Citrojim's Pixo, Saxo and Cycling Tales

Xaccers · Post by **Xaccers** » 14 Mar 2010, 21:30

CitroJim wrote: As a result of heating, a small fire under the wing had to be extinguished.

Only you could slip that little gem into the writeup as though it's absolutely normal

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 14 Mar 2010, 22:10

Funny how the eyebrows always seem to be the first to suffer in case of blowtorch accidents Richard

I lost mine in a gas oven many years ago but that's another story entirely....

My old smoke spanner works well. It's a Calor propane torch that attaches to a standard Calor cylinder. I've got a small burner on it and it gives a flame not unlike an oxy-acetelyne torch..

Been quite a day today. The Activa project is running again and the suspension system is under pressure. Touch-wood, the repair to the front ram appears to be holding but I'm not going to celebrate just yet. I want to see a few hundred miles out of it first.

I fitted a set of diodes to the hydractive electrovalves and now have a fully functioning hydractive system

Generally the hydraulics are good; it holds pressure for ages after the engine is stopped and the tick rate is measured in minutes now with good spheres fitted and the only remaining problem is a very lazy rear height corrector that won't bring the rear up from low without help and will not correct a sit in the boot test.

Once pressure was established in the system, I could then get the two rear corner spheres cracked off and tested. Given that every other sphere on the car was a battle, I fully expected these last two would be as well. They were just the opposite! They came off easily and were found to be OK

Work now moves to the interior and the electrical problems that have their root in the corroded loom connector in the passenger footwell. I noticed today the sunroof has packed up and the feed for that runs through that connector...

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 15 Mar 2010, 09:14

Xac wrote:Only you could slip that little gem into the writeup as though it's absolutely normal

After all I've been through with Project Activa recently, a small fire seemed in no way out of the ordinary at all

Just par for the course really

Gosh, never have I had a car with so many issues. I thought nothing could top my V6 for having s much needing doing but Project Activa is beating it by a country mile

Not sure what the fate of the car will be just yet. An MOT is not now far off and it should be on the road thereafter but after that I'm not sure. Having put so much into the car I may not want to part with it even though I can't really run three cars. Time will see...

I'm still on the wagon with the smoking but this weekend was hard

After the success of releasing the seized flare nut, which involved much work, fire and smoke, when it eventually came free I so badly wanted a cigarette as a celebration of a job done

I resisted!

One thing that was had is that I left off the NRT patches ffor the weekend, just to see, and the old nicotine withdrawl really hit in big-time with virtually all the symptoms you could get

By Sunday evening I was a mental wreck who culd barely speak or type

I'm back on the patches today and much improved in both mood and mental faculty

I'm seeing I'll now have a battle to give up the patches! Doctor tells me they'll be weaning me off them very gently and I can see why now.

By golly, smoking and nicotine addiction is evil stuff. I'm told it's easier to kick heroin addiction but I get the feeling kicking a Citroen addiction may be even harder...

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 15 Mar 2010, 21:20

Given the lovely weather and the fact I started work early, I sloped off early and got an hour or so in on Project Activa this afternoon

It was actually some much-needed therapy after a pretty intense day looking into and correcting software bugs

With the rear of the car up in the air I took at look at the lazy height corrector. I thought at first it was seized but in actual fact the problem looks to be just the opposite. It's free enough; too free actually as the part of the mechanism that connects through the plastic link to the ARB has a lot of free-play in the pivot. This is leading to lost motion in that movements transmitted by the link serve to move the mechanism up and down rather than the in and out needed by the hydraulic valve. The valve moves so little that any lost motion at all in the mechanism will have severe consequences for the ability of the height corrector to do its job properly and at the moment it is doing it's job hardly at all...

In keeping with my repair rather than replace philosophy with this car, I'll have the whole corrector mechanism off and see what can be done with it. I suspect that the corrector was seized at one time and was rather brutally freed off and that has resulted in pivot damage.

It might be an un-rivet job and turn up a new pivot in the lathe.

Hopefully tomorrow will allow me to find out.

admiral51 · Post by **admiral51** » 15 Mar 2010, 21:31

Another quiet day then Jim

Glad your still smoke free something i really must attempt myself,been putting it off for far too long

Colin

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 15 Mar 2010, 22:34

admiral51 wrote: Glad your still smoke free something i really must attempt myself,been putting it off for far too long

I recommend it Colin but don't ever get the idea it is easy

It's actually bloody difficult and Project Activa is a useful distraction...

One big recommendation is to go see your Doc and join any smoking cessation clinics your practice runs. Big advantage is that they will assess the best method for you and any "aids" you need will be on prescription and that means a big difference in cost. These patches I'm on cost a small fortune over the counter but on prescription they cost just the cost of one prescription. The other big advantage of a smoking cessation clinic is they're with you and keep close tabs on you and are avowed that you won't fail.

It's worth it in the end. You know you've turned the corner when as happened this evening when I went to pick up the girls and we nipped into a corner shop for a few bits for Siany's cookery class tomorrow; the customer in front of us absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke and it really was pretty disgusting

To think I may have smelled like that a few weeks ago

Go for it Colin!

Post by **RichardW** » 15 Mar 2010, 22:38

The most vehement anti-smokers are usually ex-smokers....

Keep up the good work Jim, on both the cancer sticks and the Activa, both will be worth it in the end!

Gingerposer · Post by **Gingerposer** » 16 Mar 2010, 07:03

CitroJim wrote: keep tabs on you and you won't fail

not sure that's the recommended method but all power to you for giving up (been there, know how hard it can be)

Ainslie

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 18 Mar 2010, 19:59

Gingerposer wrote: not sure that's the recommended method but all power to you for giving up (been there, know how hard it can be)

Ainslie

It works with her because she's not the sort you would admit that you've failed if you know what I mean Ainslie

It is tough and this week has been especially difficult but still going strong

Project Activa has taken another small step forward

The last episode of this blog ended on a cliffhanger where the rear suspension would not rise from low on its own and would only come up if the lever was set to high first... It would not correct an height changes either. Most odd.

