First, the good news, finally got round to putting the new air filter I won from ebay a while back in the old red car, I think last time was when I first got it in 1998. Most noticeable improvement is power steering, which has been somewhat "heavy" for some time, seems to be a bit more perky all round:-)

Second bit of good news was I ruined the tyre on the same car that picked up a screw and a slow leak as I was going out on Sat night by driving slowly to the garage and pumping it up (it was down to about 10 psi), and leaving to go flat all week (no time in the day) rather than changing it when I noticed it. Tyre was otherwise borderline repairable and only had about 1k miles on it.

Why is this good news? Because when I went to get it looked at the tyre guy spotted the jacking point was bad. "You'd be f***ked if you had to use the car jacK" was his almost exact comment. Notwithstanding the fact that unusually he tried to use the jacking point before sticking it right under (usually they go right under straight away) and so may was have contributed to the deterioration, I am taking my own advice from last week and not spending any negative energy, just I feeling lucky that I didn't have the car resting on its axle last sat nite!

So, new sill is it? Or can the jacking points be repaired more easily? I guess I'll get the indie to have a look. I can see myself acquiring something cheap that will go right under and live in the boot until MOT time (early sep) though. Any suggestions?

Blue one driving around all week, first time for a month or so, MOT soon, seems to be OK, its just a bit too racy for around town (and I spend most of my time running all over the place in the week), and not as comfortable as the old Presteige. Havn't done many miles since I Ksealed it so too soon to know about that, but I think it was sounding a bit less "pinky" than it was before (but I am no expert in these matters, dioes this make sense, it was loosing small amount of water, even with new rad cap).
I'll get a new accumulator and maybe fronts done (rears done last summer) and the cams/water pump (no history, R reg car) done if MOT is reasonable. My mate spotted a bit of a bump in the chassis in front of the rear NS wheel arch, but I'm pretty sure that was there before the last MOT that the previous owner did. Anyway, plan is to get it in to indies for test with plenty of time to spare (exp 6 Apr). I think the sidelight dash bulb is gone too, or do S2 cars not have one of those?

As for flushing with petrol or diesel or Hydranet2000, I am gonna wait for a bit more feedback from you guys who are more used to doing it yourselves, but I'm very interested as the blue S2 car definitely has bad road noise from the rear and gives low pressure warning when going from low to normal during citrobix, and the red one is starting to leak a bit of LMH from the rear I think, quite often "kicks" a bit when performing citrobics and I have noticed that sometimes LHM seems to "disappear" (presumably in the rear somewhere) only to "reappear" after topping up. Having to use LMH plus now too, which does seem to leak out faster that the normal LHM. Got to be worth a try before getting the height corrector refurbished. surely?

happy xming to you all

Yeah, try spotting an XM without bent jacking points or dented sills from idiot tyre fitting bays. I reckon this considerably accelerates corrosion. Has anyone still got all their jacking point protectors?

Using three XM's and a Xantia as evidence I think the Hydraulic pressure warning and stop light is normal when going from low to normal. The system dumps all the hyd pressure back to the reservoir in low so then takes a while to pump up again once the lever is moved back to normal. You should try an Activa some time - certainly not a great getaway car when it took a 90 secs every morning to pump up all 10 spheres and get it raised onto its feet, then it did a little dance while the levelling rams and height correctors had fights whilst deciding whether to level the car in roll or pitch first. I quite miss that.

I've bought a Clarke 1.5 ton scissor jack from Screwfix that goes nicely under the front onto the subframe, haven't tried it under the rear yet. It's good quality kit and was only 6 quid or so.

>>>>>didn't know they had jacking point protectors<<<<<<
They were still available from Citroen, but in true Citroen fashion, they are only listed for S1 (even though they also fit S2) and only sold insets of 51 Must be an even older model than the S1 'cos mine only had four!