Simon's new Xantia V6 and Leaf blog

[white exec]

Junior hacksaw the old one out, cutting from centre outwards, towards the outer steel tube. Weaken the outer tube enough to allow it to loosen, with/without help from a chisel.
As advised, press the new one in with a vise and socket, lubricated.

[RichardW]

Rear bush - this fits on a pin so can't be pressed off. Cut the rubber away, slit the sleeve, and pull it off. Refitting the new one is tricky as it needs to go on in the right orientation, which you may not have a reference for, and at least one person on here has reported the bush twisting as it was driven home. Didn't you post some diagrams for bush positioning a while back? Perhaps a jig could be made to get it in the right place.

Front bush - less sure about this, it lasts much longer than the rear. I recall there is an issue with pressing it in as the arm is not square so pressing it home tricky.

Height corrector - the roll bar comes right in front of the rear bush mount, which makes getting the arm back in difficult, especially with new stiff bushes. The temptation is to lift the roll bar, with consequent impact on the height corrector. Plenty of Xantias have come back from front arm replacement with the front height screwed up...!

[Mandrake]

Rear bush - this fits on a pin so can't be pressed off. Cut the rubber away, slit the sleeve, and pull it off. Refitting the new one is tricky as it needs to go on in the right orientation, which you may not have a reference for, and at least one person on here has reported the bush twisting as it was driven home. Didn't you post some diagrams for bush positioning a while back? Perhaps a jig could be made to get it in the right place.

Yes I have the diagram somewhere here. It shows that the neutral position of the bush should be adjusted such that the bottom of the end of the arm is 5mm below the horizontal. So the arm is hanging just slightly below horizontal from the pivot.

Front bush - less sure about this, it lasts much longer than the rear. I recall there is an issue with pressing it in as the arm is not square so pressing it home tricky.

If the clonk is indeed a faulty bush I think it must be the small front bush split, as the rear bushes while worn don't look like they are bad enough to allow for a clonk due to metal to metal contact.

Height corrector - the roll bar comes right in front of the rear bush mount, which makes getting the arm back in difficult, especially with new stiff bushes. The temptation is to lift the roll bar, with consequent impact on the height corrector. Plenty of Xantias have come back from front arm replacement with the front height screwed up...!

Ok I see what you mean - I may just disconnect it to be safe then. I think the front height needs resetting anyway as the front ride is intermittently harsh. The only problem is I don't have sufficiently flat ground to do an accurate job of setting the height. Last time I had to go to an underground ASDA car park to take the measurement!

However I think it's very likely that I'll go the replacement arm route - while some of the after market types may not be good quality I'd have thought the SKF ones should be OK ? They have the right one available for £50ish and left side for £60ish, and a complete arm swap is a job I should be able to do myself.

So when I get a quote back from the garage (they've only done a preliminary inspection and check of the gas pressure so far and haven't quoted any prices) I think I'll tell them to just leave the arms for now and go ahead with the A/C compressor replacement and regas.

Especially in the current virus climate I think it's wise to get the car finished and back on the road as soon as possible in case there are parts shortages! (I'm already worried that they may have difficulty ordering a compressor from Europe in a timely fashion) I can tackle the arms myself in the summer if things have settled down a bit by then but even then it's not a critical repair as the clonk has been there for the last 6 years!!

[Zelandeth]

Probably a daft question, but I'm assuming those arms are unique to each model? I need to get a similar issue sorted on my Activa where the rear bush on the nearside arm has basically disintegrated allowing about 1/8" of movement... I'm guessing that rebushing it will be necessary given the usual parts availability game for the Activa.

[Stickyfinger]

The ACTIVA arm has the drilling & tapped thread for the rod guide bearing...other than that the arm is the same as the equivalent engine/model without SCCAR. All arms I have seen have the lug cast in so you can drill-tap if needed.

[Skull]

No mention whether theses are ns or os but seem a bargain price (no connection to me)

50 x rear pivot bushes £24.99

OEM PART NUMBERS :
352382, 3523.82, TC352382
_________________________________________________________
and

50 x front bushes £24.99



Maybe a car club could buy them ?

