Harrison's Garage - XM and 440

[rob88h]

2 hours ago, Rust Collector said:

You can remove the nose cone

I saw this on YouTube from someone called Dailying XM. 

Looks novel. 
 

In the meantime the Volvo exhaust is sorted. 
This exhaust was brought to you by the letter P

The previous AutoDoc exhaust only lasted about 5 years, but the car did a fair bit of standing which exhausts never really like. Having fitted a pattern exhaust last time by myself on axle stands in the gravel I had vowed never to fit an exhaust again. So a garage fitted this.

It’s not a bad job but I’m not 100% happy as it knocks the body if you get the revs wrong or thump through the gears. I probably need new engine mounts and some bracket tweaking as the old exhaust didn’t knock quite so much. 

Also the tip wasn’t the best fit, but this photo sort of exaggerates it. 

[beko1987]

I once fitted a wrong centre section to my zx (was a 1.9td and I got a 1.9d part). Fitted it and a tiny edge of it hit the body in the exhaust tunnel 😂 

Drove around for a month with it droning away getting louder the faster I went until a mate welded up my 1.9td centre section and I could refit that!

Let it drone for a few days then see if you can spot a witness mark anywhere,  then smack the car/exhaust there? I did that after 2 weeks and it helped a bit

[rob88h]

The Volvo exhaust has settled somewhat into a happier place I think, but I’ve most probably just learned to drive around the problem. 

The Xantia radiator has arrived for the XM and it “looks” like it’ll work. First though I needed to shuffle the cars to give the XM a suitable spot to die for working on. 

…I struggled to get the first car moved. Bastard. 

The Mini had tried to start (off a spare battery) then seemed to completely die. No ignition lights, nothing. I chased 12v through the starter solenoid and steering column but could no longer get ignition lights or solenoid clicks. I was pretty puzzled, as everything seemed fine as I worked my way with a wiring diagram from the battery to the starter, through the key, fuse box and solenoid, cleaning up and greasing connections as I went. After quite a while with no success I tried 12V directly to the starter and still got nothing. So out it came.

It didn’t sit right that powering this thing straight from a battery had elicited no life whatsoever, not even sparking as the leads touched, so I tried with a different set of jump leads and lo behold is danced around the floor like a mad one. 

I then did a resistance check on my jump leads and the negative lead I had been using had something like 100 times more resistance than the positive one and my two other newer leads. Great... If it’d been completely broken with no continuity I’d have not got 12V everywhere, but under a load the resistance was too high to allow any current draw. I’d been looking for bad earths all day and only thought to check the jump leads right at the end having tried just about every where else.

I put the starter back in the car and using the good leads the Mini sprang straight to life. Looking for the positive (unintended pun), at least I have a lot of cleaned and protected terminals now. 
 

Then the Focus got two! nails in the back tyre. Lucky me.

I managed to get a part worn of the same brand and model, so all four still match! Nice. 

Excited to take the nose cone off the XM I started working my way round it left to right to find that the (practically) penultimate fastener of the job that fits to a captive nut inside a box section was just spinning. (The Torx bit through the tow eye).

This nose isn’t coming off then without drilling that out so I resorted to posting the rad out instead. 
Amazingly I spilled no coolant thanks to the handy little drain tap.

With the oil cooler and hoses off the rad (boiling water softening hoses for removal for the win) I was able to pull up the radiator and leave the intercooler in place.

Old vs. New.

The core tube dimensions are quite different and the general quality of (what I think could be) the original radiator is/was clearly better. It’s a pity; I hate buying cheap parts, but it is better than no parts and this new one should probably see the car out.

 There is a bracket for the oil cooler that’s pop riveted to the old radiator that I need to drill out and transfer to the new radiator. I need to get a new tool for doing that so I’ve stoped here for the moment.

A few fins down over the years!

 

And because the XM is boss level diva, the Hydroactive is in fault again. It was a firm ride home bringing it back for the radiator work. While it’s on four axle stands I plan to lubricate the height corrector with silicone spray given the last error code, then drop it down, do a bunch of citroebatics then read and reset the codes again to see what we’ve got. 

[rob88h]

Satisfying step: transferring the oil cooler bracket to the new radiator using exactly the right dimensioned rivets. 

I enjoyed that way more than I should have done. 

That allowed me a to reinstall the “shiny new”. I made it a personal mission to not bend any fins and succeeded. 

Using my hose softening kit the hoses slid back on no trouble. 

