Citroen XM Forum

Evening chaps,

1st breaker of the year.

Its a 1996 2.1 TD Auto VSX. The usual series 2 green. Indicated 133K miles.

The car has terminal rust, and is beyond redemption, plus I got a new MOTd spares car sooner than anticipated.

If you need anything, please shout. It will be getting the usual thorough strip, and hopefully be away early next week.

Christ, she looks tidy on the outside too

Where did you find that one? UDZ, not seen it around before.

I've seen that gold YAZ Saferane about Belfast before...

Hi Ciaran,

That car lived around Ballymena for a good part of its life. Desi the Citroen Specialist in Portglenone had it in for some repair work he didn't want to do, and I got a phone call to see if I wanted it, and the previous owner of this Xm is running about in a Xantia now. Handy car, it had 3 months tax on it and is MOTd to October.

The rust to the outer and inner sills is bad. How it passed its MOT in October past is beyond me. This car is a perfect example of the kind of shock many XM owners are going to encounter in the next couple of years. Tidy looking cars will have terminal rust that will be discovered during MOT.

Its a bit of a pity because it drives so well, and is clean and tidy above the sills. The interior is very clean also. I was planning on running it to the MOT was up, but I now have Nicolas' 2.5 and am going to run about in it until it expires.

The Safrane came down to visit for a day and is now in Ballygowan.

Xantia drivers are going to start having even more surprises than xm owners funnily enough Robert, rear subframe mounts and boot floors for starters, then there is the rear door shuts and back end of the sills, I remember when John first started making noises about xm rust and mainly underseal delamination and the cautionary tale of rust working inside out rendering the car scrap by the time its detected and i must admit i had it put down to a poor lifestyle for the car but now i see how right he was and unless preventative measures are taken no xm will be safe, hence the work im undertaking on mine.

I think a lot will end up a scrap, most by the time they reach the stage of your breaker could be saved with new sills etc but from what ive seen the sills can be layered from 4 or 5 layers of spot welded sheet in places, once rust has started here the fate of the car is effectivly sealed, welding will buy you time but with the corrosion prevention breaking down inside lapped welds the inevitable will happen no matter how much you chase the car around with the mig.

D

I saw a dreadfully rotten Xantia a couple of days ago on my way to the MOT centre. I was sitting beside it at some lights. It was a 95 car; it had a huge plate on the rear N/S sill. Bad rust blooming from the very top of the front wing, and the rear wing was just a complete boom of rust ready to poke through. I felt like winding my window down and asking him if he would like a nice rust free Xm!!

The rust is a big problem, these cars are going to be harder to fix than comparable BXs and CXs due to the complexity of their shell structure.

Surprisingly this car in question has a reasonably good under boot area. The last Green 2.1 I broke was starting to suffer at the end of the rear boot floor cross members where the towing plates are. The rear exhaust hanger had rusted off this one, and was the first alert to the problem in this area.

A local Xm owner came to visit me a couple of days ago in his newly acquired '92 2.0i. I haven't seen such a bad Xm yet. It was just a sea of welded on plates to the sills, and inner wheel arches.