Xantia Height corrector pipe lengths ?

[Mandrake]

Hi All,

I'm planning to swap over the rear height corrector and cradle for a refurb one on my S1 Xantia V6 (Hydractive 2) some time in the next two weeks as part of my MOT preparation (MOT on the week of the 27th of July, gulp!) and I had phoned Pleiades today to get them to make up some replacement pipes for the height corrector as I seem to remember the flare nuts looking pretty badly rusted, (I like to go into this sort of job prepared) but they didn't seem to know for sure what the correct lengths were and asked me to measure them.

Whoops It never occurred to me that they wouldn't have the figures on hand from Citroen docs or previous orders so I felt a bit silly not having the figures on hand but the guy seemed to think that they weren't listed on service citroen. So tonight I went underneath with a piece of string measuring the pipes. Two of them I was able to measure and got figures of 390mm and 280mm - but I then realised one pipe was rather long and goes up over the top of the suspension chassis and out of sight. Following it with my fingers it SEEMS to be part of a bunch that goes right up to the front of the car as one piece ??!

This is the pipe in question:



So can anyone tell me (a) what the exact length of the pipe is, (b) confirm whether it is really one long run up to the front of the car (ugh!) or whether there is an unseen junction above the suspension chassis and (c) if there is a junction above the chassis, is it necessary to drop the chassis down to change the pipe ?

Upon closer inspection I don't think the flare nuts are anywhere near as bad as I thought they were - I may in fact be confusing it with the previous silver V6 whose height corrector flare nuts were definitely very badly rounded off and rusty and would have required mole grips to undo. (Destroying them in the process)

I slipped my flare nut spanner over all three of these and was able to rock them back and forth an 1/8th of a turn without any apparent trouble (I didn't go any further as it was pressurised) so I'm now wondering if I'll get away with not replacing the pipes after all, or only getting one made up if it breaks...

If the long pipe can't be replaced without dropping the chassis then there's no way I'll be replacing it unless the old one breaks, especially if it runs all the way up to the front of the car! I can't make up my mind whether I should just take my chances with the old pipes, or get the two short pipes made up regardless - I'm looking at about £20 and they're short easy to change runs, and being copper-nickel I'd see it as preventative maintenance to help prevent those pipes ever failing in the remaining life time of the car...

Any advice ?

[superloopy]

Simon ... service.citroen shows that

... on the supply side there's two pipes between rear HC and the antisink valve - 5270.LN (768 mm) and 5270.LP (644 mm)

and on the return side there's one long 3.5mm pipe listed running from rear hc to front of car 5270.Y0 ... 3761mm

and a shorter one at 270mm which runs to a three way t-piece presumably up behind the subframe.

So ... i'd plan for an extra long one and then you'll be able to shorten one end of it as required and any spare will come in handy elsewhere

[xantia_v6]

If you can't remove a fitting, you can change the cradle without changing the valve.

[Mandrake]

If you can't remove a fitting, you can change the cradle without changing the valve.

Thanks, I'm aware of that possibility, but I want to change the height corrector itself too, not just the cradle - it has something wrong with it that is causing the rubber cup on the end to blow up like a balloon, and it is under considerable pressure when the height corrector moves in that direction. (Not really visible in the photo because the height was at the other extreme where it moves away from the ballooning end)

I've never seen or heard of this happening before but my guess is that the overflow return port (the one with the little discs and spacers in it) is completely blocked up, thus there is no way for the leakage pressure to flow back to the plastic return - eventually it has caused the rubber cups to leak as well. (With the amount of pressure the rubber cup is under if it was the plastic return itself that was blocked it should have blown it off the spigot by now...)

The leakage from the cups is what has finally prompted me to do something about it.

The cradle itself is in really bad shape too - the pivot is completely knackered with a mile of slop as well as all the rust. I have a complete assembly kindly donated by RichardW nearly 2 years ago for the previous V6 that never got fitted to it - so I'd like to fit it to this car so that it finally sees good use on a car that deserves it. The steel roll bar clamp link rod is extremely rusty and about to snap too (ala northern_mike's red V6) so I'll be replacing that as part of the job as well as a new dogbone link. So basically the whole rear height corrector assembly is getting a thorough overhaul so that it should work as new and shouldn't give any future problems. (It's a bit sticky at the moment and doesn't keep the height very accurate, as well as the leak)

Simon ... service.citroen shows that

... on the supply side there's two pipes between rear HC and the antisink valve - 5270.LN (768 mm) and 5270.LP (644 mm)

That must be for the wrong RPO number or something - neither of the short pipes are anything like that long - as I say they measured 280mm and 390mm respectively - and they are easy to get at and see so there is no mistake in my measurement, certainly not by a factor of two to one. One goes to the anti-sink valve, the other goes to a K junction on the under side of the chassis.