I need to finish off a big bottle of pop  for the bleed process, so I’ll know if it leaks when I get a chance to have a go in a few days. The split lines left by the injection molding on the spigots aren’t great, but they shouldn’t cause a leak. Hopefully. 

Then I just need to redo all the bits unnecessarily removed for the aborted nose cone removal. Also while it’s “up” (on stands) I want to lubricate the height corrector because of the last error code and have a general look underneath. That may be something I regret. I’d like to treat it to a new exhaust, but finding the right parts has been unsuccessful so far. 

[Rust Collector]

On 05/09/2025 at 22:30, rob88h said:

Excited to take the nose cone off the XM I started working my way round it left to right to find that the (practically) penultimate fastener of the job that fits to a captive nut inside a box section was just spinning. (The Torx bit through the tow eye).

I’m late to catch up on this, apologies, but that’s not one of the bolts you need to remove to pop the nose cone off - it’s just the ones along the top edge of it, two behind the side lights and a couple of push fasteners in the grille and it comes straight off and leaves the bumper behind. Loosening the 4 big bolts in the top of the slam panel then creates enough room to pull the radiator pack out.

That said, it was probably better for the intercooler to remain undisturbed, so you may have inadvertently found a better way of approaching this!

Well done for getting it sorted, fingers crossed it remains trouble free for a bit afterwards.

[wesacosa]

I saw your post on the coolant fill procedure . Did you find it? Its in the Haynes. There are (I think two, possibly three) bleed valves you open as you fill and close them when coolant spills out. You then fill the reservoir with a header made from a 2 litre fizzy pop bottle cut in half, with the reservoir totally full and the bottle half full run the engine up to temperature until the fans cut it twice (it will take a fair amount of time if just idling as they are slow to warm up).  Don't do what I did and let the bottle collapse as it warmed up and chuck a litre of coolant over the engine bay

[rob88h]

Ah, right. I was following Dailying XM’s instructions and he pointed out these two lower bolts need to come out, with the caveat that his were missing anyway😆. Might be a phase 1 thing or with his missing he never realised that they’re not actually for that.

To be honest, it came out pretty easily this way in terms of space. There’s just my glacial work pace getting time on the cars and ordering parts setting me back. But at least I’m still living the dream* as all my back up cars are Shite worthy. 

[Brigsy]

Ive noticed the trend of the crap large bar core aftermarket radiators lately. They cool poorly compared to originals with lots of small bars in. Id imagine due to size of this rad, it will prob be fine temp wise but worth keeping an eye on.

[rob88h]

1 minute ago, wesacosa said:

I saw your post on the coolant fill procedure . Did you find it? It’s in the Haynes. There are (I think two, possibly three) bleed valves you open as you fill and close them when coolant spills out. You then fill the reservoir with a header made from a 2 litre fizzy pop bottle cut in half, with the reservoir totally full and the bottle half full run the engine up to temperature until the fans cut it twice (it will take a fair amount of time if just idling as they are slow to warm up).  Don't do what I did and let the bottle collapse as it warmed up and chuck a litre of coolant over the engine bay

 

Cheers. I don’t have a Haynes at the moment, so I’m just using the t’internet. Drinking Coke as we speak. Burp. 

[wesacosa]

Just now, rob88h said:

Cheers. I don’t have a Haynes at the moment, so I’m just using the t’internet. Drinking Coke as we speak. Burp. 

The bleeder valves are on the hoses towards the top rear of the engine, I think one is on the heater hose near bulkhead and possibly one on a hose running down front face of engine towards water pump 

Due to the location of the thermostat at the bottom of the engine they are better at self bleeding than the XUD9 apparently but can suffer OMGHGF if you leave too bigger air pockets so worth doing a proper bleed 

[rob88h]

14 minutes ago, Brigsy said:

Ive noticed the trend of the crap large bar core aftermarket radiators lately. They cool poorly compared to originals with lots of small bars in. Id imagine due to size of this rad, it will prob be fine temp wise but worth keeping an eye on

Yeah, it’s not great. The original Valeo one was clearly better, but at least this one *exists*. It’ll be fine for my use I should think. I can’t see a situation where I’m flogging it up hill towing in the South of France, but a man can dream. 
I used to design cooling systems for cars in a previous life, but shhh, don’t tell, as it’ll make my failings on my own cars all that bit more embarrassing. 

