thinking of buying a C5 X7

[bobins]

You can easily check whether it's actually leaking by shining a torch through one of the cut outs to the rear of the driver's side roadwheel, but to actually check the condition of the shaft itself you really need to get into the footwell and remove the lowest steering column cover where the column goes through the floor. You also need to disconnect the column at the base, but that's a simple clip and 10mm(?) head bolt.

[admiral51]

Peter N has a couple of early C5 X7 tourers, both are steel sprung but from memory there is a difference in suspension between them, i think there are different specs for the shocks/springs.
When i had my old 1.6 we would do the round trip to the west coast of Scotland and whilst not being 4 adults there were 3 of us and a well fed Border Collie and a boot full of luggage and it turned in close to 50 mpg from memory.
The 2.0 Hdi we have now is something different, just pulls and goes like stink and still turns in 50 mpg even with a heavy right foot
The only benefit of wet suspension in terms of towing is the self levelling that i can see.
Colin

[darbuck]

I would imagine you might get a bit of hostility if you start taking bits off the steering column, I'll just check for leaks and if none then fingers crossed it'll be a good one. they do seem to fairly shift the new 2.0 HDI. As for suspension I found the self leveling on my old estate brilliant for towing. Ill just have to be careful when buying thanks for all the advice lads. I will report back when I have one bought.

[Hell Razor5543]

When you are towing anything heavy make sure to manually reverse it (and don't use the car). Dual mass flywheels HATE braked trailers! Unless you can temporarily disable the brakes on the trailer they will engage as soon as the car starts to reverse, putting a greater strain on the clutch and DMF.

[darbuck]

Will do thanks for the tip. the trailer doesn't have any brakes on it, its an old one off I bought about 15 years back when braked trailers were relatively new here.
Is There anyone running a SMF. I have no faith in DMFs and it hurts my feelings to swap out €500 for clutch kits every 20/30000 miles. It will be one of the first things I will change if there is no issue with them. The SMF was a gift on the MK1 I had.

[GiveMeABreak]

I would not recommend a SMF conversion at all. DMFs are designed to take the torsional stress out of the system - a Solid Flywheel can't really do that - and will still cause additional stress and vibration that has to go somewhere..... Put it down to the cost of owning a diesel with a lot of low down torque.