Xantia turbo deezl collecshun caperz. Now with hot (literally) welding action.

[Talbot]

Can I at least attempt to fix it first?!! :mrgreen:

[RobT]

I did a good job of NOT fixing anything, but in my defence it was meant to be a quick, cheap dalliance with a little bit of profit at the end!

 

Must say I did like it, although if I had another I think I'd prefer pez just for added refinement.  A VSX 2.0 pez would be nice.

[forddeliveryboy]

The suspension doesn't have the float that a decent BX has, and it is definitely more firmly sprung and damped. There's more "thump" from road surface irregularities transmitted to the body of the car, and all-in-all it definitely feels more conventional.

 

Even the brake pedal with it's silly-spring feels more like conventional brakes rather than how a dosieur valve should feel.

 

 

Xantias replaced a string of CXs then BXs I used to haul cars about the country as well as everyday transport, it doesn't take much to re-Citroenise them.

 

Quickest and easiest is to replace that ridiculous spring under the brake pedal with something solid, then you once more have properly controllable really good brakes.

 

Replacing the LHM and cleaning the filters isn't time consuming, neither is sphere replacement. The brief, it seems, was to create a car which replicated a 406's ride and not to improve on it - at lower speeds this was achieved. The damper hole on modern spheres has no machining to encourage flow at lower pressures so compare with an old, find a drill bit and do something to smooth the ride. 5 seconds a sphere makes a surprising difference.

 

Xantia spheres were all small in volume and not exactly pressured much for its mass (so a much smaller soft spot before the spring rates began to rise rapidly). It's not difficult to transform the ride to something more fluid with 450/500 spheres and suitable pressures without losing any agility. Keep the damping the same or slightly tighter.

 

Hydractives were particularly wooden on English roads, I spent far too long meddling with different spheres (around a set of 195-65-15 tyres) but ended up with something sublime, slow or fast, any surface/foundation. It was still short of a CX's capabilities - you don't get summut for nowt - but the speedo always seemed to over read by 25-30mph in Citroen tradition.

[jbz2079]

I had an N reg 1.9TD just turned 100,000 when I got it and a few years later it managed to read 250,000 and the engine was as sweet and economical

as ever.

No body corrosion of any kind but a few sphere mounts (rear) corroded through and leaking.

I had the feed pipes to the front struts snap and need replacing.

 

I away found it to be a quiet comfortable, economical car, I changed the spheres a few times and it had an appetite for front tyres.

Generally I would check the oil and screen wash fill it with fuel and drive it.

 

Needed driveshafts, brakes, tyres and brakes for test all at the same time, so I decided it had to go.

I missed it terribly for a long time.

A very clean tidy 406 HDI was it's replacement, not a bad motor but not a Zantia.

Try finding a good one now though.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

.....still short of a CX's capabilities ....

 

On the other hand, tthere weren't that many cars that had a CX's capability.

[Broadsword]

This car deserves the small amount of work it requires. Even with my recently acquired Jag, I still have a slight hankering for something hydropneumatic. For high speed cruising these are pretty hard to touch. Our 110 W-reg HDi estate made York to Dover in just over 4 hours in the wee hours one morning long ago. Saying that, we had that one nearly 7 years ago now and good ones will be hard to come by now.

[forddeliveryboy]

On the other hand, tthere weren't that many cars that had a CX's capability.

 

Exactly. CXs are completely out on their own, but a properly-sorted Xantia, despite the cheaper layout is really good, it's only the woolly steering which really draws your attention and tires you as the milometer ticks through the hundreds in a day. Accurate steering is under-valued.

 

Xantias are conventionally and well constructed, resist rot well and share so many components with Peugeots they're no more bother than a 406.

[Talbot]

So.

 

Now that Mrs. Talbot's Blingo has decided to eat it's own head gasket, I need something to keep her and the small T's mobile while I fight with a DW10 engine, so the Xantia is being pressed into service.

 

Here it is in all it's snowy goodness.

 

 

First things first. To be useable as a daily, it kinda needs some heating, as driving about with no heater is just miserable. So. It needs a thermostat.

 

 

Christ, what a rat's nest of pipes that underbonnet is! I remember a time when you could actually get to the front of an XUD and work on it without having to remove a thousand stupidly-routed pipes and hoses. Ah well. French.

 

At least the thermostat is still reasonably easy to get to. Quite why the top hose goes all the way to the wrong side of the radiator is beyond me, but at least it means there's plenty of movement to get the 'stat out without undoing those arsehole hose clips.

 

 

The coolant that came out was remarkably clear and looking like water, so that'll need to be addressed at some point. I just hope I've gotten away with that in the recent cold snap.

 

Old thermostat has a date stamp of 04 96, (just about visible) so that's clearly never been changed in the life of the car.

