Xantia from Gunness

[Dieselman]

^ Good call.

[mardybum]

Elastomer.eu manufacture them already, apparently quite reasonable on price too. Not affiliated with them in any way, have dealt with them before for a family member though.

Fabricating one doesn't seem impossible, but without measurements, tolerances and an old one to go off, I wouldn't know where to start to be honest having never seen one.

Would a Xantia unit be a suitable replacement, or has this been tried? I believe that BX parts are similar to Xantia parts in places and can be adapted.

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[xmexclusive]

Hi Mardybum

Xantia and C5 strut heads are physically too tall to fit in an XM.
Xantia rot is much worse than XM ones.
I looked hard at reusing C5 ones as they are far better constructed.
Even using a round sphere this did not clear the chassis in the engine bay.
This is because the strut head elastomer is unidirectional and must match the steering.
That meant the C5 strut head needed to be rebuilt with the head centre rotated to a new position.
Then the pipework connections needed modifying.
All too much work compared to rebuilding standard ones.
The amount of weld repair needed to deal with rust on some XM baseplates concerns.
I currently have someone looking at a small production run of new baseplates in stainless steel.
I can provide a copy of the dimensions I gave him to work to.

John

John

[Dieselman]

I currently have someone looking at a small production run of new baseplates in stainless steel.

Would stainless steel be a good material to use, it is brittle in shock applications and suffers fatigue cracking.

[xmexclusive]

Hi Dieselman

I think that is putting it rather black and white.
All steels carry those two risks to some degree.
I accept the harder the steel the greater the risk.
As well as a diagram of the baseplate I provided a recovered one as a template.
First time I have cleaned up a baseplate.
It was the extent of metal loss on this that made me concerned about weld repairs on old ones.
The proposed plate manufacturing process can easily use mild steel.
If I make that change then I will use 5mm or 6mm plate rather than the present 3mm.
Thickening the plate is a design change with the C5 plate along with low quality galvanising.

John

[mardybum]

John / xmexclusive,

I've sent you a message regarding the measurements, etc for the strut top.

If you would be kind enough to forward them to me, I shall gladly have an in-depth look in to the solution.

Many thanks,
Steve

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[steelcityuk]

With a username like that I thought you had to be close by!

Welcome to the forum.

Steve.

[xmexclusive]

Hi Mardybum

Will take some photos of the recovered up baseplate next time I go to the CNC man.
Will scan the drawing and post here later today.

John