Citroen XM Forum

It's still showing on ebay

Exactly. If it's making £560 on Ebay, and he was advertising it at £550 on Gumtree, he's probably deleted the Gumtree ad. I know I would! Will be interesting to see what it makes with such a pitiful description.

Yes, but I was on the way to view this afternoon, he texted it's sold, I retexted to confirm, and he re-texted definately sold. Hmmm. Any prospective buyer would be crazy not to view, I note his comment about the water leak but no overheat, I have an xm prestige on my driveway, no water leak, no overheat, does a ton OK but it definately has a blown headgasket.

Head gasket problems on a 2.5 are not that common.
Often associated with failure to pressurise and bleed properly when coolant refilled.
Engine side of the coolant system is very prone to air locks.
Gauge can read ok despite gross overheat around the valve seats.
When they go though the head is often badly cracked and scrap.
Rads I have covered before £200 for a replacement set.

John

Ah, ok. I wonder what he sold it for. He may soon regret it!

Pretty sure you were right, and he's holding out on ebay for a higher price, but if so, he wasted my time.

Regarding the headgasket OK John but if it's losing water and he's been using it for long distance regular journeys (as he said to me he did), I would say it's at risk unless he was diligent in refilling. Mine (with the duff headgasket) has done just over 250,000 miles. What amazes me is that it still runs really well, I just leave the filler cap loose. I know the risk, depressurised = lower boiling point and so on, but it's great for local use.

Yes folks, still on Ebay, over £700 with nearly 4 days still to go.
@hydroman- being pissed around must be really annoying!
I'm sure this thing with 2.1's with failing headgaskets being ok in use as long as coolant levels are kept topped up has been mentioned before- was it Peter N who said this? Perhaps it's just my defective memory.

2.5 saloons now seem to be fetching decent money- I'm sure the last one I saw on Ebay went for about £1k, and that was even with it being a left hooker, so not everyone's cup of tea.

Gloriously underrated!

Not sure about the 2.1 as it's still fairly new to me, but I know that an XUD9 engine will keep running quite happily with a cylinder head and gasket in quite shocking condition.

I managed it... viewtopic.php?f=19&t=6577