Xantia tire wear

[kiwifrog]

Good grief! Possibly the worst documented case on the forum. How many kilometres has it done, and in what part of the country ?

The only Xantia I've changed the rear arm bearings on was my 1997 2.0i VSX which I owned in New Zealand - it had done about 150,000km when I changed the bearings and to be honest they looked almost like new and turned out to not really need changing at all! My car spent most of its life in Northland though so wasn't subject to road salt etc and was an ex Japanese import not NZ new.

When I lived in NZ Alan Sklenars Citroen in Hamilton was my go-to supplier of second hand parts - he had an entire scrap yard full of Citroen's. I don't know if he's still in business though - last time I had dealings with him was nearly 10 years ago and I suspect he is at or well past retirement age by now!

But check the phone book for him and if he's still around give him a call. If he's not, I'm not sure where else in NZ you would try for second hand Xantia parts!

Edit: Looks like he's still around!

http://sklenarscitroen.weebly.com/

Its done 160k KMs and lived all its life in the South Island, bought new at Archibalds. I still cant believe the signs werent a lot worse, just squeaked a little on a hot day and had the negative camber, correction..... its the inner bearings gone not the outters . Thanks I will check out that guy.

[RichardW]

The inner bearing track is a little way inside the arm - you may find that once you have drifted it out there will be enough metal left in the arm to hold it in, particularly if you put it back with some bearing lock. You might need to get inventive to hold the seal in place though. If that was in the UK, it would have come out in a pile of rusty dust!!

[Mandrake]

Agreed. Before ordering replacement arms carefully drift out the old bearing shells and clean up the surfaces where the bearing shells and seal sit - if those are still ok you might be fine with the original arms. It might not be as bad as it first looks as long as the damage is only within the bearing race.

[kiwifrog]

Yes the bearing race area is fine, i did the bead of weld trick to get them out. Was thinking about welding up most of the damaged area and die grinding it enough for the seal, with maybe a bit of goo for good measure.