Fun and games in the Clark household
Got a few things done this weekend...
On Saturday Lindsey took Aston out to get his new glasses, and they stayed out doing some shopping and had lunch etc. So me and Spencer had the day to ourselves...
I did a few DIY things in the house, which I won't bore everyone with... then I did what Spencer and me love to do best.. CARS!
That Mercedes CL500 is infuriating me with it's refusal to lift up off it's struts, so I decided to swap out that ABC valve I spoke about previously.
It made absolutely no difference....
So I decided to measure the voltage, as reading online it should have 5Vdc on it to open it up, and allow the pump to pressurise the system. This is what I got...
Sweet nothing... so why is the car keeping this important valve closed??
I studied the diagrams, and found the ABC suspension controller, but because of the design you can't exactly take a measurement here, and I don't even know which pin to measure... Mercedes cars are so difficult to fault find.
I think it's reached the time where I need to just buy the Mercedes Diagnostic tool. This will be either an Ebay special version of STAR, or the YOUCANIC tool.... we'll see.
I'm not grabby any more
So wanting a quick win, I changed over the grab handles in the Citroen C5 for the new sunglasses holders!
Very easy, and to my surprise you can use the same screws as the grab handle. I was expecting to need to source longer screws, as I read that the sunglasses holders come with them when new (my second hand versions were missing the screws). But you get a good number of turns in before it goes tight, and the brackets go nice and firm.
Then feed in the hinge pins...
Done in less than 10 minutes!
...so now I have them both passenger side...
....and drivers side!
Not bad for £30ish for the pair off Ebay.
I notice the rears are also the same size, so I have ordered more for the back, and then Aston and Spencer can have glasses stored in the back too; who needs grab handles anyway?
Now for the real manly stuff!
Feeling cocky from the glasses case win, I decided to have a go at the lower "knuckle" suspension bushes. This is the kit that arrived earlier in the week I needed:
Lindsey and Aston got home, so I had more pesky spectators, and wannabe helpers...
It's dead easy to do this, you release the old bush using a spanner and socket, then two spanners when the socket is not deep enough. The you use the Sealy kit to push out the old bush.
It just pops loose when the bush is out, it shocked me how easy it was.
The old bush looked a little tired, but not as bad as I was expecting. I checked my notes, and the bill from the Citroen specialist definitely said "passenger side knuckle bush" so I had the right one.
Then you use the same kit to push in the new bush.
It all went back together and I have to say I was feeling rather good about myself
...and most of all, I was wondering, why did the Citroen specialist garage not just buy and replace this simple part for me? More money for them, and I'd have been happy too. Instead they told me this bush might write the car off due to difficulties sourcing one...

"this car has a very complicated suspension setup" was what he said to me, and this was from a Citroen specialist garage too!
From what I have seen, most of the suspension is shared with other Citroen and Peugeot models, and all the parts seem as easy as Pie to get hold of. Let's face it there are loads of C5's all over Europe, probably more than there are Jaguar XJ's or some other cars that are still dead easy to find bits for.
Then when I offered to source it for them if they tell me what it is, they give me a misleading name for it, and give me the wrong side of the car too!
I have to say I am completely tired of the way garages behave. They are always so negative, careless, and they make owning a car so much more stressful than it needs to be. They always seem reluctant to take on work unless it's a routine service or MOT... I say this because we are currently experiencing a similar thing with Lindsey's Audi, which has been with the garage for 2 weeks now... having just got it back a week before that... Hoping we get that back this week, and I'll explain what happened there when the palaver is all over.
Then there's poor Jelly bean (the C3) which when I asked about getting the CAM belt done, the same garage said "I wouldn't bother on such an old car" and then it looks like it might have popped just weeks afterwards. That did rather annoy me... though I had intended to get it done somewhere else if I am honest, and it's a shame I did not do it more quickly!
So anyway... then I thought... why not do the driver side too? - it was not stated as needing it, but I may as well do it given it only took 30 minutes.
Things did not go so well this time.
Getting the bush out went pretty well, and I was surprised to see the drivers side bush was in a much worst state than the passenger one - it's core was freely wiggling about and the rubber was perished and loose it's the right hand side one below).
I think the garage got mixed up when they typed the notes on my Bill...
But then things took a turn for the worse, as you can read about in my plea for help here:
viewtopic.php?&t=76294&p=772270#p772270
During the process I also realised that the bushes on the lower arm were not the best, so a new arm has been ordered too.
The poor Citroen is now sat lonely in the garage, and I had to take the Mercedes S class to work this morning...
I don't think I'll get to fix this side until next weekend, but I will try to find some time in the week.
