Simon's new Xantia V6 and Leaf blog

[CitroJim]

Created a Puegeot service box login, looked up the drop links and promptly fell on the floor laughing. (or crying, not sure)

Left and Right drop-links are different, one is £270, one is £286.... No thank you Peugeot...

Looks like the PSA pricing random number generator has been in action again

[Mandrake]

Created a Puegeot service box login, looked up the drop links and promptly fell on the floor laughing. (or crying, not sure)

Left and Right drop-links are different, one is £270, one is £286.... No thank you Peugeot...

Looks like the PSA pricing random number generator has been in action again

Yep!

You would think there would be some kind of regulations against selling a part for over 20 times the wholesale cost but apparently not!

[white exec]

Those Pug prices are ridiculous!
ADL-Blueprint stuff is very good quality. Have had wheel bearings/hubs and even an SMF 4-part kit from them for RAV4, all good.

[Mandrake]

Those Pug prices are ridiculous!
ADL-Blueprint stuff is very good quality. Have had wheel bearings/hubs and even an SMF 4-part kit from them for RAV4, all good.

Thanks for the reassurance - I've plonked down £26.56 on ebay for a left and right hand version of that blueprint drop link, free delivery due Friday. Hopefully that will fix the incessant rattle!

Because I'm doing such a high monthly mileage I don't want to wait until next spring to do it in case it wears to the point where the joint pops apart.

Interesting that the drop links are left and right handed, I don't think I've come across that before, and I wonder why they do it... The two ball joints seem to be at right angles to each other and its not clear whether there is top to bottom symmetry or not...

[CitroJim]

The mileage you do Simon they're more likely to rust solid rather than pop apart!

[Mandrake]

The mileage you do Simon they're more likely to rust solid rather than pop apart!

These are for the Ion Jim - which is doing about 1000-1200 miles per month. It has had this annoying rattle ever since I bought it but it has got progressively worse over time.

[CitroJim]

Sorry Simon... I was thinking they were for the Xantia - my brain is not at all good today!

[RichardW]

Welcome to my world of 15k pa Scottish road induced maintenance!

I had a Xantia one pop apart.... it was very quiet when it let go, the ride improved, and I didn't really notice the lack of roll control!

Let me know if you need to introduce it to Mr A Grinder to get them off

[CitroJim]

I had a Xantia one pop apart.... it was very quiet when it let go, the ride improved, and I didn't really notice the lack of roll control!

Trouble is, you loose height correction if you disconnect both links!!!

[Mandrake]

Welcome to my world of 15k pa Scottish road induced maintenance!

Since I had the proper charge point installed in September which has a dedicated hard wired kWh meter I've decided to collect monthly statistics.

So for the month of October 1st to November 1st I've done 1078 miles in the Ion, of which 720 will be bare minimum daily commutes and the rest other running around or additional detours during the commute.

I did a total of 334.72kWh worth of charging at home, at 12.3 p/kWh that cost me £41.17 in charging on my power bill. This means an average consumption of 3.22 miles/kWh - down on my summer average of 4.2kWh due to heater use, and possibly wet weather since that increases drag. This gives me a charging cost of 3.8p/mile - up on the 3p/mile I was seeing in summer. I expect in the depths of winter I'll probably hit about 4.5p/mile.

The heater is certainly not on flat out but I'm using it a fair bit including on really cold mornings (only a few so far) manual "pre-heating" where I unplug the car, put the heater on full blast for 15 minutes to de-ice it then plug it back in for 45 minutes to top the battery up again before leaving. 15 minutes of full blast heater consumes about 1kWh while stationary, so while I leave the house fully charged again it counts against my charging.

Of course if I did any public charging this would not be recorded by my kWh meter and make my figures look artificially good, but I didn't actually do any public charging last month that I can remember, it was all charging at home.

If I was doing 1078 miles in the Xantia in stop start traffic I would be looking at about £301 in petrol and filling up 4-5 times a month - it doesn't really bear thinking about!

Let me know if you need to introduce it to Mr A Grinder to get them off

Don't worry, you're on speed dial!

I don't know when I will get a chance to tackle it. What I may do is try to slacken off both bolts on each drop-link, if they come willingly I'll proceed, if not I'll chicken out and tighten them back up and wait for a booking with Mr A Grinder.

In other news I got the front Quatrac 5's fitted today, so now I have a full set - all good, I think. I noticed something a bit strange though which I'd like peoples thoughts on.

Immediately after the fitting I went for a motorway run to check if the wheel balance had improved as there had still been a little bit of vibration - and it seemed pretty smooth and vibration free. Excellent I thought. I got home and found the tyre pressures of the new tyres a bit low at the front and bumped them up a bit. A bit later I was out on the motorway again and suddenly I was noticing quite a bit of vibration between 50-75 again. Bugger. If anything worse than before the tyres were changed

So when I got where I was going I let the pressure down a little bit on the tyres in case it was that - no improvement. Then I had to drive on a stretch of motorway that was stop start traffic and I discovered that at very slow speeds the car wasn't moving forward smoothly, as an electric motor should - it was actually lurching slightly in small lurches as if something was holding it back. There was a noise that was also corresponding with the slight lurches and I suddenly had the idea that the rear brake shoes might be binding slightly at a particular part of the rotation?

