non hydractive spheres for hydractive xantia

[aneesh84]

I own a citroen xantia 1.9 TD (1994) Hydractive. I have owned it only for the last 2 years, so i have never seen the hydractive system properly working since the spheres were almost gone when i got the car.

I live in portugal and here it is very difficult to find gassers for spheres or even buy new spheres. And my good old xantia rides really hard. I believe all it's spheres are gone and i was thinking of ordering them from France or UK coz it's impossible to find them here. I was thinking of trying this site http://www.sphere-discount.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . you can also suggest me some other site.

Now the problem is that I want a simple quick solution, and i have read so many issues on this forum related to the operation of hydractive valves, and I have no idea if my hydractive system is working properly or not. So here are my questions.

Is there any quick way to test if my hydractive valves are working fine? In that case I can order all 6 hydractive spheres. If not, and there is a high probability of failure of hydractive system, i could

a) order only the 4 hydractive suspension spheres, without unnecessarily spending for the centre spheres.

b) order 4 non-hydractive spheres , and take out fuse 8 (in the engine compartment) to permanently disactivate the hydractive valve. In any case i am almost certain that the current centre spheres are flat. Would this work okay, at least better than option a?

What do you suggest? I am really waiting for your advise.

[xantia_v6]

If you hear a quiet whistling noise from under the front and rear of the car after opening a door, then your hydroactive valves are probably operating correctly.

You can also wire a small light bulb across the front electrovalve and extend the wires to inside the car (or tape it to the wiper blade) so you can see the valves operating as you drive.

If the valves are operating, then I would advise replacing all 8 spheres. They are all there for a purpose, and probably all equally flat.

[Peter.N.]

The quick test is to open a door, bounce the suspension noting the ammount of movement, then close the door wait about a minute and repeat the test, if the hydractive is working you should have considerably more movement with the door open but, if the centre spheres are absolutly flat you will notice little or no difference as these are the ones responsible for the soft ride, in which case as previous post. The bounce test needs to be carried out with the engine off but with the suspension in normal position.

Peter

[Mandrake]

If you are able to get your hands on or borrow a standard accumulator sphere (62 bars, no damper valve) this is close enough for a hydractive regulator sphere for the purposes of bounce testing. (Normal rear hydractive regulator is 50 bars, front one is normally 70 or 75 bars)

Substitute this sphere one at a time for the rear hydractive regulator sphere and front hydractive regulator sphere, then perform a bounce test on that end of the car. With the engine on and idling that end of the car should be fairly soft to press down even if the strut spheres are flat.

Then turn off the engine, leave all doors closed and wait 30 seconds for a "click", now try bouncing again. If the suspension at that end is now much stiffer the hydractive electrovalves and ECU are working. Now repeat the same test with the other end of the car.

I actually put a spare accumulator sphere on the rear of my (previous) Xantia when I first got it as a stop gap measure until I could get the right 50 bar sphere as the one on the car was dead flat. The ride at the rear was VERY soft but actually perfectly usable until I got the right sphere.

[Peter.N.]

I must try that on my XM, I like a soft ride

Peter

[Mandrake]

I must try that on my XM, I like a soft ride

Peter

Well it will only make the rear softer - the front would be stiffer than it should be because the pressure is too high for the rear but too low for the front. I think I had it on for a month or so, it was very soft with a very slow settling time like older Citroens but still fairly well controlled, and because of the hydractive system if you did any spirited driving it would switch the sphere out anyway. A little bit too soft for my tastes but certainly not dangerous. There was quite a bit of rear squat with acceleration though.

[Peter.N.]

I don't do spirited driving, interesting about the different pressures, I ought to know that after 15 years ownership. I did as an experiment fit two accumulator spheres on one side and drove it up the forest track, fantastic you couldn't feel a thing on that side, so it is possible to make it really smooth, was a bit like a cross channel ferry in a force 9 though.

Peter

[addo]

Mister-Auto Portugal has both Febi and Monroe brand spheres. Febi are appreciably cheaper.

Besides that, I actually thought Lizarte spheres were made in Portugal.

[Mandrake]

I live in portugal and here it is very difficult to find gassers for spheres or even buy new spheres. And my good old Xantia rides really hard. I believe all it's spheres are gone and i was thinking of ordering them from France or UK coz it's impossible to find them here. I was thinking of trying this site http://www.sphere-discount.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . you can also suggest me some other site.

