Xantia back arm bearing replacement.

[addo]

The other place you may find pictures/information on a "How to" could be the Haynes BX manual - cheap now on Ebay as the cars are all gone! If you can't find a seller who will post one of them to you, I'm sure one of us here could help out.

[lancia58]

Does the hydraulic system need to be depressurized ?

[mirafioriman]

Yes. But that's easy

[lancia58]

Does replacing the bearing involved with disconnecting hydraulic pipes ? If yes which pipes should be disconnected ?

Thanks
Zohar

[citronut]

not realy if you carefull you can unbolt the calliper (if your lucky and the bolts come out ) from the arm and support it so not to strain the pipe,

no other pipe need touching

regards malcolm

[lancia58]

So why does the hydraulic system need to be depressurized ?

Zohar

[mirafioriman]

Because the back arm needs to be removed, which isn't a good thing to do when the rear suspension unit is pressurised and therefore pressing on it.

[Mandrake]

I did the rear arm bearings on my previous Xantia a few years ago and one of the most annoying things I found about the job was the ABS sensor. In theory you're supposed to remove the ABS sensor from the hub, but on any car of an age that needs rear arm bearings the ABS sensor is well and truly rusted in place, and any attempts to remove it are likely to end horribly with a broken ABS sensor

To leave the sensor in place means disconnecting it's connector further up the cable, the connector is VERY difficult to get to, especially on the left hand side where the muffler is in the way. On both sides its in a narrow gap near a crossmember which requires long fingers that can bend in unusual directions I had to drop the muffler down a bit to get at the left hand side one. The cable passes through a hole in the arm itself with a rubber grommet.

One other piece of advice learnt the hard way - the arm is hollow, with the opening to the hollow at the pivot end. When you remove the bearings and plastic tube the opening to the hollow is exposed. Don't let anything fall into that hollow, especially metallic. How do I know ?

Yes, I dropped a washer in there (at least I think it was a washer, it was definitely something metallic) and didn't realise until everything had been put back together...when I then noticed there was a small but annoying "tinkle" sound whenever that rear wheel hit a large sharp bump like going over the curb entering a drive way.

I searched for that noise for a long time before it finally sunk in that there must be something metal loose inside the hollow of the arm... fixing it would require doing the arm bearing all over again as you have to destroy the plastic tube in the removal process and risk damage to the bearings getting the bearing shells out... which means a new arm bearing kit is required... so I just put up with it...

So after the old bearings are out give the arm a good shake to make sure nothing fell into the hollow, and be careful when fitting the new bearings.

[lancia58]

How do you depressurize the system ? Is it enough to put the height selecting lever at the low position ?

Thanks
Zohar

[Mandrake]

How do you depressurize the system ? Is it enough to put the height selecting lever at the low position ?

No its not enough for this job.

You would first set the height control lever to minimum with the engine idling and leave it for 3-5 minutes to de-pressurise the suspension. At the end of this time you should be able to grasp one of the rear suspension strut spheres and rock it from side to side - if its solid there is still some pressure in the suspension, if the whole cylinder and sphere rock side to side by about 10mm (eg the cylinder seems loose within the bracket which supports it) then you know the pressure is gone. You would then turn off the engine and open the pressure regulator bleed screw in the engine bay by half a turn to remove any pressure in the main supply line.

The reason why its important to do this is because as part of the job you'll be unbolting the anti-roll bar from each suspension arm, and before you can do this safely you MUST loosen the height corrector clamp near the middle of the anti-roll bar otherwise the anti-roll bar will flop down under its own weight and bend the height corrector linkage...and if you are disconnecting the height corrector linkage or messing around with it any way you want to be sure that there is no main pressure supply available to put pressure back into the suspension, especially when the suspension arm is missing. (There would be nothing to prevent the piston in the hydraulic ram flying out of the cylinder...)

After reassembly the very last thing you would do is re-tighten the height corrector clamp on the anti-roll bar, in the process of performing a ride height adjustment.

[lancia58]

Can the arms be removed without detaching the rear suspension crossmember ? What should be done in order to remove the arms ?

Thanks
Zohar

[KevMayer]

When I did the rear arms on one of the Xantias I owned (Activa now owned by citroenmad. yes it's got new rear arm bearings) I lowered the rear subframe slightly by slackening off the two bolts on one side. This improved access to the ABS plug which sits on top of the subframe.

[reblack68]

AEP normally sell only OE or good stuff so you should be fine. If you do get this one it'll be interesting to see how makes it.

It's a jolly good price...

I've just received an AEP kit, the bearings are Timken.

Am I right in thinking that I can use the bearings and seals from this kit on our C5 estate?

[citronut]

yes they do cross over to C5's but that's all that does,maybe the plastic liner can be used also,

i think its best to source the bearings and seals separately from GSF then the spacer tube, end spacer's and shim's from citroen,

all the part No.'s and price's are in a C5 trailing arm thread somewhere on here,

regards malcolm

[reblack68]

The bearings are POA on GSF at the moment, so I bought the Xantia kit from AEP for convenience. The old bolts and stepped seats from the other side were fine so I kept them and I ended up with an extra spacer tube because the Citroen dealer cocked up the order.

The N/S one clicked intermittently for about a year before I worked out what it was and had it replaced, the O/S one started squeaking last week and it's already got so bad that I'm scared to drive it. I suspect it won't be pretty.