Citroen XM Forum

Quite handy having a bead blaster in the workshop at work!

Aerodynamica wrote: Cylinder head, can see no 1 cylinder different colour- might be running at a different temp but could just be the coolant ' washed' the carbon out..

It has just been steam cleaned!

Hahaha one down, three to go!

I'm afraid Matthew the exhaust manifold nuts were loose and the manifold has been blowing at each end (though I'll admit I didn't hear it) but at least it made loosening the nuts east apart from the access.. It is a shame to scrap the barely aged exhaust gasket but since it's a notorious spot on this engine it'll be replaced all the same.

I find this difficult to believe Graeme as I did my very best, although the access to the nuts was fairly horrendous and hopefully you might have smaller hands or cleverer tools than me!! Regards, Matthew T.

The access is horrendous - but I'm going to fit the manifold to the cylinder head first then fit the assembly to the block and hopefully it'll mate up ok. It was only the upper row of nuts that were slack- the lower ones were pretty much as tight as that can be but as you can see from the photo above it was blowing at the gasket ends. Anyway it's the least of concerns - New gasket has arrived at AEP in rutherglen along with all the other items. Trouble is it will all have to wait!

Is it worth re-assembling either with all-metal locking nuts, or adding some 'wiring' or 'tabbing' the nuts so they can't work loose?

Could be Chris, I'm thinking about tightening them to the torque in the manuals and checking them after a month to see if they're loosening of due to heat cycles.

Just thinking that if getting to the nuts is difficult when everything is back in place, might be worth locking them up as part of the rebuild.

All looks good so far!

You're dead right! The worst thing is actually the heat shield that covers the manifold right down to the turbo body itself: it's a double walled shield too so it means business! Even with the head off, the heat shield still won't come out with out any major effort. It's still merely shoved to the side. Need to think about the steps for refitting if I fit the exhaust manifold to the head first. The heat shield still covers the lower fixings of the downpipe to the turbo so either way it has to be refitted after everything else.. One of those things fitted to the engine in the factory before the engine was fitted to the car.

Anyway I think I might remove the turbo to check it is spinning ok and that the dump valve lever is free. Also with the head etc of the gear selector levers (manual XM mind) can be looked at with more devotion and might allow the side ways slack to be improved on the gear stick.

And although I fitteda brand new crank sensor, I am still getting an occasional fault code for ' engine speed sensor' so I'll need to tee check the block connector and wiring- much easier with all this stuff out of the way!

The exhaust manifold nuts were certainly all left secure Graeme and must have loosened though vibration and/or compression of the gasket. It is interesting that the lower nuts were tight where the access is most difficult! I had to use a small socket handle with various extensions and flexible joints and you would not get a torque wrench in there! Regards, Matthew T.