Le bus oignon - Xantia of many Autoshiters - GYPSY CURSE

[vulgalour]

Today we went to visit shiter The Moog to purchase a fine piece of automotive design previously owned by shiter Ruffgeezer.  At an agreed price of £325 what could possibly go wrong?
 
Seemingly nothing.  We'd been warned of the foibles but were happy with the car, seemed more than reasonably priced.  On the rough farm track at the end of which Chateau L'Moog is located we did notice an occasional knocking but dismissed it as being that wheel bearing we had been told about or just the road surface.  Out on to the open road and the knocking got worse, and it sounded less and less like a wheel bearing and very familiar... oh yes, I remember, when my wheel nuts were tampered with on the white BX estate it made EXACTLY the same noise.
 
Tried to make Dad aware that we were pulling over and he completely missed the horn and flashing lights and sailed off into the distance.  Confident it would be nothing serious and that there were tools in the car we pulled into a layby and had a check to find all the wheel nuts on the passenger front wheel were finger tight and ready to make a bid for freedom.  Then we found there were NO TOOLS in the Xantia at all.  We always travel with tools.  There wasn't even a wheel brace in the capacious boot!
 
Dad was long gone so using the initiative we refused to call the AA to come out to fix this problem and I schlepped over this sheep field to see if I could borrow a wheel brace.

 
Which was the wrong size so I had to schlep back over the sheep field - climbing over a fence and a dry stone wall to do so in my usual ensemble of a light two-piece suit and a straw hat since the weather was so lovely - and the very nice chap at the house I'd borrowed the wheel brace from let me borrow his phone to call shiter The Moog to come out with a wheel brace to sort out the problem.  By the time I got back to the Xantia, Dad had arrived but he didn't have a wheel brace that fitted either, nor any tools.  Still, at least chompy_snake was finding the whole incident amusing, probably because he hadn't had to dodge sheep poo in a squidgy semi-boggy field while wearing shoes that were little more than loafers.

 
Before much longer, shiter The Moog arrived in his doom blue 405 with a spider brace and we sorted the problem.  I then had to steal his pen because I had nothing to write directions down with even though I'd brought a writing pad.  Today WAS going well!  That's my Dad in the massive hat, he only started wearing them after I extolled the virtues of my own collection.

 
Then we drove home.  Nothing happened.  No fires, no breakdowns, no problems of any sort.  There's a wheel wobble - probably an unbalanced wheel - at 70mph which we discovered on the motorway and there might be a front wheel bearing on its way out as advised though again, it's not clear.  At some point we got a puncture in a rear tyre, which we noticed when we parked up at home and we must have been driving on the flat for a few miles judging by the warmth of the tyre though the car didn't choose to notify us of this at all.
 
The car itself just seems to need a jolly good clean.  Rides sublimely, goes when you press the loud pedal, stops when you press the other pedal.  Excellent visibility all round, masses of room in the front and the back, everything** electrical works, seats are supremely comfortable and we averaged about 55mpg all the way back on 100% veg as you'd expect.  It's a fantastic looking machine and I'm very jealous that I don't own it but happy to have got first dibs should my brother choose to part with it, which seems unlikely judging by the width of the grin on his face.
 

 
**the fuel gauge dash bulb went out.  Hit the dash and it came on only to extinguish another bulb.  That bulb came back on and the heater controls lost illumination.  This is normal behaviour.

[TRW]

9/10 for report. I can't give more because there was no picture of you in said 2 piece suit complete with hat/loafer combo dodging sheep shit in field.

[catsinthewelder]

Good to see it's found a new home and that the electrics are properly French.

 

Well done on spotting the warning signs of a loose wheel before it became buried in the front of an oncoming police car.

[MrDuke]

Top score, they really are grin-inducing cars - mainly because they don't feel anything like an estate when you hurl them round corners, but also because they have the perfect combination of progressive pre-turbo pick-up, smooth boost, and spot-on gear ratios. Once you fold the seats down, they will swallow an unbelievable amount of stuff, as well.

[gadgetgricey]

Just be careful, as its a slippy slope.

 

Starts of with a TD,then goes to an Hdi,then a chipped Hdi Estate.

 

Ask me how I know. 

 

Mines Red, but much prefer the white.

 

Great car

 

- Dave -

[The Moog]

Glad you made it back ok even though i tried to kill you. I just ignored the bulbs seemed best ...

 

Sucks about the puncture, although completely proved our conversation about not noticing 😃

 

Look forward to the clean pics

[vulgalour]

Day two, another 80 miles completed and the front caliper has stopped sticking, the wheel bearing is getting quieter and the punctured tyre - 2 screws and a nail in the tread, only one of the screws had actually punctured the tyre - has been repaired.  Insurance is £200 a year less than the Omega and mpg is high enough that fuel consumption is barely noticeable.  They're already saving that much on fuel and insurance alone that money can be set aside for if/when it does break.