 

 

The new 'stat is actually an old second-hand one from my big stash-o-xud-parts. It should be a good one, as I always change dead thermostats in any car I have.

 

However, I know XUD's can suffer from not being able to be bled properly, so the nasty little fix to help this is a bleed hole in the thermostat. I'm sure I've seen XUD stats with a jiggle-pin before, but this one was plain, so a 1.5mm hole was duly drilled. Just got to remember to install it with the hole at the top.

 

 

Topped back up with neat glycol to try and get some ice and corrosion resistance in there.

 

Now attention turns to the inoperative fan. This had been suffering from the well-known Xantia "runs flat out all the time" problem. Unfortunately now, the motor may run flat out, but it doesn't do a lot:

 

 

Bollocks. I'll be needing a new one of those then.

[RobT]

Yes, sorry that woz me that broke it. In replacing the resistor I was geting angry as I couldn't get it past the hamster wheel, then that happened. I should have just got a new motor, 20 quid off ebay.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Range-Rover-P38-valeo-heater-Blower-Motor-also-fits-some-Citroen-Xantia-/182304573572

[Talbot]

Range Rover P38 heater uses the same fan as a Xantia with aircon? Pfft! Both are well known for having absurd issues with the heaters. Kinda makes sense now.

 

I have a second-hand one on it's way. It's coming with a pair of good boot gas rams too, as the ones fitted are marginal at best, and in the cold weather don't hold the tailgate up. Because of course that is the most important thing to get sorted on this car right now.....

 

Actually, thinking about it, it's probably fairly important. If Mrs. T. gets smacked on the head by a falling tailgate, it will hurt me more than it hurts her.

[Scruffy Bodger]

I've been under the impression for years that with many XUD's it's the fact the expansion tank is too low that doesn't help with bleeding. The fix is to get a pop bottle, cut the bottom out, bit of tape on threads and then fill the tank with that, thus pushing more fluid round the system and out the bleed points.

[Talbot]

I've been under the impression for years that with many XUD's it's the fact the expansion tank is too low that doesn't help with bleeding.

This is absolutely true. The 405 in particular was terrible for it.. having the expansion bottle moulded in as part of the radiator with the working water level about 200mm lower than the water jacket in the cylinder head is just barmy.

 

The best vehicle ever for an XUD installation that made sense from a cooling system point of view was the Talbot Horizon XUD. It's expansion tank was right up at the bulkhead, with the filler at the very highest point possible, with several pipes leading from local high-spots (like the thermostat housing) up to the tank. It filled perfectly every time without the need for bleeding. Like this:

 

 

Even with a failed head gasket, you could just run the tank with the pressure cap off and all the combustion products would just bubble out and you barely lost any coolant. It was a brilliant installation. No McPherson strut tops to get in the way of cambelts, plenty of space to work.. etc.etc.

 

Every other installation has local high-spots. The 309 installation got close to OK.. the tank was in the right place, but there wasn't enough bleed lines from high-spots to the tank. BX wasn't bad either.

 

Damnit. I now have a hankering for another Diesel Horizon. Quite why I have no idea.. they were terrible.

[Scruffy Bodger]

After being persuaded to change a weeping metal hose by the drivers wheel one evening I scrapped a 405 engine after work doing it in a rush. It was a really sweet running engine too. That mistake cost me £100 for a replacement and of course the hassle of fetching it, swapping it etc

Citroen seemed to have a better handle on it than Peugeot?

Didn't even know there was a Horizon XUD. Learn something new everyday! I'm sure they'd be improved with a cheaky turbo install and a tweaked pump?

[Talbot]

Didn't even know there was a Horizon XUD. Learn something new everyday! I'm sure they'd be improved with a cheaky turbo install and a tweaked pump?

I had three of them. They were not overly common in the UK, but I did see a few more around. Probably knew of about 6/7. They only ever came in LD specification for the UK market, which was a fairly miserable spec. The LHD market, particularly Spain had much higher specifications available, even including such luxuries as Central locking, Electric windows, Power steering, and (quite surprisingly) AirCon. I think there are barely two or three survivors in the UK now.

 

Whilst UK market Petrol Horizons were made in the UK, France and Spain, all the Diesel ones came from Spain. I suspect that may have had something to do with their staggering corrosion, as the Spanish may not have quite seen the same need for corrosion protection as is needed in the UK!

 

I also did consider puting a TurboDiesel engine into one, but when I had my ones (1993 to about 1996) the TD engines were still rare and expensive. These days, if you could get hold of a decent condition high-specification Horizon Diesel (needs to be a Diesel one.. the shells had a lot of detail differences to the petrol version) then an XUD11T from a Xantia/XM/406/605 would make a very capable car.

