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

[octinum]

Let me resurrect this zombie topic then. With one sad, and one hopefully happy update.

Sadly, the C5 is gone. I lived in a smaller city when I bought it, with access to a lift and a canal for almost as long as I needed them (courtesy of a friend), and it was much easier to obtain parts from Europe. All three cars in the stable were bought with the same advantage. Life changed, Turkey changed, and I no longer have the time, free access to a lift or canal, and it is practically impossible to import parts as an individual to Turkey now. Obviously, the v6 and Hydractive 3+ specific parts are hard to come by in Turkey (I think mine was the only facelift Mk1 C5 3.0 v6 in Turkey).

The C5 was a victim of sabotage-level "repairs". First, a shop "fixed" the leaking swirl pot. Years later, the thermostat got stuck. I got it replaced. After that, coolant temp always tended to tick a bit above mid point, and I noticed unusual fan noise after I parked from time to time. Since the C5 was always driven sedately, these were not easy to replicate. One year later, climbing Taurus mountain passes under 40C outside temperature, aircon working overtime, with 4.5 people on board and the boot loaded up to the rear windshield, I had to pull over because the temperature suddenly went up. The sensor cap blew, emptying the coolant like a Geyser (luckily nobody was hurt). I had the car towed for around 20kms, had the coolant tank plastic-welded (as the sensor cap is now a citizen of the forests on the mountains), and drove another 80 kilometers to in-laws' summer house. A week later, the car brought me back to where I live, around 700 kilometers and back over the Taurus mountains, only overheating close to the highest pass, as I chose to drive at night and we were much lighter on the way back.

Turns out, the leaking swirl pot "fix" was actually deleting it. If it is not on the car, it can't leak. And then I found out that the thermostat seal was never replaced. They had just pushed the thermostat in its chamber and called it a day, not bothering to check if it moved at all. The car stayed in storage for many months, with me trying to find a shop that would carry out the repairs by the book. Almost everyone was like "we don't touch v6", and a couple who claimed they would simply stopped answering my phone later, presumably because I asked them if they would replace the head bolts, torque them to spec, and re-torque after a warm up and cool down cycle. Both claimed that was not necessary, they did head gaskets and all everyday, yet one of them didn't even have a torque wrench in the "shop".

Luckily, a fellow Citroen enthusiast volunteered to work on it, and I'm sure he will bring it on the road. But it's one car too many for me at this point. I bought an Audi A3 which I knew from brand new for the wife, as the kid is 10 years old now and our interior and boot space needs are more manageable. We still miss the C5.

As for the Xantia, hopefully she will be back on the road come the end of this month. I found a crashed VSX which a scrapper was breaking, with the 16v engine and manual transmission. And found another shop, which it seems like is much better than the two others I tried before. X1 VSX is very rare in Turkey, this is the only VSX I saw in Turkey apart from mine in the 8 years I owned the Xantia. I bought it in full. Most of it is usable. In addition to manual conversion, I'll strip it as best as I can and keep spares. I'll then hand over the shell back to the scrapper as I don't have anywhere to store it.

Let's see how it comes out and hopefully I'll have photos to share.