'96 Xantia Activa - back to the future!

[Donald]

It was the 'flat out at 71.5 it will overtake a Ferrari doing 65' that tickled me

[wurlycorner]

[Doggo]

[lxstuart]

Looks like a winner, assuming that is the correct connector.

[wurlycorner]

The layout etc looks spot on and 2 of the 3 connectors are exactly the same, including the bayonet one. The hose at the back of the engine (water pump) is about 6mm bigger on the new hose, but that's ok - bigger I can cope with...

[wurlycorner]

Right, (work) project (largely) back under control now, have a couple of mins to start catching up the last 2 weeks on LG...

Last bank hol, I intended to crash through the Xantia and get stuff finished, but that didn't happen because I was so exhausted at the start of it and got so terribly wasted on Sunday night but I did manage to get a bit done;

This is some of what needed to be dealt with on the rear spheres

Access with tooling wasn't great, so this lot came out;

Which left it looking like this;

I was going to change the top 2 - top one on left is the 'hydractive' sphere, middle one (next to the ARB ram) is the 'Activa' sphere.
That ram by the way, is the guts end of the system that gives the car fully active roll control - basically that's a double acting piston that sits in place of an ARB drop link on one side of the front and the rear, so it physically pulls the car over to the left or the right to counteract any roll. The whole system reacts to correct roll in milliseconds - it's very, very impressive.

Beefy strap wrenches were getting no-where, as can often be the case on these bloody things, so out came the metal custom wrench.

Oh and a big hammer. Don't forget the big hammer!
Tightening the end of a bolt really really hard into the side of a thin ball of metal and then whacking the crap out of it with a big hammer, doesn't feel at all natural when you know that it's charged to 55 bar... however, it is necessary if you want to achieve this;


Incidentally, for the naysayers that don't believe it's at 55 bar;

The main accumulator parts of the system actually operate around 100-110bar pressure

Clean up the valves;
Activa sphere

Hydractive

Wire brushed down the hydraulic connections and sprayed up in Dynatrol Underseal to stop them corroding in future and being impossible to undo;


New sphere's fitted and more spraying up of connections;




So that was the Easter weekend.

At that point though, I'd decided that neither of these spheres were actually knackered (if the membrane goes they normally stay full of fluid and these weren't) so in for a penny, in for (lots of by now) pounds, I ordered up the centre sphere to change that as well...

[wurlycorner]

Sunday afternoon/evening after Mimms, I set to to get the centre sphere done.

Rear strut brace removed to ease access;



More whacking/abuse with the metal wrench;

(note the strap part of it is no longer round and the handle and bolt are bent! )
Off

This one is just an accumulator sphere, so it just screws into a housing and the hydraulic pipe screws directly into the end of it. Fortunately the pipe end came undone without any major grief

New one in

Sexy stuff!
and pipe reconnected (nice easy access )


Unsexy stuff;


That was it (dark by then) so back onto it this weekend. Hoping to get the front end back together, bleed the hydraulic system (and cooling system of course) and pray that has sorted the rock hard suspension at the back

Then I need to work out how on earth to be able to lie under the car so I can set up the suspension properly level left/right, without getting squashed (need the wheels on the ground, suspension charged, engine running etc. while I fiddle with adjusting rods moving the car about )

[indigolemon]

Time to dig a trench?

[wurlycorner]

Will this solution not actually work then?

[indigolemon]

Well, it might be worth a shot right enough ...