[Talbot]

March.

 

Seriously, was it last MARCH that I last did any work on this?  Life really does get in the way sometimes.

 

Well, since the photo of it parked up in the snow, the sum total of effort on this car has been moving it off-road after I got a fine for leaving a SORN-d vehicle on the road.  It was at least not too expensive (£100-ish) which is not bad considering how long it had been on the road for... ahem... officer.

 

So it was moved.  I put up a free Party-gazebo in the back garden over summer, labelled it as my temporary garage, squirreled away a BX and this Xantia in it, and managed to do *staggeringly* little with it.

 

Until now.  Now Mrs. Talbot's Blingo is really very ill indeed.  We've been keeping it going by shoving a few litres of water in every day for the last 8-10 months, but it's now blowing out so much of it's coolant, I actually have to do something.

 

So.  To the corrosion.  This Xantia has had a repair to the front of the offside sill before now, and it was shit.  You can just about see in the previous photos where it's been black-painted at the leading end of the sill.  I gave it a prod, and it fell to bits.  Out with the grinder and cut away the crap:

 

 

As is always the way, where there's rust, there's always more rust.  That'll be the central vertical of the sill gone through too then.  Bottoms.

 

Never mind.  Some galvanised sheet nicked from a sheet-metal company's scrap bin to the rescue:

 

Disclaimer:  Anyone hoping for Granada-Coupe-levels of fabrication and welding quality is going to be bitterly dissapointed.  This is going to simply be a "bash it back together" job,  MOT test worthy, strong and solid, but I fear the cosmetics may let it down a litle.

A) I don't care.

I don't have time.

C) It's not a Ford Granada Coupe, or anything ever likely to be as desireable or valuable, so is anyone going to lose sleep?

D) It's still better than a nasty little back-street garage would do.

E) I just want to drive it.

 

 

Now to make up a new closing piece for the hole I had to cut.  This was a bit interesting, as there's a joggle in it where the front wing (also rotten at its lower edge) comes down and bolts on under the sill.  Not having a joggler, or any other pressing tools, it had to be fabricated using hammers.  It's terrible, but it will barely be visible, so sod it.  See disclaimer above.

 

 

Before welding that bit on, some corrosion protection might be a plan.  Usually I'd use zinc-rich paint to protect what I've welded, but I hadn't got any, and I've no idea where to buy any nearby, so I had this in my collection of stuff.  It'll do:

 

 

I've no idea how old it is, and it goes on like no paint I've used before.  Not ideal, but better than nothing.  I'll have to cavity-wax in where I've been welding anyway, so I'm not too worried.

 

Closing panel welded in and ground back.  I am waaaaay out of practice doing this, and the alignment of the sill and the repair piece is not good, hence not being able to flat it fully back.  I also didn't tack it enough properly before welding, so it's slightly distorted.  It's solid, and I don't care.  Disclaimer again!

 

 

Good.  Well, with that in, time to turn attention to the corrosion hole that I knew was there to begin with.  I knew this one was going to be a bit of a cow, as Xantia are known to rot at the trailing end of the sill, and access isn't brilliant.  Lets have a look:

 

 

Out with the cutting disc.  This should be a big enough cut surely?

 

 

Erm:

 

 

Bummer.  So that's the central vertical of the sill gone here too.  Going to need a bigger hole.

 

 

After generally hacking at the central vertical, it was clear that the inner sill was shot at the end too, so that got cut out as well.  If I'm honest, there's more car on the floor here than I was hoping for.  No surprise though really.

 

 

And after cutting everything back to reasonably solid metal, I'm left with this:

 

 

The biggest issue of which is the proximity of the fuel filler pipework, which was more than a little concerning.  I was very lucky in that the corrosion stopped just short of needing to remove the filler neck and drop the tank.  Not a job I would have wanted to do.  The piece of steel on the left is holding the tube out of the way, and affording a very small amount of protection while I weld.

 

Speaking of "not wanting to do a job"... ordinarily, dropping a fuel tank would be easy enough, but the working space I have for this car at the moment is far from ideal.  It's a 9m X 3m party tent, which was free to me as it was a bit knackered already.  It flaps about in the wind like mad, and the sides don't reach the ground, meaning there is always a draught across the floor.

 

 

It's also made from the thinnest section steel poles I have ever seen.  Most of them have bent in the recent wind, so have had to have wooden splints added.  It's also got something like 10 heavy-duty ratchet-straps holding it down/together, attached to large ground-screws that wind about a foot into the soil.  I'm terrified it's going to take-off and end up in one of my neighbours gardens.  Or indeed several of them.