10 minutes ago, wesacosa said:

Due to the location of the thermostat at the bottom of the engine they are better at self bleeding than the XUD9 apparently but can suffer OMGHGF if you leave too bigger air pockets so worth doing a proper bleed 

Cheers, a good bleed is on the cards. Thanks for the info re: bleed nips. 

[Brigsy]

You will be well versed in radiator design then 😁 as you say its prob the only design available now and will be fine for intended use. From memory they used to run cool ish as stock too.

I had same newer design rad on my r26 megane and it was straight up/over 100deg on a full throttle pull. Oem is nla, eventually found used oem which sorted it out. All rads seem to be made on the cheap these days sadly.

[Rust Collector]

11 hours ago, Brigsy said:

From memory they used to run cool ish as stock too.

When the thermostat was stuck open on this XM it ran ridiculously cool, and that was with the knackered rad that most of the fins had fallen out of. I reckon it will be fine with the new fan rad, it’s got to be more efficient than the knackered one that came out.

[Brigsy]

Totally agree. If it keeps the coolant in the right place its all good. 

[rob88h]

On 15/05/2021 at 21:26, rob88h said:

Living. The. Dream. 

I’ve done it again! This time in the Volvo 440

123,456 odo 789.0 trip. 

[rob88h]

On 08/09/2025 at 21:22, rob88h said:

so I’ll know if it leaks when I get a chance to have a go in a few days.

It’s leaking. Of course it is 😆. 

Bled just fine though with the tower of coolant. 

(Although I couldn’t get a very good seal on the neck so it was slowly dribbling out down the inner-wing. Spoiler alert, that stopped me spotting a leaking hose)

This was and still is this car’s “happy place”. 

And the fans kicked in. Releasing the bleed nips let out steady streams of coolant and no air. All great. I can’t wait to do it again when I change the clamps and re seat the hoses. Sigh. 

For good measure, in trying to prep the rammel for winter I discovered that if I put the Mini in the other shed “bay” then the MX5 will fit in there too. 

Fired up, reversed out, and then just completely died. No ignition lights! Nothing! Just like before. My jump lead was definitely dead before, with very high resistance, but this is more than a coincidence, something else is at play here. 

I think it could be (4) the Starter Solenoid given that the main 12V comes through here from the battery and it’s also carrying ignition switch positions. And to corroborate this when I tapped it everything came back to life... It’s not so scientific though as I tapped a lot of things and probably kicked the ungrateful sod to boot. 

With it running though I got it and the MX5 under temporary cover for winter. Yes, there’s a rather large hole in the shed where a mighty limb of the tree fell through. Work in progress!

They’re all fighting me at the moment, but I’m still rolling!

[rob88h]

The XM is back on the road! Instead of dropping the coolant again I just opened up a jubilee clip to thread it on and then added it to complement the original spring loaded clip. It works, it works. 

The Hydroactive ECU is running checks and working on start up again after skilfully* clearing vehicle speed and vehicle height error codes. I also lubricated the ride height mechanism and linkages and did a bit of Citroebatics to exercise it all. There is a decidedly louder thunk from one of the Hydroactive solenoids (I think) than I remember from before. I’m undecided if this is a good thing or a bad thing. 

[Rust Collector]

1 hour ago, rob88h said:

There is a decidedly louder thunk from one of the Hydroactive solenoids (I think) than I remember from before. I’m undecided if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Congrats on getting it back to being useable as a car though!

[wesacosa]

1 hour ago, rob88h said:

The XM is back on the road! Instead of dropping the coolant again I just opened up a jubilee clip to thread it on and then added it to complement the original spring loaded clip. It works, it works. 

The Hydroactive ECU is running checks and working on start up again after skilfully* clearing vehicle speed and vehicle height error codes. I also lubricated the ride height mechanism and linkages and did a bit of Citroebatics to exercise it all. There is a decidedly louder thunk from one of the Hydroactive solenoids (I think) than I remember from before. I’m undecided if this is a good thing or a bad thing. 

There should be a single clunk from the solenoid after starting or when opening/closing doors I think. On mine it was audible inside the car

[rob88h]

In which case, and with no intention of investigation, I declare this new noise something that was previously broken is now fixed. 

Side note: do you mean after start up or after turning to ignition on? There’s no way I’m hearing anything over the XUD 🤣

4 minutes ago, wesacosa said:

single clunk from the solenoid after starting or when opening/closing doors I think. On mine it was audible inside the car

 

[rob88h]