Xantia HDi 110 Cambelt

[DHallworth]

David,

Id get a second opinion on the tightness... not good being too tight!!

Paul

You planning on being near Glasgow any time soon?

lol

David.

[citroDane]

Hi gents,

I have 105K and six years of age on my cam belt. But given I live in Croatia my number is in kilometers.

I saw you UK gentlemen talk about the mileage on your belts and no one seems to have them break
before at least 100+ thousand miles on them.

Does that mean I won’t need to worry for say another 50 thousand kilometers or so? How about age? Citroen
in my own country, Denmark, says “mileage aside you need to change it at least every 3 years”. I think this might be
a bit of an exaggeration when you see how many years, for instance, an auxiliary belt lasts (the one I changed on
my -99- Xantia recently was the original and had only almost microscopic tears).

Thanks a lot in advance.

Best-
Gabriel

[RichardW]

Gabriel

The 'official' Citroen guidance for the HDi 2.0 is 10 years or 100k miles (160k km) for 'normal' use. Believe this is reduced to 80k miles (130k km) for severe use (your guess is as good as mine as to what severe use is!!). The drive is well engineered and generally reliable - the weak point is perhaps the water pump. Provided the pump and tensioners were changed (for quality items!) when the belt was changed then it should be OK for a good bit yet. In any case, failure of the belt 'only' results in broken rockers, so the repair cost is not that bad - the head does not need to come off.

[citroDane]

Hi Richard,

These are really good news, specially since you mentioned the water pump as the weak point…here’s why:

When I bought the car six years ago, it had 110 TKM on the clock. But as I have an untrusting nature
(kidding, I’m not that bad…I just don’t trust the clock on any used car I bought from someone else that much! )
I went to Citroen in Zagreb and asked them to replace the cam belt and tensioners. The parts cost a whole lot but
they were all original from Citroen. When they dismantled the old parts -as per your note on the pump- it looked
like the water pump was in fact leaking. They asked if I wanted to leave it like that, to which I responded “there is no way
I am gonna come back here in a few months and pay to have the entire procedure repeated because the pump
died or started spaying coolant out of the engine!”. So I paid for a new original pump and coolant change on top of
everything else but felt my decision was prudent. Since then I’ve been changing the coolant every two years to –at least-
avoid coolant gone acidic eating away at the pump seals.

Anyway add to all of that your comments (and I’m not a severe driver…whatever that means! ) and I’m gonna sleep like a
baby tonight with good thoughts about my cam belt lasting me another 50-60 TKM! Yeah!

Thanks a lot.

Cheers,
Gabriel

[RichardW]

Job done yesterday

Despite having run 10 years and 110k the old belt was in remarkably good condition, just a bit of light surface cracking on the back, no visible wear on the teeth, or cracking at the roots. Tensioners were in good nick too, but changed anyway. Water pump had some signs of weeping around the shaft but otherwise OK, but again changed anyway. I also fitted a new thermostat whilst the coolant was drained - the old one had gone a bit baggy, and running temp had dropped from 90 to 75 (probably that line doesn't have a number on it!) - I have found that on my previous Xantias that the stat appears to give out after about 100k.

I will put a post in Handy hints later about doing the job - it must be coming up for a lot of people and at first looks near impossible, but turns out to be not THAT bad if you work methodically. I had the same trouble as DickieG when bleeding the coolant though with the car trying to self combust - definitely a point to take care of on these engines - I will explain in the later post.

Made it the 30 miles to work this morning OK with no repeats of self combustion, and the engine appears smoother and quieter, but I rather suspect a lot of that is Placebo affect. Now, if only I could have some placebo affect for the scratches on my hands!

Top tip for the job is to get some flexi head ratchet spanners - Halfords are currently knocking out a set of 10 for <£40 which is highly recommended - the 10mm (which is essential for this job) is nearly £10 on its own. Unfortunately no 16mm in the set - which is Citroen's favourite size of fixing, so I am going looking for one of those I think.

I got my mate around to help, and it's a lot easier with 2 people. Some of the steps would be v difficult on your own. That he's got a compressor and 450 lbf ft windy gun to extract the crank pulley bolt was a bonus! I will be reciprocating next week round at his by helping with the clutch on his C5.....

[RichardW]

Write up now Handy hints: HDi cambelt

Feel free to add info and tell me I could have missed half the job out and saved some of the scratches!

[DHallworth]

Richard,

That's a great write up!

Makes me think that I may attempt the one on our Exclusive rather then paying someone to do it like I did with our SX.

If you're ever in Glasgow and fancy an afternoon of Citroen chat, a Lexia session and some bacon sandwiches then give us a shout as I could always use the help of someone whose done it before!

David.

[RichardW]

Got to work this morning, and was greeted by steam emanating from under the bonnet Seems the bleed screw on the stat housing has worked loose - it must be just hanging in there - lucky I didn't lose it and all the coolant! Of couse I emptied the tools out of the car yesterday left over from the C5 clutch job.... Hopefully my mate's got enough tools to nip it back up again at lunch time.

David - having seen the pic of your workshop on the smoking thread, I'd be pleased to come and have a play some time! I want one of those - is it just personal, or do you run some business out of there???