So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

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ashy90
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So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by ashy90 »

Or is it just mine?
I know there is a lot to be said for premium branded tyres over cheap tyres. I always go for Goodyear, Dunlop etc. However I have owned and driven enough cars with all manor of different tyres including cheap tyres and have an idea what a car can be like on cheap tyres. But my Xantia is by far the worse in the wet weather. Its almost dangerous. It can lull you in to false sense of believing its grippy and adequate enough, and then in a different situation totally loose grip.
I have been driving the same route to and from work for 5 years in all sorts of cars - equally old/cheap cars such as my old Saxo or Rover 400, to brand new cars (work cars). I have never had an issue.

But I have now had TWO hairy moments on my route to/from work where my Xantia has lost grip. Once going around a bend and it lost traction and slid/under-steered quite drastically. Another time braking fairly heavily the ABS kicked in (way before I would have expected it to) and the car diddn't do much slowing down while I was heading towards the car in front.

It has Mohawk tyres, but they are all new and matching and at the correct pressure. The suspension is ok - new suspension arm and 4x new spheres, ride height seems ok etc. I know they are cheap tyres. But tonight following my in law in his 2009 Ford Ranger pick up truck, I could not keep up with him for fear of sliding off the road. His pick up truck has a mixture of different CHEAP tyres by the way.

Is this how Xantia's are? Or all hydro Citroens?
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by Michel »

My first Xantia years ago had cheapo tyres on. It was shocking in the wet. I crashed it, backwards through a dry stone wall after it spun on me!

Recently - like a month ago, I put one new budget on the Octavia rather than a part worn as we were going to trade it in.

It's also now dangerous in the wet, to the degree o thought something had broken in the suspension.
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

When I first got my company van it had Continental tyres all round. The road holding was good in all conditions. When the front tyres needed replacing the leasing company specified Hancook tyres. In the wet I feel these are terrible. For example, when I am heading to Basingstoke there are a few roundabouts. When I had the Continentals on I could go round these at a decent (but safe) speed in the wet. Now I have to go around them about 15 - 20 MPH slower because the tyres loose grip at any faster speed in the wet.
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by white exec »

A company ZX of mine wore out its Michelins a couple of months before it was due to be sold off. Car Fleet insisted on fitting a set of budget tyres, but the first time I went out in the wet it was horrific - sliding and understeer on even urban corners.

Car fleet insisted I immediately get the car into a national tyre fitter for examination amd comment. The commemt was "That's how they are...". Michelins were fitted then and there; end of problem.
_____

Can be good fun here . . . five or six months without rain, with tarmac lightly sprinked with over-filled diesel. And then it rains - roundabouts etc like skating rinks for a week or so.
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by chinkostu »

I've got budgets on mine that are essentially kuhmo tread patterns and i think the same factory and compound. They're not bad.

I had a set of bargain basement tyres on my Saxo VTR years and years ago that were absolutely lethal though.
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by Mandrake »

There's nothing at all wrong with the handling of a Xantia in the wet - especially on the Hydractive 2 models the grip and handling is top notch in dry or wet, well above average for the class of car IMHO.

It's going to be largely down to the tyre choice and condition. (Including the AGE of the tyres! Older rubber does not grip as well as new rubber especially in cold or wet!) When I got my first Xantia V6 it had a mix of crap tyres on it - one brand at the front one at the rear. Plenty of tread but I could tell they were many years old.

And it was downright scary in the wet, as described. It would spin the wheels on takeoff unless you feathered the throttle and I wasn't comfortable taking corners at speed as it felt like it was going to let go at any moment. I put some new, regular Michelin Energy savers on the front and it transformed the wet grip and the feel of the car despite the original tyres having not much less tread depth. I never did get around to replacing the rear tyres on that car before I moved it on.

On my current Xantia V6 the tyres that came on it were shocking, largely because they were very old, same problem - a bit scary in the wet in particular. I immediately put 4 Michelin Energy savers on it and they have lasted 5 years and 20k miles with plenty of tread left yet and still feel great in the wet or around corners in general. In fact after recently swapping the front strut spheres which were getting a bit low in gas I've been marvelling at just how well this car is riding and handling now, it feels fantastic. :) Really chuckable around the corners and totally unflappable even on a twisty lumpy bumpy country road. It was good before but replacing the two partially flat spheres really raised it another notch. Breakaway in hard cornering in the wet is progressive, totally controllable and more or less neutral.

Having said all that, if there is something significantly wrong with the suspension like flat spheres, that will of course affect the handling in a negative way. You don't say whether your Xantia has Hydractive 2 or whether it's just the basic system, but if strut spheres are flat that can cause the handling characteristics to change in a bad way when the car switches into hard mode.

