Sharp Pointy Red Thing, New car!

Hi guys,

I accidently bought this monday night -















£335!!!!

Hahahahaha awsomeness

The auction finished at 1am on a week night, i've had a BX in the past and really fancied an XM, but times are tight so I only put on a silly bid, and won!

The car seems good, although an engine mount may have gone as there is clutch judder when pulling away?

The suspension also feels a little harsh, more so than my BX, so im thinking the center sphere needs re-gassing?

I would also like to get it hydraflushed and new LHM, any ideas on cost of this operation?

Kind Regards

J

This post has been edited by HexEm on January 18, 2009 12:15 am

Hi Hexem

Wondered who was going to get this one, congratulations with the purchase and welcome.
The centre spheres should be regassed first if things are a little firm yes, or new from GSF for £20 each.
Are you doing the work yourself? or thinking of getting it all done at a garage?

Regards
D

Welcome to the best Xm forum around!!

Lucky you!
Strange how ebay manages to mug you and the next thing you know you're driving an Xm...
Awsomeness indeed! Get some decent bobbly alloys fitted asap as funds permit!!

Judder on take off is likely to be the lower stabiliser engine mount on the driver's side that
houses the casting the driveshaft intermediate bearing runs through. It's fiddly and the fitment
of a new bush may not go smoothly in situ - to remove the casting you can undo several chunky
big bolts and then take it to have the old/new one's pressed BUT the driveshaft will need removal
- all very similar to the BX if you've been here before.

The middle spheres are sometimes the best place to start as there's just the two and they're the
bit that really gives the car suppleness in it's ride - the corner spheres are set to give the car a
ride in sport when the middles are isolated out of the circuit so you can see the benefit in
softening the soft side of things first!!

Hydraflush is sold for about £15 at any German Swedish French and their Morris LHM is about as
good as it gets at around £4 a litre - you'll need about 3 or 4 litres to change over after using the
flush.

Andrew

This post has been edited by Andmcit on January 18, 2009 12:18 am

Thanks for the warm welcome guys,

If there a guide on the forum for flushing the system?

Also how often should I be hearing the pressure relief valve clicking?

Kind Regards

J

30sec or more is healthy, any less and its a new accumulator sphere, if you cant find a guide for flushing there is plenty of people here who can talk you through it

D

I'm sure there is one here but an immediate reference worth reading anyhow as an extra resource is:
http://www.frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24595

Spend some time looking through the separate sections below on club-xm especially the
hydraulics one - there's 26 pages so you could help by using the search option in the top
right of the forum page too.

Andrew

This post has been edited by Andmcit on January 18, 2009 12:37 am

Right, new accumulator sphere it is!

It's clicking about every 10 sec, must more often than my BX (about 40secs) thought it wasnt right.

Just looking for bits on GFS, were all the spheres the same on all years?

I feel so smug when i'm driving that car, it makes me laugh! Just knowing that all that comfort cost me about 1 months payment on that merc im following

J

I think the sphere's are the same for all years but different depending on engine size and body type. Yours is an early mk1.5 by the looks of things.
When doing the hydraflush/ hydrorincage everything is quite straight forward and BX like, but on this 2l engine the pump feed pipe (largest pipe on the reservoir nearest the O/S) is a swine to get the air out of because of the pointless route it takes across the gearbox and around the front of the engine and too much flexing of this pipe whilst trying to remove the air at its advanced age will more than likely result in it splitting so be gentle.

The service manager at my Citroen dealer did something to my car to make the clicking stop altogether. It pumps up and down in total silence whereas before the service it would click quite regularly.

Andrew, the other day I noticed the first signs of a slight 'shimmy' that you could feel through your feet when leaving a junction. Thanks for the heads up.

If you read the section from frenchcarforum that Andrew supplied, ignore the bit about the antisink sphere, it ain't there and you don't have one any way.

A quick way to check your centre hydractive spheres is to drive the car and switch from normal to sport. There should be a massive decrease in ride comfort, if not then it's probably your centre spheres - or it may be the diodes in the suspension computer. This gets a bit complicated and involves listening to the radio and daft things like that so I suggest you do the check and post back. It's probably best if you post your findings in the hydraulic section.

Derek

This post has been edited by DerekW on January 18, 2009 06:00 pm

What causes that?

Chris

Engine mounts going soft!, the back one causes the wobble when pulling away and juddering when releasing the clutch or on auto's a judder when changing gear, the n/s one gave me a wobbling like with an unballanced wheel when going around a r/h bend and the o/s one can cause a knocking noise when cornering aswell as the engine hits the inner wing.

D

I have the rh bend wobble

And me! I posted somewhere else on here. I thought it was the intermediate driveshaft bearing on the way!

Well it was the engine mount for me giving the wobble through the whole car and the steering wheel when doing about 70mph and accelerating round a r/h bend but it was too low frequence and powerfull to be out of ballance wheels and it never done it in a l/h bend or straight on. I asked about the driveshaft extension bearing before and im sure xmexc said it gave an oscilation when excellerating but was quiet, with none of the usual bearing rumble as a give away.

D