Quite a few unique parts that are proving difficult to source these days.

Been trying to help find a jockey wheel tensioner for the aircon version of the 2.5.
None tracked down in uk and the one french advertiser found turned out to have no stock.
The car owner needs one urgently.
He has made contact with one of the suppliers.
They may be willing to make a batch of 10 and hold in stock.
Cost will be £125 each inc vat.
If anyone else wants to purchase then PM me for contact details.

Clutch kits for the 2.5 are expensive at around £200.
There is one french supplier offering a pattern part at £130 plus post?
There have been some ESJ9/ML5 clutch kits offered as NOS recently.
Typically at £50 plus postage.
Citroen/Peugeot part number is 205204.
These are not identical but can be made to fit a 2.5.
Cover plate is the same part.
Clutch disk dimensions are the same but slight variation in springs and friction material composition.
Thrust bearing is shorter but wearing parts identical so can be moved to old bearing.

John

It's always slightly worrying to see parts beginning to get hard to source John but I guess that's the problem of a relatively rare car..

I'm thinking that the ES9 V6, despite being achingly rare, is a bit better off for sharing a lot of mechanical bits with the Xantia V6..

Exhaust apart of course

Hi Jim

I was a bit suprised by the jocky wheel tensioner.
A few years ago I bought AEP's final 3 for a lot less.
Needed another late last year and BRT got me one next day for about £70.
Passed on the contact details but BRT no longer stock or supply.
So I passed on my final reserve the French ebayer showing more than 10 in stock.
Not pleased he turned out to be a man of straw.
These tensioners and spring have been a repeated failure on 2.5's.
Working life is far too short, seems to be 30-40k.
Needs a bit of redesign and remanufacturing.
The spring is common with the ES9J XM but can safely be replaced with a fixed link.
Must find out about the ES9J jockey wheels (XM, Xantia, C5 and some Pugs).
Are they all the same tensioners? How different from 2.5 ones?
Got any used ones about to examine and measure up?

The clutch issue seems to be less of a problem.
Plenty advertised at around £200 plus for a valeo 3 piece kit.
Once done should last for 175k.
Just that when you want a stock of 5 that becomes a bit pricey.
Hence my interest in V6 ones.
Seems that Citroen made lots of dealers hold a V6 one despite no UK manual cars.
Seen at least 4 sold as NOS in the last couple of years.

With strut head refurbishment now solved this seems to complete the 2.5 unique and failure prone components.

Was interested to see in the last Citroenian a well respected Indy predicting
dire difficulties keeping XM era Cits going compared to DS's.

Bodes well for long term value of working survivors.

John

John, I can certainly lay my hands on ES9 tensioners and jockey wheels. Odd thing is that on the ES9 they're practically everlasting...

What dos the 2.5 one look like? Can you pop up a picture or diagram of one to see how much alike the ES9 one is.

I believe, on the subject of keeping the XM going, that just like the DS, somebody will begin making the pattern parts we need as has already begun with KingAS and strut tops...

And argulably in these days of CNC mills and the like it shouldn't be too hard... 3-D printers may be our saviour yet!

John, this is the complete tensioner assembly on the ES9..



How does that compare to the 2.5?

Hi Jim

Thanks for that.
Similar belt layout but there it ends.
Jockey wheel has a rear extension beyond the piviot point.
Same spring but top bolted on the jockey extension.
Bottom of spring bolts to engine roughly where the central bottom idler wheel is in the picture.
2.5 belt runs straight across at the bottom, no idler.
That long belt run flaps like hell in service.

Been looking at plastic printers and the outputs possible.
Found a club that members can book to use printers, CNC and CAD.
Bit far from home to join as a full member though.

John

I know the setup used John,

The Xantia 1.9 TD used this setup on Air Con cars for a short time, this being R 1997 cars to T/V reg 1999 cars with XUD engines and Air con ONLY.

The hdi switched to a better tensioner, of the VAG sort or viriety, which Ive yet to see lean in like the Xantia ones do due to bearing failiure on the tensioner pivot.

Obviously the run out of XM production didn't warrent a re design and change in setup.

I have NO idea if a HDi braket that houses the tensioner would fit to a 2.5 Block...

Ahh yes, I can picture it now...