[Mandrake]

Ok I've just found a triplet that has worse under body corrosion than my Ion...



Just shows what the lack of factory undersealing does in a salty environment...

[white exec]

Why, oh why, oh why, do owners get upset and out-of-pocket when they find their 10-year-old cars have succumbed to underbody and cavity rust? Has no-one learned anything about cars rusting, especially in northern climates, where the roads are repeatedly spread with salt?

I've been banging on about this - not least in Simon's direction, after underside photos of both the Xantia and the Ion - for a long time now, and am in two minds whether I should apologise or not.

My first car (a 1935 Rover Ten) was built from railway lines, and leaked oil, so rust was never an issue, either in London or Warrington. But everything subsequently (1956 Hillman, and Austin/Rovers from 1960, 1963, 1966, 1970, 1972 and 1975) rusted merrily. An Austin1300 actually had sponge foam in sills, ex-factory, this guaranteeing capilliary rust. P6 Rovers had no wheel arch liners, so wet mud piled up in the wing corners, and destroyed the mazac light fittings in short order.

Anything learned from the holes and lacework? Hell yes, but it took a while. When an 8-year-old '75 P6B V8 arrived, I decided enough was enough. Its underside was inexpensively steam cleaned by a local pre-MoT HGV garage, as preparation for copious waxoyling, sills and cavities included. Hard work (with expendible ASL plant-spray guns) but effective enough. Rusting was no more.

Come a rust-free '89 BX in 1994, the waxoyling was repeated, and it never rusted, anywhere, going from 45k miiles to over 177k, despite snow, ice and salty slush in UK and abroad.

A new XM in 1999, which deserved to be protected, and it was. Initially with waxoyl again, before a salty slushing in both Scotland one New Year, and Switzerland late-spring. It got moved (with us) to Andalucia in 2004, and at that point (even though the climate was far from wintry) I decided that something a bit more durable than waxoyl would be a good idea. Settled on 4CR brand 5300 brown cavity wax, and invested in a Sealey SG18 cavity wax injector gun - much easier on the wrist, and better than endless polythene spray bottles. Those bits have done a tremendous job, and the car - now 24 years old - is rust-free. Unshipping underside bits - spheres, brake parts, etc - is always easy.

It took a while to learn the lesson of rust protection, and not without a few casualties and premature deaths-by-rust (eg the 1960 Rover P5) along the way. But the tin-worm can be fended off . . . just don't wait until it's already there. Get in with the wax while the going's good. The investment will be tiny compared to the mayhem and expense of repairs later on.

[daviemck2006]

That is a poor state of a car at 10 years old, but if I look up the gov site for mots I find that very few, if any of my early cars lasted much more than 8 to 10 years. My leon is 8 years old and the c1 is 4 years old. I think they will both get a good going over underneath this summer. The last time I looked under Shaun's 107, it is the same age as my Leon at 8 there was quite a bit surface rust underneath it. No rust on the body but I recon if it does not get treated then it will get to 10 years old and that's it.

[Mandrake]

Not much to report here lately, like most of you we're locked down here, I was working from home for about a week but am now on Furlough for the forseeable future, (on full pay thankfully!) and SWMBO is working from home as well. Touch wood we're all healthy and well so far.

The Ion has been working fine since the charger repair, although the edge of the front right tyre is starting to look decidely iffy as it is wearing through the outer skin in patches and will need replacing soon, mileage wise... It has been our only means of transport (for grocery runs) while the Xantia sat in for repair at the garage...

Yesterday when going for a grocery click and collect I noticed that my drivers license had expired a couple of weeks ago...DOH I had been aware back around January that it would expire on the 23rd of March but was expecting a reminder letter to come in the mail as I was under the impression that I needed the reminder letter to renew at a post office. (I can't renew online as I don't have a British passport required for the online process!!)

Of course the letter never arrived and with the coronavirus situation the expiry date got forgotten until yesterday. After a bit of research I confirmed that no, I definitely can't renew it online, the only options are post office or by mail. And doing it by mail means getting a new passport photo (with almost nowhere open to do one) and going to the post office to post it anyway, so very grudgingly I went into the main post office in Glasgow today to renew my license!

