Citroen XM Forum

nice one Dollywobbly but can I repeat: get those spheres done and then do a new youtube????????? please?????

7 K is nothing, only 2 return trips to France I guess...

Nice car though, better hang on to it for a while:)

captainhaddock wrote:nice one Dollywobbly but can I repeat: get those spheres done and then do a new youtube????????? please?????

7 K is nothing, only 2 return trips to France I guess...

Nice car though, better hang on to it for a while:)

Oh I know. 1000 miles a month is sod all for a lot of people. Mind you, I do work from home most of the time.

Ok. I give in. Some of my tax refund is going to have to go on spheres. I can't afford a full set (I'm not even sure what a full set is - eight on mine?) so am thinking of starting off at the back, as that's noticeably worse. That might get me some float back. The fronts (on the struts at least) appear to have valves on. Is there anyone not a zillion miles away who has regas kit?

I have but it's not working ... Yet...and only one million miles away. Russ can give you address

Hmhmhmhmhmhm you sure?

Well...uhmm....it's cheaper than buying new ones. And they always leave that one out that will suffer first after If I can take off the trickier spheres, so should the experts with better tools

There has been sphere-related progress! Good and bad...

AEP Direct seems a good place to source IFHS spheres. I did just that. I could only afford one end of the car at a time, so I chose rear, as it really was rock hard.

The corner units put up no fight at all. Well, nothing that my new sphere tool and a gentle smack with a lump hammer couldn't overcome. The centre sphere was a different matter. No matter what I tried, I could not get it to budge at all. A search on here revealed that this is not unusual! It doesn't help that someone had obviously fitted regassable spheres at some point. That just means that the sphere sits there for even longer! After many forms of bashing, including using a chisel, I gave up.

Demoralised, I went for a test drive anyway. By golly things are better! It once again has the float that it should have, even with a centre sphere that I suspect isn't doing its best. Certainly, the rather annoying Mini-esque bounce it was displaying on occasion is gone. I will get the fronts done before too long (says he who's taken nine months to get around to the rears) but I think I'll farm the centres out to someone with a lift and an even bigger hammer!

It's interesting to hear that they've made such a difference. Having only ever driven my own XM's I'm not sure how a newly-resphered XM compares to a flat one but I suspect that after at least four years my car would probably benefit from replacements too.

I've driven a few now, so knew mine was under-performing. That said, it was still better than an awful lot of other cars...

The old corners must have been in a really bad state if you've regained noticeable comfort by replacing them.
It's the centres that provide the real softness, so they ought to be done.
BTW, you did depressurise the system before trying to remove spheres? Makes a big difference.