Adventures with a Xantia VSX and a C5 v6

[octinum]

...or "I couldn't find a section for members and their vehicles".

In this topic, I want to share bits and pieces from my experience with our two Citroens. Our lovely moderators can freely move this topic to a better place, it's just that I couldn't find a section for this. In the forum about my third car, alfistiturkey.net, we have a "Our members and their vehicles" section for this purpose.

Anyway, as I mentioned briefly in my introduction topic, we have 3 cars at home, two of them are Citroens. Let me start with the specs and the state they are now.

1. 1997 Xantia Mk1 VSX automatic transmission. Currently not running (will ask for opinions and help in a bit ). Has leather power seats _without_ airbags, which I believe the reason it can have separate adjustments for lower and upper back as well as side supports. The transmission is a ZF 4HP14. AFAIK it's a plain hydromechanical unit, no electronics. As such, no snow or sport buttons. The transmission is the reason it's not running right now. The suspension is of Hydractive 2 type, with "sport" button.

2. 2005 C5 Mk1 Phase 2 3.0 v6 Exclusive. The X7 SW with H3+ suspension is _very_ rare in Turkey, I only saw one example. Plus, I heard that the X7 is somewhat on the firm side in terms of suspension setup. So it had to be the Mk1 either with the hatchback body, or the SW. Again AFAIK, Phase 2 has the newer generation ESP with extra features, AM6 transmission, and the directional headlights. When the H3+ suspension entered the equation, and my preference for petrol engines, it had to be the v6. Runs on autogas, though I run a tank of gasoline every couple months to keep the valves "sooted" to avoid valve seat recession. Urban fuel consumption is around 11-12 litres/100km of autogas.

3. Not a French car but... Alfa Romeo 156 Mk1.5 Selespeed. If anybody has questions about this car, feel free to ping me.

[octinum]

The first adventure, from around 1.5 years back: Xantia's leather seats and interior upholstery, raised from dead.

When I got the Xantia, the leather seats were very bad from a combination of lack of maintenance, wrong methods for maintenance when it's done, and I suspect a botched "repair" job which involves painting the seats with some acrylic paint. I asked around and found out that almost all shops where I live just use the paint they use for bodywork on the leather seats. It looks good at first. Then it kills the seats. Like this:

The Alfa's seats also have worn areas, however minor. Fearing someone will ruin it while trying to "fix", I thought I would learn myself on Xantia's seats. As seen on the photos, I didn't have much to lose. Worst case would be getting some good covers and hide my screw-ups.

You can see the evolution if you look closely. I believe I screwed up every single challenge when I stumbled upon the first time. Stitches were strictly off-limits for me, no intention of going there. I can give some walkthrough if anybody is interested, or if I have some spare time and nothing else to do.

Why the color change? It is a standard color from a leather products manufacturer in Turkey. I didn't want to spend time on color-matching, which would double if I fail miserably, to fix my possible failures. This way I can just order more of the standard color to fix my mistakes. It is too "bright" in the photos, it looks more "matte" in real life, and a little "old and used", which I think better fits the car.

The results:

[octinum]

Xantia's leather seats and interior upholstery, raised from dead, vol. 2.

When the leather seats were done, the old, worn, dirty interior started to look odd. That itch started to bother me. After a few days, I found myself talking to a real automotive designer, a friend of mine with whom I worked together when I was an R&D Engineer in a bus/coach building company.

Here's the "before" part. Apart from the headliner, look closely to the door card. I think it had some pattern when it was new, which is completely removed by now.

While I dislike the "dark" interiors (one of my favorite features of Xantia is the large windows), my friend's expertise worked out quite well for this: I went for anthracite. I also wrapped the same fabric on the A pillar trim plastics. All the plastic parts I cannot wrap were painted matte black. These are the handles on top of the doors, the upper part of the C pillar, plastic parts of the sun visors, basically every plastic trim piece that had a light color to match the original interior with matte black. Like the leather job, the first parts I painted were flaky, but it got better as I gained experience. Unfortunately I don't have photos for them, but I would like to share when I have those photos.

The sun visors were wrapped in the same fabric I used for the door cards, with the help of my mother-in-law and her skills with the sewing machine. I haven't installed them yet, and don't have the photos at the moment.

All images copyright @octinum. Free to use without additional permissions in frenchcarforum.co.uk.

[octinum]

What's next?
I forgot the sunroof interior panel. I'll have to remove the headliner for that again.

The harder part was the carpets and the parts behind the front seats. I prepared some black fabric paint and started with the right side of the car (I had the front passenger seat removed at the time). I thought of replacing the carpets but it's not available in Turkey. The initial tests are positive, the right side of the floor is black now, with the exception lines under the dog hair I skipped to vacuum. The passenger seat lower back part is also black now. I'll apply the same to the other side of the car some time.

The seat trims are going to stay as they are (light color!) for the moment. The power seat controls are the problem, they have those tiny markings which need to be masked for a matte black paint job, and I don't have the confidence for such finesse.

[Paul-R]

Keep going!

[GiveMeABreak]

I've moved this into the Members' 'Blogs and Galleries' Forum.

[CitroJim]

Wow! Great work on the upholstery