Hydraflush And "hydronet 2000", ...and the happy ending of an Odyssey!

Ok Ciaran, done.
G

Hi all

just took the car again after it had sat since Wednesday. Today I did an experiment, I wanted to see how it performs with LHM instead of the flushing oils. I've been adding about 0.5lt of oil each month as I have a leak and each time was putting different proportions of hydraflush, Hydranet and LHM. So this time I only added 0.5lt of LHM, and topped it to the max. It is working wonderfully, what a good surprise. Later as I arrived to my destination and tried to park in a crammed park I decided I would put it in a slightly off-the track area at the edge. But there was a slight downward step of about 10cms on my way so spontaneously thought "I better lift the car" and put the lever just to "intermediate high" as I was crowling and about to touch the "step". I was surprised at the speed the hydraulics reacted, literally in 1-2 secs the car added height and I passed the object comfortably and parked -did not even need to brake and wait for it to lift itself-. Everything hydraulic seems to work so much better now -it's not only the height correctors, it also affects the reserve and supply of pressure-. Trust me, this feature was of no use when I got this 138,000 miler car, this would have needed 1 minute to happen -if the height correctors reacted at all...-. Now it's a proper usable feature of the suspension! I cannot imagine it happening faster with the electric pump/valves of the new Citroen generation.

As I was in the supermarket car park I took 2 videos with my mobile doing the same thing as the guy in my signature. I'll post them here later.

cheers
George

This post has been edited by jorgy9 on March 17, 2008 06:03 pm

OK, I'm convinced, if there's any hydronet 2000 left I would be very interested in some, preferrably enough for 2 cars. Will probably try on the old one first as it leaks LHM anyway.

Oh, and when you're ready with those videos....

regards

Ok DrTim, put you down.
G

Ok, here are the 2 videos of me pushing my car. The quality is bad and you will have to tilt your head, but they were not planned. I'll soon do normal quality and more extensive videoing. Still, you get the idea:


pumping the rear


pumping the front


Mind you, opposite to what you might think the video shows, to that day the front performs better than the rear!! The rear has not followed the front in improvement with respect to being able to deal even with the most sudden bumps/holes. Although very soft and fine in 95% of situations, when something very abrupt comes it still is "crashy", while the front is "rounding" 99% of the things you'll meet on the road. Clearly the cylinder cannot move fast enough -this is well demonstrated on a couple of motorway holes I pass everyday: the front wheel moves satisfactorily and falls in the hole, then the rear wheel doesn't and makes the car fall in the hole-.

There's no doubt the rear middle sphere is *in* circuit though, e.g. it "bottoms out" like a real Cit when starting up from a traffic light. However I was thinking perhaps because the rear cylinders work less than the fronts, and also have a smaller actual travel, the flushing has done less of a job overthere. E.g. the slaloming I do lately, that seems to have done so much good, obviously works the front much more extensively.

That's why I was already thinking of starting doing also some reverse-gear slaloming. Then I read DrTim's indy suggestion of violently braking going in reverse. So that's what I did last night in an empty car park, in various versions. I did a number of straight line braking -about 4-. Then I did the same but also steering at the moment of braking -another 4-. This was fun, in the last version the ABS came in every time.

Then straight afterwards I tried doing ups/downs as described in the other thread, with the suspension ECU off and suspension in "hard". It was funny....First of all, car is lower to move than when doing the same in "soft", both directions. I didn't count, but perhaps almost double the time. I did about 15 cycles. I think it moved a bit faster towards the end, but I'm not sure. There's obviously more resistance in that path: the front took 4-5 regulator's cycles to reach "highest", this means the pressure regulator has felt 4-5 times a pressure of 170 bars counteracting it. In my car it will only click 1 time or not at all to get it to "highest" with suspenion in "soft". For now I'm not able to know if this increased back pressure is because that path is narrower or because it is clogged up. I suspect a bit of both. It will show as I continue the routine.

Second, on the way "up", a loud "whistle" was produced by the car, somewhere at the rear, till it got to "highest". Then this would stop, and the front would start rising. This whistleling made me laugh because I had had it when I had first bought the car, before I ever used hydraflushed it. It did it -louder also- at exactly the same circumstance, i.e. when having put car to "lowest" and then to "highest", frightening people around. Obviously this is something to do with LHM passing under pressure from a passage it shouldn't pass. So that was either noise from the point I was putting under stress for the first time (the ball setup in the hydractive block) or the rear height corrector leaking. It wouldn't be the rear e-valve as this was "closed", the suspension being in hard (they are only known to develop a leak when in "open" position).

Third, the most striking (and worrying) effect is that the pressure regulator was clicking in very small intervals afterwards, like in the past before I ever put hydraflush: about 14secs, instead of 25+ which I had achieved with the flushing. This cycles of 14secs came for the first time after that devilish day in March 2006 when I had the car for 2 hours on "highest" engine running -just prior to that it had been doing about a minute-. The good news is that, with yesterday's experiment, I am able to say that 1/it is NOT the rear cylinders, 2/NOT the e-valve, 3/NOT the brake valve. All these items I was worried I destroyed because of exposing them to high pressure for 2 hours. But yesterday, the only items that received all the stress (pressure) are the height correctors being in the middle of high pressure between the accumulator sphere and the small AND/OR clogged alternative passage of LHM in the hyractive blocks.