It was a terrible design and is always causing grief on the 1.9 and 2.1TD engines in the Xantia...

I take it the 1.9/2.1 variety won't do, even with a bit of modification?

As has been said 2.5TD with aircon is one horribly designed belt tensioner setup. I think that part of the problem is that the long length of belt at the bottom makes a terrible racket and encourages over tightening of the belt to try to reduce the flapping. This in turn causes either the bearing to fail and thus the belt leans into the engine, the shaft to score and not go round and round smoothly or the big bolt which holds it on to shatter (did this twice).

I no longer have an XM , but was unaware that the tensioner was in short / no supply. I did consider adding an adjustable / sprung idler pulley offset from the subframe, just under the mid-point of the long length of the aux drive belt, to apply pressure from below onto the slack bottom belt, this would quieten things down / stop flapping plus reduce the temptation to put excess tension on the belt via the (weak) tensioner .

I thought I saw on the parts diagram some time ago that there was a modification around 1997 to the tensioner arm - but I may be just plain wrong on this .

Hi All

I now have an A/C 2.5 running with the jockey wheel spring replaced by a fixed bar.
I used two steel brackets and a 10mm dia bolt.
I have owned this car for 18 months.
The Aux belt has always been rather noisy but appeared to run reasonably true.
So I had let it run and last week it shed the Aux belt.
Took less than an hour to put a new belt and jockey wheel on.
Would have been quicker but for small mods needed to the bracket system to make it fit and work.
The Aux belt is now quiet and the bottom run only flaps on sharp rev reductions.
Even that flapping is around half the amount I normally expect.
One very important gain is in the alteration of the belt adjustment position.
The Citroen adjuster hidden behind the chassis rail is no longer needed.
I just left it as currently set up.
My adjuster is now a 100mm long 10mm bolt in clear view from the wheel arch.
We will see how things progress.

As far as I am concerned some very interesting facts have emerged from researching this little modification.
The workshop manual gives 98mm spring length over bolt centres as the limit at which a used belt should be replaced.
They also specify 1863mm as the belt length to be used.
Both my old and new belts were Dayco 1865mm belts.
Seems common to be supplied with this over length belt.
Some while ago I did a check on a spare engine while trying to redesign the aux setup.
An 1865mm belt gives close to 98mm spring length when installed with all new components.
The normally hidden aux eccentric adjuster is set to maximum travel for this.
The adjustment range for this eccentric adjuster is 0 to 20mm of belt length.
So it needs to be set close to full travel even with the correct belt when new and unstreatched.
Getting the correct setup with new bits is difficult enough.
I now doubt that it is always achieved.
I would be very surprised if any of these Aux systems get retensioned in service for belt streatch.
The flap with the engine running at constant speed has always concerned me.
Never though before to see what it was like when you blip the throttle rapidly.
I now believe belt flapping is a major factor in the component damage seen in these systems.
When present it will lead to very heavy snatching with bearing impact, exactly the feature that the spring was put into the design to eliminate.
Belt flap is a clear indication that the spring is not doing its job correctly.
I also think that the belt can reach the stage where it flaps enough for the edges to strike fixed projections or drop a "v" width over the edge of an idler roller.
The edges of some of the idler wheels are very sharp so not good to an overlapping belt.
The noise we are used to with these worn systems is I think a mixture of belt strike and bearing grumble from a very hard life in a poorly setup system.

I have now examined the jockey wheel idler that came off the car.
I can see no physical damage that would stop me reusing it.
Particularly if I use it in the revised fixed tensioner arrangement.
I spoke to the Citroen Indy that supplied the car to me to get the maintenance background.
Timing belts and clutch were renewed just before I got the car.
It is thought that a new Aux belt and jockey wheel were fitted.
Condition seems to confirm all this.

John

The 2mm difference in length makes a hell of a difference in the tensioner adjustment.
Using an 1865mm belt the tensioner is at the maximum adjustment and that is still not quite enough this is for a NEW belt. This means the belt is too slack and you get a lot of vibration at the bottom( both on acc & dec).
They also wear out fast and if you watch you can see the jockey wheel bouncing.

I use a 1863 belt (Goodyear Gatorback) and find it a lot better with plenty of adjustment available on the initial tensioning.

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