Well, it was not the height corrector mechanism

Changed that, no better.

I then thought the height corrector itself might be bad or full of gunge, especially after seeing the state the roll corrector was in so I removed the height corrector for overhaul. Someone had been there before me and all the hydraulic union flare nuts were rounded right off

I had to resort to pipe grips to undo the very tight unions

I expected to find the height corrector full of dirt but after stripping it I found it pristine

In fact it looked recent...

This is it coming apart.

I gave the corrector a good clean and check and it was faultless. Back on, the fault remained

The problem actually turned out to be something very simple. The height adjustment on the ARB was so far out that the only reason the car was at near right height in the normal lever position was that the lever mechanism was over-riding the ARB mechanism. After moving the clamp a fair way, the height now corrects as normal

Even that was difficult as the clamp bolt was a bit corroded and very, very tight. Plus-Gas to the rescue again

I was really lucky, I moved the clamp to just test the hypothesis that it was a mile out of adjustment and the amount I moved it was just about right!

Goodness knows how the height adjustment was set so wrongly. I know now the car had a lot done to the rear a while back, including a new ram. The height corrector was obviously removed at the time but it seems whoever did the job totally cocked up the height adjustment and landed in a situation where the height looked more or less OK but was totally wrong. It now responds a treat and the rear suspension feels distinctly softer

Provided the front ram repair holds, that's the suspension work done now.

It raining here, especially to test my sunroof leak repair..

Work now moves inside, reassembling the interior and sorting out all the electrical gremlins stemming from the corroded loom connector...

An MOT beckons

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 19 Mar 2010, 08:31

happy to see the car still riding nice and high this morning...

Previously and with the mis-adjusted ride height, the car would sink quite rapidly at the rear.

Since the adjustment has been made it no longer sinks

davetherave · Post by **davetherave** » 19 Mar 2010, 09:41

Nice one, all seems to be coming on Jim.

I remeber riding around with the back end up in the air on the 1st xantia, not much fun!
You are soon going to have serious problems deciding what car(s) to take to the rallies this year!

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 23 Mar 2010, 20:33

davetherave wrote: You are soon going to have serious problems deciding what car(s) to take to the rallies this year!

Yep

I reckon my next project perhaps ought to be a car transporter

Not much has been happening on Project Activa recently. Saturday was busy with the girls, mainly giving Robyn lots of driving practice. She's doing really well and I can see a definite improvement now every time we go out.

Sunday I got a little done on the electrics. The big corroded connector that mainly carries speaker wiring I've managed to save but the really bad one that carries the wiring up to the sunroof and IR receiver is beyond salvation and has been replaced.

I'm now ready to refit the interior after finding all leaks are now gone (thanks to some good, hard rain

)

This evening was too wet and cold to do anything out of doors so needing to do something mechanical, I looked at the height corrector mechanism I had dismantled earlier thinking it was the cause of my rear height correction problems. It wasn't and effectively I'd destroyed a perfectly good mechanism by pulling it apart as it was necessary to un-rivet the pivot and the only way to do this was chop off the rivet head meaning that it could not be re-riveted

So, basically the mechanism was scrap.

I rescued it by mounting the pivot in the lathe and drilled and tapped an M6 thread in it so that it could accept a 10mm bolt.

I now have a height corrector mechanism that can be dismantled in fiture for thorough cleaning and lubrication

Here it is in its component parts:

And here it is all ready to go back into service:

So, a seized height corrector mechanism is not necessarily scrap

I've been rotating my two working cars on a weekly basis for a few weeks now and currently I'm using my Activa

Last week I used the V6 and she is now resting...

On Sunday I took a ride down in the V6 to see Richard and return his sphere tester I'd been borrowing. Whilst nattering, Richard observed my V6 is riding a bit high at the front. I'd not consciously noticed it but looking at his HDi and V6, he was absolutely right. So that'll be the next job..

Apart from that, both the V6 and Activa are fine and nothing significant to report on either

Next wet evening project is to build my own sphere tester. It's such a useful thing to have. I have all the bits. it's just a case of assembling them. I've been saying that for a year or more now; I really must set to and do it, just like I must do the headlamp relay mod on my V6

vince · Post by **vince** » 23 Mar 2010, 21:25

Good stuff Jim

CitroJim · Post by **CitroJim** » 28 Mar 2010, 20:08

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible but for now I'll be a bit quiet.

I have ongoing and worsening problems with my ears which is affecting my balance and my ability to think and do things clearly, hence why I've been a bit quiet on here lately. In fact it is making me feel very rough and the maximum I can concentrate on here for is about ten minutes before a raging headache comes on and everything goes cross-eyed. Me head feels like it is clamped in a vice.

To add to my misery, I have tinnitus so loud it is deafening me

Doctors tomorrow. Hopefully he'll get to the root of it.

My ears are my Achilles heel.

The massive queue of PMs I have will be answered as soon as possible.

way2go · Post by **way2go** » 28 Mar 2010, 21:04

CitroJim wrote:
Doctors tomorrow. Hopefully he'll get to the root of it.

Not pleasant, I can empathise.

Best to press the Doctor for the ENT referral straightaway as you now have to book an appt on the web after he gives you this. Good game as I had to ring the appointments line then because the website said "no appointments" as it hadn't been updated across a few potential hospitals by the NHS. Then when you get sent an appt it's at least a month away!