2003 C5 Estate, rear wheels tipping in

[Gary-James]

Hopefully this will reach open post.
Please can anyone help with advice.
Just joined this forum.
My 2003 Citroen C5 estate, 2.0L diesel has failed mot on both rear tyres.
While the tyre tread across the main area is almost like new the very inside edge has worn through to the steel braiding.
The camber on the the rear wheels is such that the top inside edge of the two rear tyres is actually touching the plastic liner inside the main wheel arch, this is the verticals part of the liner/spat I’m referring to the tyre does not touch the top of the inner arch. Actually on one side of the car the plastic liner it’s worn it through where the tyre has rubbed against it on the vertical part of the spat /liner.
Therefore the tyre has been scrubbed out on the road surface on the very inside top edge. Such is the camber that it can be seen when viewed from the outside of the car. The car was MOT,d 3 days ago and there were no issues with bearing, linkage or bushes.
The car is carrying weight but I do not believe the weight is greater than the cars factory payload.
Regarding weight, I had a heavy Trailor in use for couple of years which did add additional weight to the back end. However, as the the car setting would have had a slight factory set camber, I currently believe that what ever weight is on the car, within limits or over the limit, that if it was overloaded, the additional weight would compress the suspension and make the car sit lower and place additional pressure on the tyres, I can’t see it having adverse effect on the camber as such. I’ll be pleased to hear that I’m wrong. If anyone can advise I’d be very pleased for the help.
Many thanks. fingers crossed this end. Gary

[Hell Razor5543]

That sounds like the trailing arm bearings are on the way out. They do wear out over time, and will need to be replaced. I cannot advise you on how to do this (as when it happened on my first C5 I took it to a Citroen specialist).

[RichardW]

Welcome along, I have split this off into its own post.

This is (or rather was!) a common problem on all hydraulic Cits - the bearings in the rear trailing arms have collapsed. Fixing it is not too hard, but not sure on parts availability now for a 20 year old car, and there are a couple of gotchas... first, if they have never been out the rear brake caliper brake bolts may prove impossible to remove and you may need new calipers, and secondly (and probably most pertinent in your case) if the wear is bad then the arm starts to get chewed up, and can't be repaired, so you need to replace - again parts availability is going to be an issue.

I'm surprised that you have not noticed a stiff rear ride, lots of groaning noises, and more importantly that the MOT tester didn't pick it up!!

[aerodynamica]

I'll second this for the trailing arm bearings. It has been an inevitable issue since the CX in the 70s and then BX, XM, Xantia and C5. The DS and GS were not prone to this.

You can still get the kits - I changed the rear bearings on my Xantia 18 months ago although I did have trouble with one of the thrust caps in the kit shattered drifting it in place on the support tube. It must have been made undersized so I re used the old one on that side.

You might be lucky with the rear callipers. If the corrosion between the Caliper and the trailing arm surface has built up and distorted the mounting. You might only need to replace the long mounting bolts. You can then remove the calipers, clean up the corrosion on the arm and then swap the calipers L - R because they're symmetrical (pipe connection becomes the bleed nipple and vice versa) and the outer flat face of the Caliper becomes the uncorroded mounting face. I did this on a previous Xantia to good effect.