 

 

Anyway.  Back to the Xantia.  Inner sill fabricated and fitted.  I managed to set fire to a fairly significant amount of the rubberised underseal behind the inner sill.. which IMO is no bad thing. It's vile stuff and I'm sure is responsible for holding on to moisture and then rotting the car away faster than ever.

 

 

Central vertical cut and welded in.  There is also a very small closing panel welded in here, but it's almost impossible to see.

 

 

Now comes the fun bit.. the outer sill.  Gone are the days when sills were straight.  Gone even are the days when sills just had single-curvature.  The trailing end of the Xantia has a lovely* double curvature to it, just as it widens to become the end of the wheel arch.  Thankfully, the steel is thin enough here that you can shape it by hand.  This was my first attempt at getting the curvature correct, and it's amazingly not far off:

 

 

After that, I started to trim it to size, but was thwarted by time and had to go and do a school run, which pretty much means the end of any available time to work on this.  No bad thing today, as it was about 3°c in the tent, and by this point I had pretty much lost all feeling in my fingers.

 

Next time on the thrilling* adventures* of the rofflewin Xantia:  More metal, more grinding, more welding.   Fairly predictable really.

[Talbot]

So. More Metal, more Grinding and more Welding: (my prediction was accurate.. I should do the weather forecast)

 

Continuing from where I left off.. The sill needed an end closing panel, so one was made by mercilessly hammering until flat was no longer flat. And welded in.

 

 

Thereafter, the outer skin of the sill could be trimmed to size and checked for fit. Not bad

 

 

Also had to form the return that folds back into the wheelarch. This was less good, as I had to make several cuts to allow for the lip to be bent around the shape of the sill. It's untidy, but again, I' not worried.

 

 

Now comes the bit that I am still somewhat out of practice on.. Tack the panel in place, and check for alignment. If I'm honest, I should have cut this off and tried again, as although each end is fairly well aligned, there's too much metal in the centre of the repair, so it doesn't sit level with the body. It's out by about 0.25 of a mm.

 

 

Did I cut the tacks out, trim the repair and have another go at it? Of course not. Weld the bastard repair section in and be done with it!!

 

 

That's the rear mostly finished now. I still need to remove the wheel so that I can weld the cuts in the return, and then it needs paint, but for the moment it will do. I now need to turn my attention to the front again, as the bottom 4" of the wing was rotted off, and I need to make a bit up to finish it. The ratchet strap is holding the rest of the wing in place (it's unbolted) so that I can just make up a bottom bit and buzz it on. Again, Function over Form here. I just need it to not flap about in the breeze.

 

 

You can see in this last picture, the light has just about gone, so time to give up and drink tea.

 

Next time, on the thrilling* adventures* of the Xantia. Wings and paint. And possibly the other side, as the other front wing bottom has rotted out and taken the sill with it. Tits.

[theshadow]

autoshites finest :-D

[beko1987]

Nice repairs, get the car running again, don't fanny about!

[Talbot]

get the car running again, don't fanny about!

This is currently my motto!

 

I thought long and hard (OK, for about 5 mins) about what course of action I should take on this car, everything ranging from buying £eleventybillions worth of genuine panels (wings, sills etc.) and doing a "proper job" on it, to heaving the engine out and bridging the rest on the basis of it needing too much work/welding/panels.

 

The deciding factor was the repair that a friend and I once did on a breadvan polo nearly 20 years ago. He had just discovered that the OSR inner wheelarch was utterly rotten, and once the inner trim was removed you could put your arm through the hole and touch the tyre. He arrived at my house in a bit of a panic as it was up for MOT the next day. Between us, two grinders, a welder, a lump hammer and bit of old bonnet we "fashioned" a repair. It was based entirely on "fuck it, that's near enough", and we formed the shape of the arch by welding a bit, then twatting the panel, welding a bit more, twatting it a bit more until it sortof fitted. Slapped some bitument paint all over it, job done. From arriving to job complete was under an hour. That repair outlasted the rest of the car (which lasted many more years thereafter) and MOT man didn't bat an eyelid.

 

If that worked, I can do the same on this car and have it work. I suspect I've only spent about 5-6 hours on it so far, but could quite easily have spent double that time for a barely-any-better job.

 

So yes. It's not a bodge. It's just not fannying about!

 

 

Also. Some of the (inevitable) welding burns from a few days ago where I was trying to do a full seam weld on the lower seam, and several largeish blobs of molten metal fell out, burning straight through my old fleece:

 

 

Y tho?

[stuboy]

blimey that paint tin is from the early 90's

[Talbot]

blimey that paint tin is from the early 90's

It's clearly been very well sealed then, as I managed to set fire to some of it earlier so at least some of the light volatiles are still there!

 

I'm going to buy some zinc-rich and some more bitumen based tomorrow.