 

While the brakes are still the usual Citroen sharpness, my brother has decided to get them refreshed anyway, especially considering how much cheaper than the Omega parts are.  Later tonight we'll get a bit of deep cleaning underway on the paint in the warm, lit garage since I can do that left-handed (see GOM thread for personal injury induced boredom).

 

Early days, obviously, but this does feel like the right car and is hopefully better than what has gone before.  Trading down seems to have netted a better condition, better sorted, better looking car than trading up... but that's Autoshite logic for you; flawless* as always.

[Mr Lobster]

 

 

 

 

I've had two breakdowns in that very same layby. 

 

Firstly in a new Focus TDCi which threw its engine management light on and went into limp mode going up the hill and secondly in my Alfa 145 because Alfa.

[vulgalour]

It is the layby of DOOM.

[Guest Facelifted75]

That is the biz. I always fancied running one of those on veg but I'm stuck with a company car.

[hairnet]

sheep shit is worth worth more than an omega - more fun too

 

chip fat works

[vulgalour]

Comfortable with the way the car is performing, brother and I risked making a start on the deep clean.  A clutch and brakes are on the eventual list as the former seems a bit heavy and as previously mentioned the latter look like they might need attention before the next MoT, and a pair of front wheel bearings are on the immediate list to cure the noise from those which is sometimes louder than other times but not alarming.

 

We've not given the whole car a wash yet and under the Tesco lighting you can see the glimmer of shiny paint fighting to be seen.

 

 

Someone made a half-arsed attempt to clean the roof.  I can't say I blame them for giving up after a couple of swipes with a wet rag.

 

We started with the bonnet and the front passenger wing...

 

Here's the driver's side front wing.  It's pretty grim and feels like fine sandpaper, no idea what the yellowy-orange staining is but it's pretty difficult to shift.  Could be tree sap, could be the Sahara as suggested to us by The Moog, could be a combination of both.  This is the worst panel on the car for dirt so we didn't start with this, it would have made us lose the will to live, let alone clean.

 

Claybars do actually work.  After a clean with car shampoo we applied the claybar to remove the roughness of the paint and get it back to a smooth surface, getting a lot of yellowy-brown gunge off in the process.  Then we used G3 cutting compound to get some of the deeper stains out and bring up some of the shine hiding in the paint.  The colour difference between the bonnet and surrounding panels is quite remarkable

 

A few scratches, stonechips and even a little dent were found when we had finished removing the dirt we have.  We also found that the paint underneath hasn't oxidised particularly and can and will hold a decent shine.  There's a very tidy car hiding here and the end result will be worth the effort.

[ruffgeezer]

Before I had it, it did used to live under some trees outside the previous owners' house.

 

Also judging by the way it is always sitting down at the back, it might be time to consider an anti sink sphere.

[vulgalour]

Actually, you may be able to help with a suspension query.  The ride in this car is actually very good it behaves exactly as you'd expect with no untoward noises or movements.  However, when you stop and turn it off but don't put it in park the back end sometimes rises rather than sinking or staying put.  Also, the front end can be really stubborn about rising from low setting, the back end comes straight up normally.  In the above pictures the car is in low, my brother always puts it in low when parked and then lifts it to regular before setting off, if the nose is being particularly stubborn he'll put it in high and it comes up properly before he puts it back to regular again.

 

I'll see if I can get a video of it in action so you can see better what it's doing.  I've some experience of the system thanks to the BX I had and my brother has some experience thanks to the Xantia our Dad had but there's still more to learn.

[cort16]

It looks great on those wheels

[robinmasters]

I wasn't keen on the white to begin with, as its become the default choice for bimbos in 1-serieseseseses, but actually it really suits a Xantia. Accentuates the practical big-windows-in-front, small-windows-in-the-boot design. 

 

And the wheels look like junior torque thrusts.

[ruffgeezer]

Yeah, you don't normally faff with the suspension lever at all in normal use, regardless of if you are parking it or not, the low setting is only for dumping the pressure to work on the suspension really.

 

It is good to exercise it occasionally, at the linkages can get stiff (this is what is causing the issue with the front, you are having to go past the "normal" setting to unstick it all!) but I wouldn't advise giving it that much wanking about, because you are likely to end up buggering the plastic links or the balljoints up.

[The Moog]

Looking better already

[HillmanImp]

I never worried about the ride in my Xantia. In fact the worse it got the more i liked it as Irena had just had a tit job and it had adjustable mirrors.

[Lacquer Peel]

My Xantia 1.9D had quite a harsh ride when I bought it, but it settled with "Citrobics" and use.

[Lankytim]

Claying and cutting is brill. I had a crack on the XM today and it's come up a treat. I've only done the bonnet and roof so far but it already looks miles better.

