Leaking Doseur Valve

[Old-Guy]

This evening, the green Xantia decided to dump all its LHM over the lane and father-in-laws drive. Could have been worse, we might have been on the M5 miles from home.

Once I'd cleaned up the drive (and moved the Xantia forward so that the OSF tyre was no longer on a puddle of green blood) I had a look.

With a small torch and a mirror-on-a-stick, I could see LHM dripping off a hoseclip on a small rubber pipe under the doseur valve close to the bulkhead. I presume this is a leak-off pipe?

It doesn't look as though any LHM has come through the bulkhead - or is that wishful thinking?

Without removing the trim above the pedals, I can only see one nut offset bottom left. Is this (and its partner offset top right) all that hold the doseur valve to the bulkhead?

What secures/seals the short rubber pipe to the leak-off pipe?

Is there more than one leak-off pipe? 'cos I'll do both while I'm at it, the valve being such a pig to get at on a 1.9TD.

And if anyone happens to know what the part number of the rubber pipe is? That would be magic.

Can't really complain - this is the first actual break-down on what after all is a 15 year-old car that has proved to be remarkably cheap to run and comfortable car.

[CitroJim]

Guy,

there's two leakage returns on the dosuer and they connect to the valve via short length of rubber tubing before this rubber gives way to hard plastic. These rubber stub pipes often perish.

You may even find the hard plastic hose has just popped out of the stub hose.

Access on a 1.9TD (or any turbo for that matter) is a bit hard but the pipes are easily replaceable once you can get to them. There is no need to remove the valve itself.

I don't know if the stub pipes are available from Citroen. Either use rubber hose rated as unleaded petrol proof or use soft silicone hose. The latter has shown good LHM resistance in tests.

[citronut]

quite offten it is possible to cut back the short rubber tube/pipe and re/attatch it, just a little bit shorter,


regards malcolm

[RichardW]

The pipes are available from Citroen... you might need to be sitting down though! You will have 5270 R2 and either R5 (no ABS) or R6 (ABS)

Part Number Description Quantity Price excl. VAT Price incl. VAT Total incl. VAT
00005270R2 OIL RETURN TUBE 4.36 GBP 5.23 GBP 5.23 GBP

00005270R5 OIL BACK HARNES 30.07 GBP 36.08 GBP 36.08 GBP

00005270R6 OIL BACK HARNES 60.18 GBP 72.22 GBP 72.22 GBP

The first (cheap) one is a short tube that connects into another tube back to the tank. The other is a long tube that goes right back to the tank (and the ABS block if fitted). I'd go with Malcolm's suggestion of splicing the tube in the first instance

[Old-Guy]

Gentlemen, thank you for all the advice and data. Once again, Forum members come up with the answers.

All I have to do now is to find a way to get the turbo pipe off! I remember that when I did the cam belt a 3 years ago, the hose clamp screw pointed straight at the bulk-head (as fitted on the engine assembly line).

[NewcastleFalcon]

Guy

I have recently taken all sorts of pipework/valves etc off my L-Reg Xantia 1.9TD (former sinker) and it was a bare shell which was taken away for scrap.

They are lying in an unco-ordinated tangle in my shed but if the bit/bits you need are amongst them and intact you are welcome to them.

If you or anyone else could post up a picture/ diagram of what they think you need I would be happy to have a look for you to see if I could help.

regards Neil

[Old-Guy]

Neil

Thank you for the kind offer, but I'm going to decline:

I need the car back on the road for Monday (finished lunch-time Saturday).

I considered replacing the entire pipe but as it runs behind most everything else on the bulkhead I decided it wasn't worth it (this time).

I do in fact have a 90% complete spare car (stored 3 miles away!), but I couldn't see the point in replacing one perished 15 year-old pipe with another of the same age and rather higher mileage.

Once I was able to get at the doseur valve, splicing in a new short length looked, and proved to be, fairly straight forward. I'll document 'my' fix in detail when I've got a bit more time.

This is not the first rubber pipe to fail (at a pipe clip) on this car and I suspect that a lot more are nearing the end of their lives.

[Old-Guy]

BTW, on this car, the leak-off pipe under the doseur valve (rear circuit I think) is a continuous 'rubber' pipe all the way back to the reservoir.

The fix started with tearing the pipe off the metal stub (on the doseur valve), and then forcing the hose-clip open with a small screwdriver. The pig was cleaning the remains of the end of old pipe off the stub. As the rest of the pipe is in good condition, I wonder if an aggressive lubricant was used at the factory to 'help' the pipe onto the stub?

The original pipe was then cut back a couple of inches to a fairly straight section the leads up and over the top of the doseur valve. An adaptor was then made up from about 6" of 6mm rubber fuel pipe with a (Gates) right angle plastic fuel pipe joiner inserted into one end and securely fastened with a hoseclip. The other end was then offered up (to the stub) and trimmed to length so the joiner just protruded beyond the forward end of the doseur valve.

The pipe was then pushed on the stub with a screw type fuel hose clip (not much space for a Jubilee clip) on it but not tightened yet.

The old pipe was pushed onto the joiner and the new pipe rotated so nothing was under strain and the clips then tightened up.

When I first found the leak, I couldn't understand why so much LHM was coming from the doseur valve return and I worried that there must be a massive internal leak in the doseur valve. I didn't use the foot-brake when driving the car to the workshop (½-mile) but that made no difference to the leakage rate. When I was doing the job on Saturday morning, I realised why; this pipe goes into a 4-way manifold beside the reservoir so LHM from other circuits was taking the route of least resistance - downhill from the manifold to the leak!

The failure itself was at the hose-clip on the doseur valve stub, as far as I could see the pipe had always been strained sideways and bent through rather a sharp angle. As it's quite an awkward job to remove the turbo pipe to get at the doseur valve and failure is fairly catastrophic when it does, I suggest checking this little b^**&r (and repairing it if in doubt) is an essential part of changing the cam-belt , as the turbo pipe has to come off anyway.

My spell-checker wants to replace hose-clip with nose-clip!