Both AEP direct and GSF in the UK will export to Europe, so you could try them for a quote:

http://www.aepdirect.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.gsfcarparts.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[aneesh84]

Thank you all for all the helpful answers. I didn't know about mister- autoportugal, thank you, but despite the shipping, aepdirect and the french company seem to be offering a better price. I am now inclined to go in for all the spheres. However I must test that the electrovalves are operational, before ordering. Since all my spheres are completely flat and I do not have access to the accumulator sphere, the bounce test is not an option for me. I do have a multimeter which i could use to test the electrovalves, except that I do not know where exactly to measure the voltages across. Is it near the front hydractive sphere. Or is there another convenient location in the circuit to measure the voltages?

Also can you please explain why the electrovalve should operate and the car be in soft mode when the door is open? any guide that explains how the electrovalve operates? Which sensors are used to control the operation?

[jgra1]

aneesh84 I have not read all posts, sorry..

Where are you?

my co-worker is Portuguese (lisbon) and often travels between UK and there.. any help?
John

[DickieG]

Also can you please explain why the electrovalve should operate and the car be in soft mode when the door is open? any guide that explains how the electrovalve operates? Which sensors are used to control the operation?

The Hydractive system becomes active when opening a door in order to allow the sphere pressures to equalise, for instance if the Hydractive sphere's were locked out of the system and a load/passenger was to enter or exit the vehicle without pressures equalising then as soon as the engine was started the Hydractive blocks would open then due to the uneven pressures in the spheres the car would jerk up or down according to whether the payload had been increased or reduced.

The system takes information from sensors on the doors, accelerator pedal for speed of application or release of pedal, anti-roll bar for body movement, steering column for the degree and speed of steering angle being applied and road speed, plus on S1 models there is a sensor for detecting when maximum brake pressure is being applied. On S2 models the system invariably switches to firm whenever the vehicle is being braked (even very light braking) so I'm left to assume that on S2 models the software ECU is written to detect the loss of road speed as the brake switch was removed on S2's.

As road speed increases the switch from soft to firm occurs earlier, so higher road = speed quicker switching. Likewise turning on sports mode causes the switch to occur earlier, so even in sports mode the suspension will still be in soft mode but the switch occurs much earlier.

[Peter.N.]

Well explained

[aneesh84]

Wow! really nicely explained!

@jgra1 I live in lisbon too, at costa da Caparica! My tel is +351 962282558. I could really make use of advise from your colleague in case I run into complications, of course it depends on how much time he has while he is here.

So i believe the next step is to order all 8 spheres, after somehow testing if my electrovalves are working properly.

I have a local mechanic who will eventually help me change the spheres, but since he doesn't have much experience, and i have knowledge only from this forum, can u tell me if it is advisable to change the anti-sink sphere too? I read about risk of ruptured pipes. If changing the anti-sink requires specialist experience, then I could just order 7 spheres and leave that one.

Also http://www.sphere-discount.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; seems to be the cheapest option, when ordering 7 spheres, it comes out to be around 30 euros a sphere, including postage.

[Mandrake]

The system takes information from sensors on the doors, accelerator pedal for speed of application or release of pedal, anti-roll bar for body movement, steering column for the degree and speed of steering angle being applied and road speed, plus on S1 models there is a sensor for detecting when maximum brake pressure is being applied. On S2 models the system invariably switches to firm whenever the vehicle is being braked (even very light braking) so I'm left to assume that on S2 models the software ECU is written to detect the loss of road speed as the brake switch was removed on S2's.

I've often wondered why the brake pressure switch was removed in the Mk2. In reading the Hydractive 2 documentation (which I no longer have, sadly) even the Mk1 measures the rate of deceleration of the road speed sensor as an additional redundant indication of hard braking and a sign to stiffen the suspension, but surely this will respond much slower than a brake pressure switch in an emergency stop ?

Whats good about the pressure switch is that if you slam on the brakes in an emergency stop the suspension will switch to hard instantly before the car has even started to decelerate, thus there is no chance for the car to nose dive. If you wait until the measured road speed reduces before switching to hard, (which takes time) surely the rear end will have risen a bit by then ? Makes no sense to me that they removed it...does anyone notice a difference in the amount of suspension dive in hard braking between a Mk1 Hydractive and a Mk2 Hydractive ? (Can't tell on the Mk2 I have as the spheres haven't been done yet so the ride is always hard )