Now, despite the pressure regulator cycling times having fallen to 14 secs (bad), the suspension's softness didn't look like the middle spheres were not opening. The opposite, on the way home after these routines, I have trown the car with a pleasure I don't remember doing since that single day in 2006 when it was working as it should. Because, one discovers, when the thing is workign as it should, it is not simply the comfort that improves, it is the whole hadling package -it becomes like a 5 meter GoKart-. This event with the regulator clicking at 14secs proved what I have evidenced in other stages of this process, when the cycling time was ranging between 14 and 28 secs on a daily basis, but the softness remained absolutely the same: that, for getting and keeping the hydractive piston valves OPEN, it is much more important to get the pressure regulator tuned correctly (145-170bars) than to achieving a long cycling time. This would prove definitely that even if your cycling time is excellent, i.e. 1 minute, if the pressure range provided is below the specified, chances are you will have a hard suspension because the hydractive pistons cannot be pushed open. Also this finally proves that the critical thing that happenned to my car in 2006 was not that I created a huge leak of pressure, but that parts of the system got dirty and sticky: last night I had again a 14sec cycling time, but the car was comfortable almost like before I...damage it. In one small speed hump -u know, the thinnest ones from plastic- the rear has passed like cream, while till yesterday I would expect it to shake the car. Pitty I cannot know if this is due to the violent rearwards braking or to the ups/downs in hard mode.

I think overall this is excellent news. I'll probaly strip and clean the rear height corrector or put a new one, come summer -looks like it doens't shut entirely or just the piston leaking above a pressure point-. Can't wait to take the car again this weekend to confirm the changes -it's always a bit worse just after doing ups/downs-.

cheers
George

This post has been edited by jorgy9 on March 20, 2008 01:43 pm

I didn't realise there was an almost parallel thread to mine going on here. I tend to ignore anything that says '2.5'. Anyway, all very interesting especially the explanation of the system function and pleased that you've got it sorted now.

Peter.N.

This post has been edited by Peter.N. on March 20, 2008 01:47 pm

Thanks Pete, glad you resolved yours also!
cheers
George

In

http://club-xm.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3131&st=40

Steve wrote:

The 'christenings' are quite a celebration aren't they? We had a great time. One or two of the British commented about the dipping and how it made Andoni cry but my attitude was it's his right of passage and his culture, his sister Anastacia didn't bat an eyelid.

As for the food where do you start? My favourite is Stefado. That said I'm quite keen on goat meat. Maybe I'll make that BBQ.

Steve.

Hehe stefado is my latest success! My girlfriend's favorite also!

As for christenings...guess who is the brave man below... :




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Hey ! Pretend you haven't seen my willy huh!

cheers
George

ps. Note the yellow Fiat 127...900cc...our family car for nearly 13 years! Sills done twice over that period and that's in Athens! Would have survided about a year in Scotland.
My sister and I cried rivers when we finally sent it to the scrap yard...

This post has been edited by jorgy9 on March 20, 2008 04:47 pm

Nice er... photos.



Athens, it must get really hot down there. I've only been as far south as Halkidiki - where the inlaws live.

As for XM work, let's see what the Easter break brings. Plenty of wiggling (!) and 'press ups'. Oh and some more hydroflush.

Happy Easter!

Steve.

Funny, my S1 will sometimes make that whistling while rising if the lever is at minimum height and you put it up to maximum....

Ciarán

Sounds like your S1 is in urgent need of a long flushing session then...In mine this -that was as loud as a siren- was gone after I first hydraflushed it for 1,000miles. At the same time some external leaks I never found were gone -I needed to top up LHM every week back then-, a sign that the clogged up situation inside obliged the oil to leak outside. Now the whisteling comes back when raising car in "hard" mode, obviously the old same weak point is being reactivated when pressure circumstances it faces are as when the system was very clogged up overall!

cheers
George

Happy Easter all!

All this talk of Hydraflush and Hydronet makes me envious. Neither is available in this part of the world according to the Citroen agents, and my indie gave me the 1000 yard stare when I asked him for some. I got him to change the LHM for me before Xmas (too busy at work to do it myself) and his approach to flushing the system was to replace the LHM and clean the filters, run the car up to temp while changing height settings, and then replace the LHM again after cleaning the filters etc. The suspension seemed firm for about a thousand Ks or so, and then softened up.

I guess it was the new LHM settling in - does that happen?

Regards,
Kiwi

Hi Kiwi

yes this happens, a matter of air trapped being bled away while LHM flows as you use the car.

As for hydraflush, perhaps Jan Burgel can help you, I think he resides in Japan where it is normally availabe.

cheers
George

Cheers George,

We are thinking of spending next Xmas in the UK or Europe (always wanted a white Xmas), so if we do I'll organise some Hydraflush to take home. Am trying to convince my wife that we could maybe buy a late model XM to use in the UK instead of a rental - and then take it home!

Regards,
Kiwi

Don't come to the UK then. No chance of a white Christmas. Your best bet would be US/Canada or somewhere in the mountains in Europe.