Citroen XM Forum

Thats a very odd spec of Xm, both look to have air con and one has climate comtrol, strange to have that and not a radio or hydractive.

Well thats something new to me, i didnt know for sure you could get non dydractive Xms.

The 2.1 is much better with its new drive shaft, obviously it had been gone for a while. It would shake the gearlever when accelerating but its stopped that now, and the slight vibration on accelerating from rest has gone too. Presumably as the front of the car lifted under acceleration the drive shaft was popping out of its wear grove.

Chris.

..so what would it ride like with those spheres in hydractive mode - anyone done it?

Peter

Given that the damping spheres are twice the size of the Hyda ones I think it would be...Umm..lively, to say the least. It would probably work OK in Hard mode only, if you needed to remove an ECU.

Don't forget non-hydra XM have much smaller diameter fluid piping, which will create some damping as a result.

Sounds nice to me.

I dont know Peter, there is soft and then there is oil tanker style handling, wouldnt like to dodge something thats fallen of the back of a lorry on the motorway with them


D

The DS seemed to handle OK with about two feet of suspension movement as do those nice American cars.

Peter

as do those nice American cars.

I've only just seen these postings so I'm a bit behind the times.

A quick comment on your mystery switch, starting with a recap of the operating method for the comfort/sport selection.

Firstly, the hydractive valve switches to soft when it is energised. Ergo, cutting the supply to the valve cuts out the centre spheres and the suspension changes to the harder setting. This is true for both S1 and S2 cars which always default to hard if the fuse or the ECU fails.

Secondly, when "sport" is selected on an S1 car the suspension goes hard immediately; with an S2, switching to "sport" simply lowers the parameters (steering wheel angle, rate of turn, acceleration/ braking rate etc.) at which the suspension ECU cuts the power to the hydractive valves and changes to hard ride. In gentle driving there is no difference in ride quality with an S2 car irrespective of whether "normal" or "sport" is selected. In energetic driving it will switch to hard whenever and only as long as one or more of the parameters is crossed

As your magic switch made the suspension stay in hard mode, it follows that it was cutting the supply to the electrovalves, not supplying them with voltage. So there was no danger of damaging the valves. Perhaps a previous owner liked the instant selectability of the S1 cars and that's why he fitted the switch?

I think you'll find the law on speedos is no underreading and up to 10% overreading, so your speedo is in limits.

Finally, I only had a quick scan through the posts so I apologise if someone else has already covered this.

Derek

Hi Derek, thanks for your post.

We have came to that conclusuion yep, but quite why its there is still a mystery. I think it was installed to disable the alarm, but the suspenion has been cought up in the process.

Anyway im actually quite liking the switch. Ive found a use for it!

When hoovering the car for example the ECU is keeping the car in soft so its buzzing, flick the switch and that stops that I know it cuts out on its own after a while, but when fiddling on with the car and doors it gets annoying.

Its also nice to have when i want a realy spirited drive, like i said before its H1 & H2 all in one car

Really enjoying the car though. The boot came in very handy the other day, when moving the horses from one farm to another we needed to move lots of chests and feed bins in the Xm. Only the clean stuff mind, cant have it getting dirty!

Chris.

Just to add a note to the comments on sphere's. When I got the current Black XM the suspension was very soft, very comfy tootling about but once up to around 60 and above it's handling got increasingly alarming, the slightest bump or curve in the road and it was a white knuckle ride. When I came to replace the spheres I found that I couldn't identify the front strut ones - I couldn't find the number on any of the lists I tried. What I did find out was that the centre hole in the sphere valve was in excess 1.5mm. With the correct ones fitted it's more pleasant to drive and ride in because the car doesn't lurch around as much and still irons out the tarmac.

Steve.