Citroen XM Forum

Having access to a workshop for the Christmas holiday I've taken the chance to explore my new car. I was looking for problems and have found a few.
Also taken the chance to sort some of the cosmetics. Mainly three of the roof edge trims. I don't know their proper name, four top the doors and two above the rear sidelights. For some reason three were perfect and three were badly delaquered. One, on the fwd passenger door, was also dented.
I'd noticed that the fwd drivers side jacking point was bent outwards and the cill nearby was also bent. So I spent half an hour attacking the area with a wire brush and rotary wire brush and found that the underseal did indeed hide some rot.
And also this:

Citroen XM. Is this what is called an outrigger? Seems to need attention!

I've cleaned the area up and doused it in rust cure, tomorrow I'll red ox it then reseal it until I can organise some welding.
Is this likely to be straightforward work? I'm not very knowledgable about welding. Yet.

Andy

In your introduction topic, you mentioned the rear suspension dropping after start-up. This may be more or less normal behaviour. It is almost certainly not the doseur valve as on a car with anti-sink, the doseur is isolated from the rear suspension by the anti-sink valve, until system pressure is re-established. It is probably caused by the sphere pressures equalising when the hydroactive valve opens (which happens when the system pressure gets almost to its normal value. At that point if (as is usually the case) the centre sphere has a lower pressure than the corner spheres, fluid rapidly transfers from the struts and corner spheres to fill the centre sphere. The effect is more noticeable if the corner spheres are a bit flat (as more of the fluid comes from the struts).

Hi .. no thats the outer cill area and its the lower wing section seen there. The outrigger is behind that jacking point..on the floor area. .

your other rust areas pictured above are more common area again for rusting out... ive had to do an R reg estate and also my H reg v6 24v there..

I think most of my sills were bent, or I bent them even on much younger cars, I think they are just not strong enough.

Peter

That rust doesn't look bad at all and is easily repaired.

Thanks for the comments. I don't think the rust is too awful either. I've been searching for it and am pleased I've found it so I can sort it before it gets worse. I think (tempting fate here) I've found most of it.
Thanks for the tip about the outriggers CitroenXM. O/S very good, N/S not so good.
I'm only frustrated because I don't know how to weld.

Thanks for the comments about the dropping rear end Xantia_V6. I'm not sure its the doseur valve either. I read a thread on here about someone with a similar issue and thought that was how they solved it. I'll see if I can find the thread again. It may well be normal as you say, and the condition of the spheres is a bit unknown, however it sometimes drops with quite a jolt which seems to defeat the point of the anti-sink. I'm also not sure if the Hydractive is behaving totally as it should. So I need to start eliminating things one by one.

Andy

This is the thread that led me to believe it maybe the Doseur valve.
I need to read it again with a clear head, it's quite involved and I may have misunderstood.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69&hilit=rear+drops+on+start+up" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The thing with the xm is majority are sinkers.. initially only the 2.5 had anti sink.. then it was also standard with the ESJ V6 from 1996 and I think then it was added to 2.1 and the TCT and 2.0 16v engines..

all xm up to 1996 except 2.5 should be sinkers so not many of us have it.. it is however the same or simmilar setup to xantias which has then from 1994 ..

Outriggers get missed a lot. I worked on one which the underseal was in place and intact yet the metal had complete rotted away from behind the underseal...

Nuage wrote:This is the thread that led me to believe it maybe the Doseur valve.
I need to read it again with a clear head, it's quite involved and I may have misunderstood.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69&hilit=rear+drops+on+start+up" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That thread does have some very good information (but also some rubbish). I think that you need to do a bit more diagnosis and give some more details here before jumping to any conclusions about the cause. It is not clear that you have the same symptoms as described there.

Thanks Xantia, I agree. There are several things I need to investigate. I'll do a more detailed write up of what I know is happening and what isn't soon.
When the cars off the ramps I'll try the ignition off, closed doors etc test again. I don't think it's doing what it should.
I think an interrogation of the ECU would be useful. A friend of a friend has some Citroen diagnostic equipment which he knows how to use (being an ex Citroen/Peugeot mechanic) I'm waiting to hear if it's compatible with the XM and whether he's happy to have a look or not. I was thinking of investing in Lexia, but getting a good clone seems to be bit of a minefield.