Citroen XM Forum

raynoon wrote:You should bring her up to me once she's back on the road, I'll help you give her a good pre-rally clean

Might take you up on that ray!!

You're welcome anytime Paul, it's the least I can do

Eddie nuff wrote:Be good to see her back on the road, although I'm curious to know what you mean by a general clean up

Polish the dash......

Good to see its going to be at the X rally Paul.

Thats the hope russ... But if work carries on i wont get the chance to do anything...

A quick lie down under the car tonight and a few things came to me..

Firstly.. I need to take the intermediate exhaust from the front bank off to get at the bolt thats allowing the blow..

The offside drop link has popped its bottom rubber cover..so that will need swapping..
The nearside cv boot has a split in it.. So that for speed will be a shaft swap..

So a bit more fun and games on the way

I told you other things would crop up... But glad you're cracking on with it.

Firstly.. I need to take the intermediate exhaust from the front bank off to get at the bolt thats allowing the blow..

I thought is was possible to access the rear manifold connection without removal of other components Paul and I had exactly the same problem with the Scotland car - en route home from pick up! A roadside garage managed to do a temporary fix. With regards, Matthew T. PS. Sorry to hear about the other issues.

Got some progress done today, feeling the exhaust blow was likely to be the largest job, I was right it turned out to be!...



Theres where the blow is from, the far away exhaust bolt n spring join.... however with the bolts being rather rusted the heads were gone, so no spanner was going to undo them... the choice, remove the front bank pipe from under the engine to free up some space..

The 24v uses two individual pipe exits, unlike the 12v where the front pipe curves up to a manifold at the rear... so its a little easyer to work on..



Once removed which was three bolts at the front, and two at a join in the area I needed to work through space was clear..

You can see here in the following that the bolt has pulled through..



Well, once I started poking and prodding the bolt, spacer and spring all fell off, the other one was just as rusty, but I couldnt get cutting gear in, so I decided to remove the CAT to get the bolt out, so removed the clamps further down to get the cat off.. then this second bolt just came away with the CAT, there was no cup left!



Remains... lol.. so cut it off, and then had to refit it all, but instead I used larger 13mm headded bolts for better grip, it went back together well, and is now way more quiter! Im pleased with the result, and have all good bolts in.

The drop link was simple and swapped easilly enough. However, I couldnt do the CV boot, I intended to straight swapthe whole drive shaft for another so I had no messing about on the car, however, I couldnt find my joint splitter, so I called it a day, the hardest job is done, drive shaft swap wont take long...

So, almost there....

You're making excellent progress Paul

So we won't hear you coming down the drive at Burghley then... Pity!
That's some satisfying Sunday mechanics there!

The air was blue when I was messing around with that exhaust join on mine. One bolt is easy enough to get to, It's the other that's a pain. Still the bolts weren't too rusted up thank goodness.