Well I am as of last week a citroen xantia owner. Now if thats a good thing or not is yet to be seen but never mind. Now I know nothing about the hydraulic system thingy on these cars so please humor me for now.
I have looked in the book and it says that the little yellow hat thingy on the LHM tank must be between the two red lines. Well today I checked it and the yellow hat thingy is right at the top of the sight window. I had the engine running and put the height adjuster to maximum and it still stays right at the top. So I went to the shop this afternoon and paid nearly a tenner for 1L of LHM fluid and put that in and it still stays at the top of the window.
Can someone please help me and tell me if there is a problem or how I get it to go down between the two reds lines.
I am worried that I have no accurate way of checking the fluid levels although I can physicaly see it in the LHM tank.
Any advice a.s.a.p would be great please as I need to get this corrected before I start towing my caravan with the car.
Thank you muchly......Tim
The LHM thingy is to measure how much fliud is in the reservoir at full suspension pressure, the gauge is a float and sort of works upside down!
When you put the car up to max, you are then using as much fluid as you can so therefore the reservoir will be nearly empty and the gauge bit on the top will drop to tell you what you have left in the reservoir.
Dont fill it too much at this point because dont forget that when you put the car back down, the fluid has to go somewhere, this is obviously back into the reservoir, if you fill it to much, when you let the car down again the reservoir will fill back up and then out of the top all over the driveway.
When the car is down at normal height, the reservoir gauge will be lifted to it's rest position, this is at the top of the glass dome, making it look as if the reservoir is over filled.
To bring the gauge into it's correct setting, set the car on high, then syphon the fliud from the reservoir untill the gauge is correct.
When i had my Xantia the float got stuck on mine.A lot of people on here say its inpossible for the float to get stuck because of its design,but mine did!I think there have been a few topics on this over the years.
Also,as a newbie Xantia owner,on top of the tank there is a black tube coming out that drops down the side of the tank to nowhere.Thats is the LHM overflow pipe,that does`nt connect to anything!
Alot of first time onwers worry about that.
I used to have a 97 Vsx estate TD,the old top of the range model with Hydractive.That was our main tow car and apart from getting a bit hot & wanting more power,it was a great tow car.I do miss the suspension on the 406,as the rear does sag
timbo101 wrote:So I went to the shop this afternoon and paid nearly a tenner for 1L of LHM fluid and put that in and it still stays at the top of the window.
If it's at the top with the suspension on full height then it's over full or the float is stuck.
As long as it isn't overflowing when the car settles down then that's nothing to worry about. If you are worried it might be a stuck float then just open the top and stick your finger in, you should be able to reach the fluid.
The LHM level should not drop significantly in a couple of weeks. It is possible a sphere membrane has ruptured or is leaking but I'd be more inclined to suspect a leak, given the amount of loss over the relatively short time period.
If a sphere membrane has ruptured, a good way to find out if it's a rear one (including the anti-sink) is to bleed the rear brakes. If you get loads of air out then it's a good sign a sphere has ruptured or is leaking nitrogen.
What I would do first is have a good session of Citarobics, reset the LHM level on high straight afterward and then keep an eye on it for another week. It could be that the system has settled a little since the last top up and displaced some air which has now been replaced by LHM. Bleed the rear brakes again after a week, again looking for air.
The rear anti-sink is mis-named. It simply holds a reserve of pressure for the brakes and is really another accumulator. It could rupture with little obvious noticeable effect. A ruptured sphere shows itself by containing a lot of LHM when removed and making a fair old mess in the process.
As the spheres slowly loose pressure they do retain more LHM so a slow fall in level could be attributed to wearing spheres.
I'd have a good look for a leak, bearing in mind that some quite heavy leaks can go almost unnoticed for some time, especially those from the steering pinion valve and particularly the brake dosuer valve. The dosuer can leak into the drivers footwell under the carpet unnoticed for ages and not show any symptoms on braking. This happened on my Activa and there was a right old mess under the carprt. You can still smell old LHM in the cabin to this day.
My Activa looses LHM from the top of the reservoir from the LHM slopping around and leaking past the round seal. I've tried and cannot seem to stop it. maybe in an Activa it slops more because of enthusiastic cornering. Even like this I top up say only once every couple of months.
As for sphere changing and Hydraflush, I don't think the order really matters unless your LHM is really, really terribly mucky and horrible. Personally, I'd pop the new spheres on and then Hydraflush as I don't think the spheres will suffer if they get a dose of old LHM. After all, there are a lot of other items in the hydraulic circuits that have been swimming in old LHM that you cannot readily change and do not suffer markedly; the Hydraflush will, in any case, clean any rubbish out of the new spheres.
What is very important is to clean the filters in the LHM reservoir before refilling with Hydraflush and leaving the Hydraflush in for at least 1000 miles. It is a good idea when refilling with new LHM to give the filters another clean.
Jim
Runner, cyclist, time triallist, duathlete, Citroen AX fan and the CCC Citroenian 'From A to Z' Columnist...
When I cleaned out my LHM reservoir and filters recently I noticed that there was no pipe in the centre of the tapered filter to dip down below the LHM level to suck it up into the pump feed pipe.
Should there be a pipe there because, at the moment, the pump feed pipe connects to the top of the LHM tank filter housing and draws the LHM up through the filter without an internal pipe to extend down into the LHM.
I have some symptoms which suggest the pump is sucking in air and surely, the lack of a dip pipe in the tank will mean that lots of air will be drawn in.
Has anyone else noticed this, or, is my tank short of a lift pipe ?
cheers, Kev
Cheers, Kev
02 plate C5 2.2 Hdi Exclusive SE (now 170k miles 03/21).
Used to have:- Xantia 1.9 TurboD SX. 1996 Blue & 1998 Silver Activa. + 1992 BX TZD Turbo.
