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

I have a friend who works for Shell, and I sent her the info on Hydronet to see if there was a Shell equivalent available here in New Zealand. This was the reply from their technical staff:

"We do not sell a hydraulic system cleaner as such. I am making an assumption that the contamination being discussed on the XM Forum are heat based deposits resulting from braking temperatures and long service.

If he is going to the trouble of flushing it himself he can try oil like Rimula X 10W or Rimula X 30 as a flush because they are high in detergent, but the dissolving of the sludges may be slower than he wants. There is some comment about this approach in the XM Forum.

Alternatively, he can use 2 to 5% v/v of butyl cellusolve (from APS Chemicals), also known as diethylene glycol monobutyl ether dissolved in the LHM. Problem is it is likely to come in 20L pails"

The last sentence sounds interesting!

Regards,
Kiwi

He can, it is and he does. But he will be away the first two weeks of April.
Kiwi might opt to wait till his dream Christmas, get rid of some of the wife's souvenirs and stuff the suitcase with Hydraflush

Get back onto your friend?

Butyl DIOXITOL* is the Shell Chemicals brand of diethylene glycol monobutyl ether. Shell website

I think these are still just solvents at the end of the day?

Cheers Wirdy,

Apparently APS handles some chemicals for Shell NZ. Probably because of our small size - eg Shell LPG is retailed via a different company.

I think I'll hold out for some Hydraflush or Hydronet on my next trip to your part of the world.

Regards,
Kiwi

If it's that hard to get hold of, over time you could recycle hydraflush through your fleet.

When I drained my last lot of hydraflush out, I put it into large cola bottles and left it in the shed to see how much debris settled. After a month it was almost clear again with all the crap at the bottom and entirely reuseable

I joined the flushing team on Friday as my serviceman drained the LHM, disassembled the tank, thoroughly washed the filters ("I have seen dirtier ones") and poured "Hydraurincage" to the system. Much more prompt and swifter upping and downing and both ends moving simultaneously are the first changes I notice these days, although I also have a feeling that the flushing liquid is somewhat softer as sinking occurs faster.

Hi George,

Do you think you could produce another video showing suspension travel when forced into hard mode please?

The amount of travel on mine in hard mode is tiny at the front and I would like some kind of reference if possible.

Thanks.

Steve.

Hi Steve
I ll try but not promise -I m super busy till April 24th, not writing on forum if u noticed-, FYI in hard mine's also tiny, front almost nothing, 2cms perhaps.
cheers
G

Good grief George.......do you really want to broadcast this kind of info on an open forum..........(snigger )

...............sorry.........it just appealed to my schoolboy sense of humour

I... er..... see. (just joining in with the spirit of things!)

OK George, thanks for the info. That does sound about the same amount of suspension travel as mine.

Steve.

I'm puzzled now. Aren't we all agreed that hard mode just alters the sensing speed of the electro valves and at standstill (S2) the suspension is still in soft mode. Why then is it not possible to gently push the front suspension down? Is it really that sensitive that any movement at all puts it immediately into hard mode?

I think they mean after you park the car & shut the doors?.

30 secs of soft (electrovalves open) then the clunk into hard mode.

The only way of getting into hard mode at standstill with the engine running is to remove the hydractive ECU fuse.....(or have a broken hydractive system ).

Mine in hard mode gives about 2" of movement at the front and about 3" at the back. In 'normal' mode about 4" front and 6" rear. (Now its working).

Peter.N.

HAHAHAHAHA!!

C'mon all of you , don't make me post another nude of myself but...20 years posterior to my christening, to put things back in order!!

Demag, u r right but they've been trying by removing the relevant fuse in the cabin fuse-box, so suspension ECU remains without any current at all, so car is permanently "hard".

OK, said I don't have time but have toi report this as I got the news today from my indy. So, what happened: rememebr last week or so, some evening I tried both reversing combined with hard bracking, and then did about 10 up/downs with suspension in permanent hard. Well, as I've written in this thread, one or both of these actions seem to have totally unstuck my rear suspension, just immediately. Going back home, I realised Iv'e passed a couple of spots where I'd excpect a "thump" from the rear, and I just didn't feel anything. Now it seemed the *front* was harder -as it should really, the rear is so soft on hydropeumatic Cits-!! Unfortunatelly I cannot say which action did it. I didn't report extensively as I wanted to confirm results for a week or so. The only thing I wrote was that after doingthe ups/dows, the pressure regualtor started cycling all too often -10secs when it was 20+ just before-.

So, a leak developed. Next time I took the car, it had poored lots of LHM on the street. First meters driving, pressure lamp comes on and I decide to stop: had lost plenty of oil. Anyway, I filled it up, decided to drove to my indy -with the fire extinguihser next to me!- and gave it to him.

My fear was that the extra back pressure created by the up/downs -obvious from the slower rise/bottoming of car when in hard mode- blew up something before the hydractive blocks. I thought the DIRAVI had started leaking -this simply means to throw away this car- so I passed a couple of scary days before I hear from my indy-.

Thanks god, all it was was a plugging fitting I had used in a modification I had done a year ago: to make sure the electrovalve doesn't leak back in case the overall wear of the system was high, I drove a pipe from after the pressure regulator directly to the front e-valve, through a one-way-valve. This had 1 inlet and 2 outlets. Obviously I didn't need 1 of the outlets so I blanked it with a standard 3.5mm fitting, in which I had normally placed a cupronickel pipe, but I had cut it and folded it 2 times and pressed this in the vice till it couldn't shrink more. So, the pressure from doing ups/downs in hard modem, has blown a hole at a folding point of that pipe!! Unbelievable. and I've been doing normal ups/downs for the last year and 6,000miles.

This tells me that I have to warn you that there's a risk in doing ups/downs in hard mode. So do it at your risk. I repeat, this pipe blew just after 1 session of these ups/downs.

Another problem in the process is that my car is now filled up with 100% LHM. Unfortunately the rear has retunre dto its previous state -and it looks worse with LHM-. Still waiting for the LHM to settle down and I'll report later. I'm stopping the experiemnts for now as I have a very important milestone for the end of April, and then will start again -I'll sure repeat the ups/downs in hard mode as I believe *they* were responsible for unstucking the rear suspension (that's because I did again a violent braking in reverse session yesterday, and there was no difference whatsoever -my regulator ticking time is again abck to the usual 20+secs after leak was repaired-).

cheers
George

As George says the car is forced into hard mode. However on mine I unplug the ECU, I've tried the fuses that are listed in the handbook but the feed to the electrovalves was still live (I knew this because my hard/soft status LED was still lit).

Anyhow when's the next full moon.... Even Peter's joining in!

Thought for the day - can you back flush a strut using the return pipes? I have a spare pair in the garage so I may try it.

Steve.