Robert's 2.5

[robert_e_smart]

Morning Folks,

I bought a 2.5 TD a couple of weeks ago, and this weekend was the first time that I have been able to photograph it. Its a 1994 Exclusive (non leather). It has 165K on the clock, and has been sitting off road for about 3-4 year since the last owner died. I have driven it home via the MOT centre, but can't really comment too much on its overall condition at present. It is in reasonable condition, its never going to be concours, but it will be a good using car, the interior could do with a clean, and there isn't too much wear to the drivers seat side bolster.

The to do list after the imminant MOT failure wasn't too bad for a car that has been sitting for a long time. This includes new front discs and pads, welding to the sills behind the wings where the jacking points have been destroyed. Also sorting out my lack of brake and rear fog lights. This will keep me busy between now and my retest date of next Monday. I also need to change teh glow plugs, and check if the fuel heather has been bypassed, as it is a pig to start.

Work to date includes fixing the horns, replacing the boot catch which wasn't opening, bypassing the oil cooler, and flushing the oily gunge out of the cooling system.

The picture quality isn't great but here goes:









Robert

[xmexclusive]

Hi Robert

Fuel heater is bypassed.
Can see the direct link in the photo.
Tailgate lock problems might be due to the tailgate hinge wiring.
See you have aircon.
Check out the history/condition of the idler on the serprntine aux belt.
A favorite for 2.5 exclusive trouble.

John

[robert_e_smart]

Hi John,

Your eysight must be excellent to be able to see all that from that awful picture!

Yep it does have aircon, I have no idea if it works, I haven't checked it out yet, although I suspect it has no gas, I'll have to look out for bubbles in the sight glass.

I'll be doing all belts and checking out idlers and pullys after I get it MOTd.

The tailgate catch problem was with the mechanism itself I believe, I swopped the mechanism with a known working one, and it is fine now.

This 2.5 action is all new to me, certainly not as much room in there as the 2.1!

Robert

[jorgy]

Hi Robert

Nice buy, will make a lovely car -I quite like the combination of colour and alloys. The interior is my favorite, the alcadara!

Lot's of fun to come then -why did u bypass the oil cooler, is it problematic on these engines??

cheers
George

[robert_e_smart]

Thanks George,

I bypassed the oil cooler because it was leaking a lot of oil into the coolant. I don't know if it is a particular weekness on these or not, but I have had to do it to a Xantia before as well, and it uses a different oil cooler.

The Silver is growing on me. I always thought a XM should be Red, Blue or Green.

Robert

[xmexclusive]

Hi Robert and George

Oil in the water on a 2.5 is a well known problem.
It can be either the oil cooler or the head gasket gone.
The usual way to check cause is to link the oil cooler out of circuit using a short length of 15mm copper pipe.
Flush the coolant well. Repressurise with the raised coolant header tank (important to protect the cylinder head valve seats).
Then wait and see if the oil comes back.
Asking Citroen the price for a new cooler will only confirm why a 2.1 is a better car for maintenance costs.
It is a unique bit of kit costing IRO £400. The 2.5 will run quite happily without one.
There is a cheap way to put one back.
A 2.1 or 1.9 one can easily be fitted and are freely available secondhand.
Just need to recover the donor cars hollow fixing tube to suit the squatter cooler.

John

[martinpenk]

I had a similar problem and I'm afraid I don't domy own work my the citroen guy who does the business I think fitted an Xantia oil cooler as they seem more readilt available. Sorry not to be more specific about which model. Seems to have cured the problem.I was told that it would probably be ok with out one unless I put greater loads on it such as towing.

Don't know if this is of any help.

By, the way is there any detergent or flushing agent which disolves the oil in this situation since it seems to take for ever to stop sludge forming around the filler cap?

Martin

[xmexclusive]

Hi Martin

Flushing out the oil out the system is really difficult.
Draining down does not clear it. Flushing with a hose has little effect.
The reason for this is that as you drain down the oil floats off the top of the coolant and coats the inside of all the system.
Then it reappears as soon as you refill.
It is better not to drain but overfill and float the oil out of the top of the header tank.
A bed of rags stops it going all over the engine.
The other advantage of overfilling is that you do not need to bleed the coolant system.
Best left until the end of the heavy frosts to start playing with the coolant mix.
Adding half a litre of washing up liquid then running the engine can help with collecting the oil to flush out.
You need to get the coolant back down to normal running level (run out or pump out) before you put the rad cap back on to use the car.
Did your indy do a compression test to be sure there are not head gasket problems generating the oil?
If the head gasket is ok and repeated doses of washing up liquid do not seem to be shifting the oil I have resorted to poping a dishwasher
tablet in the header tank. That proved a bit more effective with the oil but is a bit drastic so not an ideal thing to do and leave in the coolant for long.

John

[robert_e_smart]

I used washing up liquid in mine, and it has cleaned it well. The dishwasher tablet is a good trick also John.

[robert_e_smart]

Hi folks,

Another update on progress to date. Yesterday was the MOT re-test, and it failed on the bloody ABS light! I stupidly thought I would be clever and take the abs bulb out of the dash, and disconnect the dot matrix display. I forgot that the abs light comes on at start up and goes away again after a few seconds, so my tester was looking out for this.

So, I have to find out where the fault lies in the system (Bendix), I have been reading into this, and have cleaned the connections for the front sensors as they were easy to get to. I'll borrow a meter and check the resistance of all sensors from the ecu plug tomorrow. Having part of the dash dismantled was a good opportunity to replace blown bulbs and repair the dot matrix. Now I can see the time etc, see the temperature on the heater selector, and read the ABS failure message more clearly!

The thing that shocked me most was how much rust there was to the sills when I was cutting the rust back for my new patch. I'll post pictures of it when I get back to work. The jacking point was mangled, and was very loose, so I pulled that out, and could see the insulating foam on the back of the carpets!

Once I get this car MOTd, I'm going to take my 2.1 of the road for a while, and do a lot of preventative body maintenance to it, like cleaning the back of the wheel arch liners, inspecting the underseal, and removing any damaged underseal, and then going for a full wax-oil spray, and inject oil or wax-oil into the front cills.

I was blissfully ignorant, thinking XMs don't rot they're galvanised, how wrong was I!