Hydractive 3+ Sphere change procedure

[Eaten Chicken]

Hello fellow forum members, first time poster but long time reader here.

I've bought a C5 X7 about half a year ago and I've been enjoying it to the fullest, as I already racked up 20k kilometers in that time. However, I have a feeling the suspension spheres might be on their way out. The car has about 230k on the odo and I also heard a loud bang a while back. At first I thought it was a roadkill or something, but couldn't find any damage and now I'm suspecting one of the spheres might have blown. The car is still floaty in general, but the front end seems to skip over imperfections, sometimes making it less comfortable than traditional coil suspension. Therefore, I decided the spheres will need changing.

Now I do know the hydropneumatics are relatively simple to work on. However, since the X7 has the Hydractive 3+, I am a bit cautious. Can someone give me a guide on how to change the spheres correctly? Any tips or tricks you have? Pitfalls and traps to watch out for? I'm all ears/eyes.

Thank you very much in advance!

[Kees]

Whell it's straight forward, if you have diagbox, then put the car in the lowest position and depressed further with the diagbox.
But sinds you have a 2.0 the middle sphere is more difficult, because this one is behind the left front wheel, therefore you have to remove the left driveshaft and under the subframe a 6 mm bolt with hold the ac tube, then with a long shiffel hammer it loose and you can remove this one.

[mickthemaverick]

You may find this thread worth reading while you wait for more precise assistance: viewtopic.php?p=787562#p787562

[Eaten Chicken]

Thanks for the replies so far. From what I gather, and please correct me on this if I'm (most likely) wrong, there are 7 spheres on my car:

1 front regulator (KR70)
2 rear regulator (GV44)
2 front suspension (MC50)
2 rear suspension (ME40)

Is the number of spheres right? My understanding is that V6 variants had 8 spheres with 2 front regulators.
Suspension spheres up front are easy to see and the front regulator sphere is pretty much just like Kees said, though I'm not exactly sure about the rear end. There are clearly two spheres on the regulator valve (older picture included) but where should I look for rear suspension spheres? I haven't been down there in a while and might not be able to look in the near future, so guidance is welcome

[Kees]

The rear spheres you can see if you look inside the wheel arc earea, and no at the front there are just one stiffness regulator with only 1 sphere on it, and this is for all types the same.

[Eaten Chicken]

Alright, got my eyes on the rear suspension spheres, thanks for the directions. I will write the process of my sphere changing in this thread so that other people can use it as a guide.

Before that happens though, I wanna ask you guys about different methods of depressurizing the system. I stumbled upon a method of depressurization by just lifting the car with a lift, opening and closing doors and after that the car should apparently depressurize itself. Is this a viable method? If I want to replace all spheres, I estimate it will take about two days because of the front regulator. And since I want to borrow the diagnostics tool, if I could depressurize the suspension without it, I could just replace the spheres that are easy to reach and get the diagbox for the harder one. Thoughts?

[Kees]

If you put the car low or even in the normal stand, release the cap of the LDS tank.
Then you can lift up the car and remove the spheres.
To prevent the pomp started disconnect the battery also.

[Eaten Chicken]

Half a year later I've got an update (life was life-ing). I had the front regulator sphere done by the dealer, because I wasn't gonna freeze my ass off while working the sphere loose without certain outcome. I'm glad I did, since they actually had to remove the whole regulator to get a proper grip on the sphere. And even then they used the hammer and chisel method. Do not ask about the price

Regardless, since the weather outside now looks promising (and I'm going from R17 winters to R18 summers), I am trying to gather all the other spheres to finish the fight. Here is my struggle: I don't know which spheres to get. I know the pressures, but I had tough luck finding pressure description for the spheres I found. Therefore I'd like to ask for help in identifying the correct part numbers of spheres I need in my car. I'll try and get some info from the dealership but I'm not sure about their cooperation, so in the meantime I hope someone here can guide me

Edit:
Here is the VIN: VF7**************[VIN obfuscated, can be read by forum staff]