Xantia 1.9TD Crank Pulley rubber disintegrates

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masood_ilyas
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Xantia 1.9TD Crank Pulley rubber disintegrates

Post by masood_ilyas »

This refers to a MK2 Citroen Xantia 1.9TD 1998 with 159K on the clock.
For some time there had been an annoying squeak and rattling noise from the auto tension spring area.
I discovered this when the spring was replaced, a new spring shown for comparison.
Image
A colseup shows the elliptical hole.
Image

A week later louder rhythmic rattling noise resurfaced, nothing obvious could be seen.
last night however when I almost reached home from work it got worst, metallic clonking with intermittent loss of hydraulic pressure and the alternator red light indicating loss of charging current.
Given the time of night I slept over it and in the morning all became apparent what was causing my headaches and high blood pressure when I found this:
Image

It is amazing how it ever manage to develop enough hydraulic pressure at all with no rubber binding between the metalic surfaces
Image

Image

For the moment I have put in a pulley left over from my Mk1 Xantia days and all seems to work fine.
Now the question is what caused its demise, was it he pulley that made the hole in the tensioner elliptical or was it the tensioner that started the degradation of the pulley six months earlier.
Given the age of an old rubber mk1 pulley is it advisable to change it with a recent version.
Is there something else I may have overlooked which may cause the aux belt tensioner and pulley to break again but this time perhaps with snow all around us.

As ever any advice will be most appreciated.

Moderators: Despite my best efforts the pictures appear oversized, could you please make them sensibly viewable with an advice for best size to use in future.

Thanks

Masood
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Re: Xantia 1.9TD Crank Pulley rubber disintegrates

Post by CitroJim »

Gosh :shock: You were lucky the pulley didn't completely part company Masood! The end results could have been very nasty indeed.

I've seen wear in the spring like that and put it down simply to years of jiggling up and down. If you watch the tensioner carefully you'll see that at some speeds the tensioner oscillates. That would be plenty to wear the spring holes.

Yes, I'd swap to a new pulley when you can.

This just goes to show the importance of keeping an eye on the auxiliary belt and investigating promptly any odd noises from that region.
Jim

Runner, cyclist, time triallist, duathlete, Citroen AX fan and the CCC Citroenian 'From A to Z' Columnist...
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