I have a citroen c5 2004 2.0 16v exclusive (6 spheres) and I had a problem with my front right “SUSPENSION SPHERE BRACKET” (item 2 from the image below).
The rubber parts were broken and, after some weeks running this way, LDS started leaking through it… I decided to stop using the car to replace it, when the front suspension stopped elevating… (The LDS leak must be bigger than I previously thought…).
This week I got a replacement part from the closest citroen dealer and one liter of LDS to top up at home.
Now, at the end of the process, I have no more leaks, but the front suspension is still not working… This is how it is reacting:
- a) with the front wheels on the floor(full car load), the front suspension is always in the lowest position, even if I select the UPPER position inside the car.
b) with the front wheels raised (no load over them), the front suspension goes up and down, but very slowly…
I will describe below what I did to replace the sphere bracket:
- 1) set the suspension to LOWEST position
2) depressurized it with Lexia
3) removed the front right sphere
4) removed the front right supply piping
5) removed the topper nut, but I was not able to release the front ram from the sphere bracket… So I decide to remove the whole front ram from the car, and to separate them with a vise
6) In order to remove the front ram, I needed to remove the ANTI-ROLL BAR LINK, the small return piping (rubber pipe that starts at the base of the front ram and goes to a small pipe in the wheel area) and then I removed it (front ram) from the wheel hub.
Note: When I removed the rubber return piping, I listened to a sound as if someone was sucking the last soft drink off of a can through a straw… then I thought… OK… now I have a lot of air on the system…
7) Using the vise to separate the front ram and the sphere bracket, some LDS leaked out of the front ram too…
8) After disassembling all these parts, I assembled them back with the new sphere bracket and o-rings.
9) With all piping and spheres assembled and mounted, I opened the LDS reservoir, filled it up to about half (looking though the side window), turned on the engine, set the suspension to NORMAL position, closed tightly the reservoir cap and then set the suspension to LOW position again (to repressurize it)
10) As the front suspension was not responding to the UP command, I did the 9th step 3 or 4 times to see if something changed… Whenever I opened the reservoir cap, I heard some pressure noise getting out… I also tried to set it to UPPER and LOW on some of the times that I repeated the 9th step again…
If I do need to do it, how should I do it? To which pipe should I apply the vacuum in order to get all the air out?
Thanks,
Ricardo Jr. (from Brazil)