On the way home I got a call from the garage to say that the Xantia was fixed! I wasn't even sure that they were open during the lockdown but apparently because they have contracts to maintain council vehicles they're considered to be an "essential" business, also they don't do retail sales of cars (only repairs/MOT) so don't come under the criteria of retailers who must close.

So I went over to pick up the Xantia and handed over the £££. On the way home I filled up with V-Power and took a slight naughty "detour" on the way home to stretch its legs after it has sat unused for several weeks. The car is running great and feels very perky - even more so than normal although it could be my imagination after driving a 66hp Ion for the last month!!

The new compressor is completely silent on or off apart from the click when the clutch changes state - the old one was quite noisy and clattery when on, even when it used to work... The air from the vents is very cold within seconds too which is great.

However there is one thing that might not be right that I thought I'd query. When I left the garage I turned the A/C on and off a couple of times to check the air temperature and everything was working fine, however by the time I'd been for a drive and got home (and got the engine nice and hot) I noticed that turning on the A/C seems to be bringing the fans onto high speed instead of low.

I left it for about half an hour to cool down and tried again - but the same. With the engine at operating temperature and the fans not running at all, turning the A/C on first put the fans onto low speed for about 3 seconds then they jump to high speed and stay there...that doesn't seem right... It was still cooling nicely though.

And then after turning the A/C off the fans remain on high speed for at least 5 seconds before shutting down, instead of stopping as soon as the compressor clutch clicks off.

I don't know a lot about A/C but from what I remember there are two pressure switches on the drier bottle - a low pressure switch which goes open circuit when the pressure is too low which prevents the A/C coming on at all, and a second switch which closes when the pressure is too high to turn the fans onto full speed - in the event that the system pressure is too high due to extreme high temperatures in the system. Is this right ?

If so does it sound like the A/C might have been over pressurised ? While it's possible they've made a mistake, I'd generally trust these guys to do a good job, so I don't want to jump directly to assuming they have over pressurised the system.

One possibility I can think of is that despite being a compatible replacement, the new compressor might have slightly different specs that end up pressurising the system a bit higher under operation than the old one ?

Another possibility is the pressure switch could be faulty - I have actually had a faulty pressure switch on my first Xantia in NZ, although in that case it was the low pressure switch that was faulty - I ended up replacing the pressure switch (which can be done without losing pressure due to a built in schraeder valve) to fix the A/C on that car, so I guess it's theoretically possible that the switch is not switching at the correct pressure.

Does anyone have a copy of the wiring diagram for the A/C that includes the pressure switch ? I'm thinking of testing it again in the morning when everything is cooled down - if the problem doesn't happen with a cold engine bay and only happens when it heats up would that suggest its only marginally over pressurised ? Or that the high pressure switch on the drier is not tripping at the correct pressure ?

Thoughts ?

[Hell Razor5543]

When I had a series 2 Xantia using the A/C always brought the fans on at full speed (although I don't know if they came on slowly at first).

[Mandrake]

When I had a series 2 Xantia using the A/C always brought the fans on at full speed (although I don't know if they came on slowly at first).

Maybe yours was over pressurised too ? This is my third Xantia with A/C, and all of them including this car have run the fans at low speed with A/C on under normal conditions. I was under the impression the high fan speed was reserved for excessive system pressure that could occur if the condensor was overheated. (Or if the engine radiator temperature demanded it, independently of the A/C)

[Hell Razor5543]

Nope. The A/C was topped up by DickieG, who has all the correct details for the various Xantia levels of refrigerant. He knows what he is doing (unlike some other places).

[white exec]

I can post your circuit diagram for AC, Simon.
Just throw your VIN here.

On the driving licence, here in Spain things like that, and ITV testing (MoT) has been put on a "no need to renew" while the lockdown continues.
This arrangement might well operate across the EU, as expired Spanish-issued EU licences remain valid across the Union, SFAIK.

[Mandrake]

VF7**************[VIN obfuscated, can be read by forum staff]
RPO 7515