The car has discs at the front but at the rear it is a combination of drum brakes and motor regeneration - with the motor doing most of the work and the drums only really kicking in when you brake harder.

On a hunch when I was stopped I tried pulling the handbrake on and off really hard a few times and touch wood I think that has sorted the vibration at speed for the moment, (or at least it was very minor afterwards) with the vibration not being a wheel imbalance but rather a cyclical "grabbing" of the rear drums possibly due to the handbrake not fully releasing the shoes ?

I'll admit up front I know very little about drum brakes other than that they can have issues with grabbing or not releasing properly, but I have no real experience of overhauling them or trying to troubleshoot a problem like this. Anyone have any suggestions ?

Does the handbrake usually share the same shoes as the foot brake ? Should there be a return spring that pulls the shoes away from the drum when the handbrake is released ? It's almost as if releasing the handbrake is not always fully pulling back the shoes so any imperfection of the roundness of the drum causes a slight drag at certain rotations ?

The hand brake is a conventional ratchet lever operated bowden cable to the rear - no fancy e-brake here...

[CitroJim]

I'll admit up front I know very little about drum brakes other than that they can have issues with grabbing or not releasing properly, but I have no real experience of overhauling them or trying to troubleshoot a problem like this. Anyone have any suggestions ?

A common problem I've had a few times is the shoe friction material delaminating from the shoe carrier...

Lots of dust in the drum can cause grabbing, as can a brake fluid weep from the slave cylinder causing a build-up of sticky gooey stuff - a combination of fluid and brake dust.

Does the handbrake usually share the same shoes as the foot brake ? Should there be a return spring that pulls the shoes away from the drum when the handbrake is released ? It's almost as if releasing the handbrake is not always fully pulling back the shoes so any imperfection of the roundness of the drum causes a slight drag at certain rotations ?

Yes, invariably the same shoes...

And yes.

One of the biggest causes of all drum issues is mis-operation of the self-adjusters - due again to brake dust and dirt impeding the mechanism... The self-adjusters are activated by handbrake operation so you may have an issue with them..

Often the adjusters fail to adjust and cause a long brake pedal travel and many clicks on the handbrake...

In all cases, a disassembly, clean and careful rebuild restores normality...

Amazed you have no past experience of them Simon... I grew up on them... On bikes and cars...

[Mandrake]

My first car was a GS Jim - discs on the front and rear! Of my cars that had drum brakes (including I think, my Daihatsu Charade, Honda Accord and Subaru) none of them ever needed doing any work on the drums!

However it may be a moot point because I think I may have misdiagnosed the problem!

On the motorway this morning the vibration and noise was there again so at 70mph I tried pulling on the handbrake - it's pretty weak and doesn't slow the car much even when pulled on as hard as I can but what I did notice was that while the car slowed somewhat it made zero difference to the vibration or noise - it didn't get any better or worse. So I think that rules out the rear drum brakes as the culprit ?

I then tried applying the foot brake hard at 70mph while also accelerating to keep my speed up and the vibration and noise got MUCH worse, in fact I could clearly feel it vibrating on the steering wheel. I guess that is a pretty conclusive sign of a warped front disc ?

Why wouldn't I notice this until now you wonder ? Because I don't really use the front brakes at high speeds! At motorway speeds I generally slow down just by lifting off the throttle, or pressing the brake pedal lightly - both of which apply regenerative braking from the motor to the rear wheels and doesn't engage either front or rear friction brakes.

It's only when you press the brake pedal significantly further to brake harder that the discs and drums are put into action, and as I seldom ever have cause to brake hard at motorway speed that rarely happens. But now that I test the brakes hard at high speed there is a clearly a problem with one or both front discs.

I've read that the i-Miev and clones are known for having issues with the front brakes binding, which of course would lead to them overheating and warping. Whether they are binding at the moment (I don't think they are) or they have been binding in the past and thus warped the discs previously I'm not sure.

I guess when the time comes to replace the drop-links I better inspect the discs for warping and the calipers for binding! Who says EV's don't require any maintenance - certainly not me!

I dread checking the Peugeot random number generator for the price of a set of discs and pads. Hopefully the after market will come to the rescue again...

[CitroJim]

Yes, that would seem to rule out the drums Simon...

I'm sure the front discs will be nothing special and possibly shared with many small Japanese cars... Try looking for Mitusibishi bits rather then Pug...

I find Suzuki Alto stuff is cheaper then Nissan stuff for Sian's Pixo...

[RichardW]

Simon - check that the knocking is not a track rod end (try and shake the wheel at 9-3 - if the TRE is away the knock, and play if it's bad will be evident). I had a loose TRE combined with an out of round tyre, and I was convinced the front of the car was falling off!!

I am planning to get the Visa out of the garage over Christmas, and do some work on the 307, so there will be plenty of room for an ION in there one day over the holiday if you need to do the drop links.

[harryp]

Warped discs?? There is an excellent article on the Lexus owners site which was reproduced here a few years ago. Can't seem to find it as not on my pc... (have it downloaded there). Maybe someone can point you in the right direction? Anyone?