap arms.
The genuine articles were available from Citroen at fairly reasonable prices, from memory the p bushes were just over £30 e@ as opposed to £20 ish for supposedly OE standard ones online. Lemforder balljoints were about £50 a pair from Eurocarparts and the other bushes were not expensive from Citroen.
With the lining up being so crucial I left it to BL auto's to do the job and used genuine bushes and Lemforder balljoints and all seems well a year later.
After I'd had the job done I came across an old post from our very own Citrojim which stated that the original p bushes and arms have alignment dots so getting the genuine ones seems to be a no brainer as it's so easy to get it wrong.
Cheers
Paul

[RichardW]

Be careful who you get to fit the arms (or bushes) as well - the uninitiated will lift the roll bar out of the way to get the arm back in, with predictable results on the front height corrector!

[addo]

Isn't that a rite of passage?

Clever blokes unclip the dogbone first.

[dei9]

Be careful who you get to fit the arms (or bushes) as well - the uninitiated will lift the roll bar out of the way to get the arm back in, with predictable results on the front height corrector!

It's only on forums like this you would get that kind of advice, my bottom arm is due for a change too, and this little tip has probably saved me a lot of hassle later on. Thanks Richard.

And as for the bush vs whole arm debate, I would definitely change the arm every time, if the bush goes in at the wrong angle or twists, thats it then, it's false economy isn't it.

[dei9]

Isn't that a rite of passage?

Clever blokes unclip the dogbone first.

There's the clamp that is connected to the bodyroll sensor too (on hyractive 2 ones at least), is this another consideration?

[addo]

Yes, any and all such links should be released.

If you drive the bush home with a lump hammer, which is quite possible, apply torsion as you hit it on to "steer" the bush gently around.

[elma]

I'll be changing mine later. I'll do some pics to show why its easier to buy arms. I've got time on my hands and no work so bushes makes sense for now. If I were working it would've been arms.