Xantia II rear brakes, imbalance corrosion and, pipe leak,

[John Plum]

MOT failure on rear brake imbalance of 32% and 60% across rear axle sent me for my spanners. Fixed apparent cause, but sprung rear hydraulic pipe leak (i.e. to passenger side brake), due to pipe decay and calliper removal. I'd like any useful advice on fixing that.

I found the infamous nasty corrosion at back of rear alloy calliper, more so on passenger side, causing calliper and disc to lie at severe angle. with consequent uneven pad wear.



I decided to use a suggestion i read here, of assembling a paper gasket between alloy calliper and steel mounting on the radius arm. I also painted with red oxide, and smeared the gasket with copper grease. That's so as to improve the design, and prevent this kind of thing.


Cleaning up the corrosion, I found a welders chipping hammer to be the superior tool, over and above cold chisel. FOllowed that with a scraping of fine layer of oxide residue using a sharp wood chisel. All in all a very fast, neat and accurate operation.
NOTE: The paper gasket I cut to insert between between calliper and steel mounting is clearly visible in one picture.

Assembling with new pads and discs, I found no alignment problems in fitting the pads. Great.

As for the pipe replacement, any advice for fitting this one is appreciated. Also, who do you go to to get the replacement? i.e.
4885 E1 HYDRAULIC TUBE LEFT
DIAM 3,5 LONG 1938 mm




Cheers, John

[CitroJim]

John, there's a problem with the pictures...

[John Plum]

John, there's a problem with the pictures...

You bet, its made me work for the last two hours on trying to get Flickr links to work. Sod it.
I can only leave links to pictures, for now. But here's one of me after this Flickr attempt….
EDIT: pictures fixed.
John

[CitroJim]

Hopefully someone who understands flickr can assist you with it... I know nothing of it unless there's something in the photo posting guidance here:

http://www.frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/v ... 19&t=35470" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

hope that helps as to see the pictures will help us all...

Good work on the callipers

The pipe may be obtainable from a dealer if not out of production else go to Pleiades and he'll make you one from scratch. is that the pipe from the caliper to the subframe with the coil in it?

Those I think are not too bad to replace...

[John Plum]

is that the pipe from the caliper to the subframe with the coil in it?
Those I think are not too bad to replace...

Yes Jim, that's the one (lowest photo link)
John

[CitroJim]

That's good John, seeing the picture does help.

Can you see the other end of that pipe? It goes into a 'K' junction if I recall but can't remember now how accessible/visible it is... I've done the same job on an XM and on those the K is on top of the subframe and hard to get to... I hope/think/believe the Xantia is easier.

To undo it from the 'K' you'll need some good penetrating fluid and I'd chop off the pipe by the union so you can get a good hex socket on it. Even then it may be so tight you may need to apply some careful heat to it...

If you have to get Pleiades to make you one he may need the remains of the old one as a pattern...

[John Plum]

That's useful advice to me Jim, chopping off and using a socket, keeping the old one as a pattern.. Thanks. I just got hold of a set of worn bolt/nut extractor sockets… something I'd always wanted. Could be useful here. I'll see to dismantling in readiness, then. I'll be using plusgas. I have a torch standing by.

The K junction seems accessible enough…. pipe enters at top, but a centimetre or two of room there.
John

[myglaren]

John, there's a problem with the pictures...

You bet, its made me work for the last two hours on trying to get Flickr links to work. Sod it.
I can only leave links to pictures, for now. But here's one of me after this Flickr attempt….

John

I saw that there were only "Image" notifications there and when I checked it was the embed code used so replaced it with BBCode and the images all were there after testing and then posting.

Perhaps I could see them as I have a Flickr! account but I wasn’t logged in at the time.

Flickr! has been notoriously problematic of late though, mainly since extracting themselves from BT - had to shift my account to Yahoo! but rarely upload anything there these days.

[John Plum]

I saw that there were only "Image" notifications there and when I checked it was the embed code used so replaced it with BBCode and the images all were there after testing and then posting.

Thanks MyGlaren, I tried their BBedit/html embed code…as well as other attempts: could you give an example, I might get it to work with another try.

Joh

[John Plum]

Meanwhile, other interesting tidbits, as MOT feedback:

Another failure was the absence of a passenger wing mirror - contrary to speculation.

Xantia Estate driveshaft Gaiter replacement and supply
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Also, I had to replace a very slightly damaged gaiter (all good stuff this MOT inspection); again I tried Anders tip, to undo the hub nut, release the front strut and drop one drop link, then pull out the CV swivel joint. Again I managed to do it on the Xantia II estate HDI (last time on a TD Xantia II estate), but again - only just. The clearance is minimal, and a lot of whole body strength has to be applied to push the driveshaft inward, holding its steady whilst then pulling out the swivel joint. Marginally easier re-assembling, but very marginal. I believe Anders may have been talking about a BX, or perhaps a saloon Xantia. And, once again I had to ditch the old drop link due to the crap metal the torx fitting is made of, which rusts and wears away when trying to hold undo the nuts. This time I used a nut splitter.
Still my preferred method, because as Anders says, it prevents risk of damage to hub ball joint; these on xantia can be very difficult to remove if damaged.. last one had to be machined out in engineers' workshop.

Inner gaiters for the estate were hard to find, and I had to match up. Take care - they are different dimensions from non-estates
: I used these:
inner (axle side) 85, 40, 126 mm
Outer wheel side 40, 97, 128 mm

[Mandrake]

I use dropbox for images. I have the dropbox app installed on my PC so I simply copy the pictures using windows explorer to a sub folder in my dropbox account called forum attachments (so I remember not to delete those files!) then after it has synced I right click and choose "share dropbox link" which provides a URL directly to the image (not a page) which I can paste in between the img tags in the forum - job done!

[John Plum]

I use dropbox

I have used Dropbox for storage for years, and have it on my computer (OSX); I'll give it a go tonight I think, now that you have so kindly provided the pointers!

(incidentally tapatalk on mobile phone was great, but seems to be playing up with subscription for FCF, and in any case 'has exceeded its quota' for hosting pictures for FCF
John

[Mandrake]

Haven't tried the dropbox integration on my mac before - does it give you a dropbox folder in the finder ? Try right clicking on a file within the dropbox folder to see if it gives you a "share dropbox link" option in the context menu, if it does you're good to go, just make a folder under the public folder and put your forum images there. Remember to scale them down in size - I don't go over 800 pixels wide otherwise most people will have to scroll sideways to see them...

[John Plum]

does it give you a dropbox folder in the finder ?

Yes it does Mandrake. It's neat. all automatic, and also available from the menubar.

[myglaren]

John!
Your images as originally posted, more or less.
I copied them to Photobucket and started to edit them in but saw you had rearranged them somewhat, then Flickr! turned it's toes up, then I clicked a link to check the image position and lost the forum, came back and saw you had edited your post again.
You can edit these images into your post in the positions you want them.

Right click on image and select "Copy Image Location" then paste the link into your post - helps to have two copies of the forum open at once.

Never had a great deal of success with dropbox images other than Malcolm's French rally adventure.