For example say your front strut spheres are low in gas as mine were, but the front hydractive centre sphere is OK. The car will ride OK for normal driving but when you push it past a certain point in a corner the ECU will switch the suspension to the hard mode. If the front is a lot harder in hard mode than it should be relative to the rear suspension this will promote understeer at the moment it switches to hard mode, and could lead to a sudden breakaway. Likewise if you have flat strut spheres at the rear it could provoke some oversteer when you push the car hard enough to switch the suspension into hard mode, which could make the car tail happy.

Even on a standard model flat spheres will upset the understeer/oversteer handling balance. Flat spheres / stiff at the front will promote understeer, flat / stiff at the rear will promote oversteer. On a Hydractive 2 system front and rear both have two different springing rates for soft and hard mode so depending on which spheres are flat it can potentially shift from an understeer bias to oversteer or vica versa when it switches modes, so it's important all spheres are good.

So check your suspension is in good working order and spheres are OK, and get some good tyres on it.
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by Skull »

Since I've had my current Xantia I've been trying to wear out my budget tyres (I presume that's what they are anyway)

'RADAR' I presume they're budget as they are awful and lose traction on a damp hankie - you'll be off the road never mind off the radar if you push these slightly - I only have one left to wear out and when the Mrs phoned the other day to say the car was in her work car park with a puncture that needed my attention, the first question I asked was "which tyre is it" :twisted: .... unfortunately it was one of my better tyres that had got a screw in it, £12.50 for a puncture repair (including valve and balance)....if it had been the RADAR I wouldn't have bothered repairing it - better to invest that money in a new/better tyre.
Last edited by Skull on 11 Oct 2019, 09:25, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by Homer »

ashy90 wrote: 07 Oct 2019, 22:36
Is this how Xantia's are? Or all hydro Citroens?
Nope, it's the tyres.

If anything the Xantia was better than anything else of the class at the time because it does a better job of keeping the wheels on the road at the right angle where other cars squat and dive.

They are very front heavy, as all big Citroens were before then and if the tyres aren't up to it then it will plough on.

Having said that you can get decent tyres on a budget, and a tyre which slides less will wear less and save you money in the long run.
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by admiral51 »

My brain is a little bit vague on the issue, seem to remember some bits of it but here goes lol
HGV and PSV with tyres 10+ years will incur an immediate fail when presented for MOT or at a roadside check which will result in a GV9 ( do not move dangerous )
I believe there is some leeway for vintage/classic vehicles that are not used for Hire and Reward and if memory is correct this ruling was brought in after a coach crash on the Isle of Wight.
Yes the tread depth could be good and legal but the sidewalls will deteriorate over time and compromise the integrity of the tyre.
5 year old tyres i would replace, and if i could remember where i saw it i would put up a link, but each Tyre has a manufactured date stamped on it, a bit like the RPO number, you just need to understand how to read it and i cannot remember where i saw the link :(
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by admiral51 »

Not the one i remember looking at but Tyre age info gives lots of info :)
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by bobins »

As of December last year the DVSA had “guidance that tyres over ten years old should not be used on heavy vehicles except in specific, limited circumstances.” - although things may have changed in the last year. There have been several attempts to bring forward legislation banning the use of 10 year or older tyres on buses and coaches, but the legislation had been blocked by some MPs. The view of the DVSA does seem to be that HGV and PSV operators need to come up with a damned good reason if they are caught with tyres older than 10 years !
The coach crash which brought about the push for a law to ban old tyres happened at Hindhead (between the tunnel and Thursley) and the coach was returning from the Bestival festival on the Isle Of Wight.
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

And the person who died on that coach was YOUNGER than the tyres!
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by admiral51 »

Thankyou for filling in the gaps in my memory, apologies to everyone if i have caused offense by getting facts wrong
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by bobins »

Your post had jogged my memory as the crash happened not far from here on a stretch of road I know well. I'd forgotten the details about the crash so I looked it up and found out about the MPs blocking the legislation #-o
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Re: So the Xantia is terrible in the wet on budget tyres!?

Post by ashy90 »

Thanks for the replies. To answer some questions;
The car is a non hydroactive model. Its a basic Xantia (no spec name at all I believe? lower than LX spec?) 2.0 hdi 90.

Ive changed all 4x corner spheres.

Ive also now swapped the wheels with a Xsara Picasso that was being scrapped at work.
So instead of the rubbish make tyres, it now has 3x Goodyear efficientgrip performance (a tyre I know - my girlfriends MG3 has these and they are very good) and one Avon tyre.

It is a lot better. It's still not brilliant in the wet - I have to take the roundabouts on the a24 slower than most other cars when it's wet. It doesn't inspire confidence, which is a shame, as crusing at speed it really does.
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