Citroen C5 X7 Exclusive Suspension Troubles

[Edmurray93]

Hello all

Im just after some advice here on my new to me X7 C5 Exclusive with the Hydractive 3+ suspension. When I bought the car I was told that it was all fully functional and working well, sadly this was not the case.

After a week of trouble free driving I was on the M1 coming home and the traffic stopped in-front of me forcing me to brake hard, this in turn caused the driver side strut to burst and dump all LDS fluid on the road.
I managed to get the car home safely all be it quite bumpy but no damage was done, so getting my thinking cap on and diving into forums to try and figure out why this happened, apparently if one of your spheres has lost its gas/failed there is no cushion left to absorb the downward motion of the nose diving forward during heavy braking and when the suspension ecu shuts off the regulator sphere to keep the car controlled during the heavy braking there is nowhere for the excess pressure to go but blow out the seals in the strut.

So, long story short I fitted 2 new 50 bar front spheres and a new driver side front strut. Filled it all up with fresh LDS and proceeded to do the well documented bleed procedure as follows:

• Remove the LDS cap
• Set car to lowest position using controls in car
• Check level of LDS fluid is correct sitting at the bottom of the basket
• Turn the steering wheel from lock to lock slowly and not holding it on limit
• Set car to highest position and hold it there for a few moments
• lower car back down to lowest setting
• Repeat 5-10 times
• Set car to lowest and check level is correct and for any fizzing/micro bubbles
• If fizzing is present, turn off the car in the lowest setting leaving the LDS cap off and let the bubbles/fizz fully dissipate until clear.

I have done this procedure countless times and yet the pump is still very loud, the front of the car takes ages to start raising slowly and then violently shoots up to the correct ride height. The ride quality is awful and when I go to check the level there is always heavy amounts of fizz/micro bubbles.

I have been doing alot of research and some people have said that you need a custom cap that has a tyre valve in it to apply a very slight pressure (0.5 Bar) to the LDS tank during the initial fill up to force fresh LDS fluid into the pump which I have done and that allowed it to raise but still not solved the problem so I have stopped using that at this stage now to minimise risk of rupturing the tank.

Other people have said that its because the system needs fully depressurising using Diagbox and that the stubborn airlock is trapped in the front valve block and that the regulator valve does not open for long enough to allow the air to bleed out using the mentioned procedure above. I don't see how this is the problem as surely it should be able to purge out the air by this length of time with these systems being largely self-bleeding? The pump hasn't once quietened down not even from filling it up with fresh fluid so my thoughts are that all this chaos is possibly caused by the pump is drawing in air somehow? I appreciate that this is a long post but I am getting soo much conflicting information from various groups and forums about this and what the correct procedures are and im a little stuck at the moment and just after some clarity on how I can get this sorted and finally experience this famous ride quality everyone goes on about!

Thank you in advance everyone!

[mickthemaverick]

Sorry to see you have had such a woeful intro to your C5 but to the FCF where hopefully you will find the advice you need from one of our Hydractive expert members.

[Edmurray93]

Hi Mick, thank you for the response! I have to say it is a brilliant car, I have always been into German cars for a while but I thought id try out a C6 but with these getting really rare now I stumbled across C5's and aside from the suspension troubles I really like it, the interior is fantastic and feels really nice the engine and auto gearbox is perfect! Hopefully I'll be able to get this suspension sorted with some help from here and finally get that lovely ride everyone goes on about! Thank you!

[Paul-R]

How far did you have to drive home after the fluid loss? I worry about the pump as surely it will have been operating mostly dry for all that time.

[Edmurray93]

Hi Paul, good question! It was a good 20 mile journey home from Leeds, fortunately after the fluid dumped on the M1 and the front of the car sank to its bump stops the car threw a suspension fault on the dash and shut down the pump, it didn't come back on until I had replaced both the spheres and the driver strut a few weeks after it was sat waiting for parts at home. So hopefully the pump will have survived its ordeal as even though its still loud now it does still raise the car.

[Kees]

Hai, i read your post, for me it seems that you bought a faulty strut, you can find here several post from forummers, they replaced one or two struts and experienced that the suspension is stiff or doesn't work at all.
They buy them from several sites on the internet and when you Google for struts, you find them from different prices.
So, I think you should look into this matter instead of thinking about that there's something wrong with the system of the car. Because you say that the car will not rise smoothly.