Our old friend

[casalingua]

Hello all: alas rust has bitten my car. The front right wing has rusted through where it meets the sill, the part coated with thick black rubbery paint. Does anyone know if this is a straight bolt-on replacement? It's another task for the Dutch garage I have found, I suppose. It also means painting, irritatingly. Another question is about the windscreen. Mine is debonding at the base of the a-pillar. Has anyone else tackled this somehow? At 24 years, time is catching up on the old bird.
Richard

[MTXM]

Hello Richard,
I was sorry to hear about your problems which are both quite usual for an XM of that age. At least three of my older cars have had wing lower sections repaired with new metal welded on and the rot is due to mud collecting behind the wheel arch liner. Another solution is to find a good second-hand wing, although that is even more likely to involve new paint. The only option for the screen is replacement but I guess the problem is mainly cosmetic.
With regards,
Matthew T.

[casalingua]

Hi: thanks for that. Is a new screen really required? That's a surprise. I'd optimistically thought it just meant re-fitting. Is the clouding internal to the glass? A replacement wing seems to be cheap enough; perhaps having a whole new wing would be neater than weld'n' spray? Luckily the rust is under the black-body colour dividing crease.
Richard

[captainhaddock]

I think clouding is air or water getting in between the 2 layers of glass. I would go for a used wing, Van Gompel should have them too

[MTXM]

The clouding is de-lamination of the two layers of glass used in the screen as stated by CH. If only the bottom of the wing is rusted where painted by black and the rest of the metal and paintwork are good I would be inclined to repair myself. With regards, Matthew T.

[Eddie nuff]

Depends on how much your windscreen is clouding as to whether it's worth removing to re-seat it on fresh mastic. The work involved against a new screen fitted is something you're going to have to weigh up.

[MTXM]

Unfortunately the de-lamination is between the two layers of glass rather than in the mastic joint. It might be worth waiting until the screen is damaged, although I guess it depends on how fussy you are about appearance. Regards, Matthew T.

[casalingua]

I sent some photos of the sub-frame rust to Van Gompel in Holland. He replied (or rather one of his staff did) that in his view the rust was on the body not the subframe. And in any case he didn´t want to do the work. In the first instance I will take the car back to the garage here to have another peek under the body. I am pretty sure my mechanic can tell the difference between the body and the subframe but maybe he made a language mistake since he is not a native English speaker. Secondarily, the little black metal strip under the sunroof aperture seems badly corroded too. If Van Gompel is not interested and the problem is not the body, I may consider some German workshops. There is one in Hamburg, for example. All in all though, this looks messy. I really want to hang on to the car as overall it is in very nice condition and getting something as nice would be hard. Websites such as Mobile.de show up a lot of series 2s and V6s rather than Series 1 four-cylinder models. And I can´t really think of a better car as a replacement. My fantasy car, a 604 is attainable financially but seems to promise a lot more effort to maintain than the XM and the fuel economy is dire, even for a low mileage driver like me. How does 24 mpg strike you, if I drive it at a steady 60 and never any faster. The nice thing about the XM 2.0 is that if you want you can hammer it and it still gets 28. 32 is entirely feasible and a 100 mph sprint brings it down to 25 which is still quite sane the odd time I need to do that. Hmmmm.

[robert_e_smart]

I have found a nice car to keep me out of xms! C5 V6 HDI! Hammer it on and it will do 36 mpg, drive easier an get nearer 40! Check out the series 2 xm 2.0
16v. Very nice to drive and very underrated. A lovely car with an autobox and full leather.

[Jan-hendrik]

Casalingua, I could not find the info under this topic, but actually what type of XM do you drive? I always find it interesting to see that information in the signature or profile