BTW my VIN is VF7**************[VIN obfuscated, can be read by forum staff] and RPO is 7515 - see if that gets a different result.

and on the return side there's one long 3.5mm pipe listed running from rear hc to front of car 5270.Y0 ... 3761mm

and a shorter one at 270mm which runs to a three way t-piece presumably up behind the subframe.

So ... i'd plan for an extra long one and then you'll be able to shorten one end of it as required and any spare will come in handy elsewhere

Well I don't have the tools for making the end flares, otherwise I wouldn't be asking Pleadies to do them for me in the first place

It does sound like the steel return pipe is one long run to the front though - that is a real bummer if something goes wrong, I guess a join of some sort would be the sensible repair in that situation but again I don't have the tools to do that, so I'll just have to be really really careful when trying to remove that pipe I guess...

[RichardW]

I make no claims for the serviceability of that height corrector....

Pipes...

AS valve to HC:

5270 99
HYDRAULIC TUBE
DIAM 3,5 L=399

HC to K splitter

5270 E3
HYDRAULIC TUBE
DIAM 3,5 L=271

Return pipe (appears to go the front of the car, and then join into a rubber hose)

5270 Y0
OIL RETURN PIPE
DIAM 3,5 L = 3761

If you were worried about this one, then you could just cut the one on the car, get a short one made up with a union on one end, and then use a short rubber pipe and a couple of jubilees to joint it - it's not under much pressure.

David Hallworth has got a pipe making kit - not sure he's got any 3.5mm pipe left though....

[Mandrake]

I make no claims for the serviceability of that height corrector....

I'm sure it will be fine. It looks in far better condition than the one that's on there now, but I might give it a quick strip down and check before it goes on the car, and worst case I can make one good height corrector out of the two!

Thinking about it some more (it's a long time since I've had a height corrector apart) the inner rubber diaphragm must be split if the outer rubber cup is full of oil under pressure as the outer cup is only supposed to be a dust cover not an oil seal! (The pipe unions are not leaking at all, nor is the plastic return)

It's in a pretty bad way, as is the roll bar clamp link, so it will be nice to get this all sorted and back to nearly as new:

Pipes...

AS valve to HC:

5270 99
HYDRAULIC TUBE
DIAM 3,5 L=399

HC to K splitter

5270 E3
HYDRAULIC TUBE
DIAM 3,5 L=271

Return pipe (appears to go the front of the car, and then join into a rubber hose)

5270 Y0
OIL RETURN PIPE
DIAM 3,5 L = 3761

If you were worried about this one, then you could just cut the one on the car, get a short one made up with a union on one end, and then use a short rubber pipe and a couple of jubilees to joint it - it's not under much pressure.

David Hallworth has got a pipe making kit - not sure he's got any 3.5mm pipe left though....

Thanks for confirming I wasn't going crazy with my pipe lengths! I think you're right about the possibility of an emergency repair of the return pipe with rubber hose - as you say it's not under much pressure, my only worry is that without a bump in the pipe for the rubber and clamp to grab onto it might be prone to sliding off even with a hose clamp...

Hopefully it doesn't come to that - the unions were all covered in oily muck and that might have actually saved them - the flare nuts don't actually look too bad now I've wiped them clean so I think I'm going to chance it with the original pipes and only order replacements if something goes wrong... (I don't need the car for work so a few days off the road is not the end of the world)

[Mandrake]

All sorted!

http://www.frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/v ... 50#p453750" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No need to change the pipes as they turned out to be in perfect condition, and the cradle linkages were perfectly serviceable too...

[Hell Razor5543]

If oily muck kept the unions in good condition it might be worth covering them again, to protect them in future!

[superloopy]

So ... what DID you do? And is it mot'd or mot'able right now?

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

[Mandrake]

So ... what DID you do?

Follow the link to my blog entry to find out

And is it mot'd or mot'able right now?

I believe it is now MOTable and it is booked in for the 18th.