[vulgalour]

More cleaning today.  While my brother got cracking on the paintwork I got stuck into the glass first of all.  Only generic glass cleaner at the moment, it'll get some glass polish once we've finished with the bodywork.  It was surprising how much dirt came off the glass, particularly the inside of the windscreen, as it really didn't look so bad before.  Much better now after the effort made.

 

 

I then emptied out the cabin while chompy_snake got on with the bodywork side of things.  It's not too bad inside in all honesty, tidy but in need of a deep clean in a few locations just because the car has been used as estate cars always are.  Started in the boot and put the spare wheel back in its carrier.  Boot liner needs a proper clean but was just given a brisk wipe over for now.  We did noticed that the C pillar trims have been modified, presumably to allow the seatbelts to sit a bit lower for little passengers, so we'll be looking for a replacement set of trims to rectify that.

 

Rear seats, like most of the interior, just needed a good session with the vacuum cleaner.  The seat base fabric has got torn where you can't see it so we'll need to replace or repair those at some point and for some reason the front passenger head restraint was fitted to the rear driver's side seat and vice versa, easy enough to put that right.  The interior is actually in very good order overall and averagely clean, pretty easy to get it up to the standard my brother and I like.  For today it was just vacuuming and dusting, we'll do the deep clean of the plastics at a later date.

 

 

 

 

You'd already seen what we'd achieved on the bonnet, next panel was that horrible front wing and my brother decided he needed to get drastic with it and use T-cut.  Personally, I don't like T-cut, I find it's usually too harsh and I have never got good results from it apart from removing overspray from glass.  My brother, however, demonstrated how to get a great result to cut through whatever it was on the wing but even he remarked that he was considering getting brasso or even sandpaper on it.  Eventually it was cut back to clean and smooth paint - no sign of paint removal on the cloth, interestingly - then G3'd, then Autoglym'd to get the panel back to something approaching factory fresh.

 

 

 

Comically, the car now looks like it's had a replacement wing and bonnet fitted but at least it means that we can see we're making progress.  While he was still working on that I had run out of things I could sensibly do inside the car so turned my attention to the greasy rear wing.  If there is a drain hole in the filler pocket then it's blocked as I found out when I had to drain this after washing the panel down.  Ideally we're looking at removing the filler flap to get this all degunged as it's got diesel and veg slimey stuff in here that isn't that appealing to look at.

 

I used good old degreaser like I did on the BX and this panel came up great, mainly because it was nowhere near as bad as the front of the car for oxidisation and whatever it is sitting on the paint.  You can also make out the long scratch and shallow dent in this shot, damage that is sometimes invisible and sometimes very visible.

 

Finally, we are probably going to replace the front passenger door.  I suspected on the drive home that something was amiss with it and my theory is that there was an attempted break-in on this car as the door frame shows signs on the A pillar of being bent back as well as the missing lock button and this damage on the B pillar side.

 

200 miles or so and counting since setting off from Chateau l'Moog without any further incident.  If anything, the car feels like it's improving, particularly at idle.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Looking forward to a bucket shot!! Good work so far Vulg & crew

[ruffgeezer]

Well I can do the work, and have the tool but I've a feeling you are far enough from me to make it not economically viable?

 

Well unless you want to torture Vulg by taking him to Skegmess?

[vulgalour]

I reckon I could tolerate a trek over to Skegvegas if moral support was required.  I'm also happy to lend an extra set of hands for holding tools/making tea/getting in the way.  If it's a drive over and leave the car with Ruff sort of deal then we'll have to wait until one of my cars is road legal again if I'm providing taxi services, but I reckon something could be arranged.

 

I find the noise the car is making not too annoying and I can't actually feel the knocking or vibration through the floorpan, I can just hear it but I couldn't place it and certainly wouldn't have guessed ball joint.

[ruffgeezer]

Usually you knock the pressure off to check the balljoints anyway, and assuming it all comes apart ok it's only around an hour's work.

 

Edit:

 

On second thoughts, perhaps Skegvegas isn't a good idea, I have visions of Chompy_Snake having to rescue you from this sort of situation:

 

[ruffgeezer]

You aren't going to need any LHM, but I can't change a bearing as I haven't a kit at home, I don't like pressing them in as it's very easy to bugger them up that way.

[Lacquer Peel]

What I did with my Xantia 1.9D was knock the hub off and take it to a garage to get it pressed in, £10.

[beko1987]

Those door lock pins are a bastard to get in. Missing two on the xm simply because I gave up and put them in a cubby box!

 

My xm lifts its arse up if I sit on the brakes for too long. I think its just because Citroen. Certainly funny looking in the rear view mirror at the car behind when it happens!

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Is there a horrible speed-dependent drone coming from the front somewhere as you drive? If so you have a kippered bearing. If not, there's nowt wrong with the bearings.