1996 Citroen Xantia 2.0T Activa

totally underrated car, specially the activa.
still the fastest on the so-called elk test.
see:
readcars.co/2018/05/13/the-best-and-shockingly-worst-cars-on-the-infamous-elk-test/

quote:

THE FASTEST OF ALL

It’s a Citroen Xantia, the 1990s equivalent of today’s Citroen C5. More specifically, it’s a Xantia Activa. The Activa part makes all the difference.



Like other Citroens of its time, the Xantia had very clever self-levelling hydraulic suspension rather than the more conventional springs and shock absorbers. The Activa had a more complex version of the same system which almost completely eliminated body lean.



This put a lot of extra load on the tyres, but that was easily compensated for by other advantages. The result was that the Xantia Activa was incredibly quick through corners.



The Activa tested by Teknikens Värld had a three-litre V6 engine which was not available on versions sold in the UK. We got the less powerful two-litre turbo, but since that was lighter it would probably have made the car even faster through the Swedish slalom.


Even so, the fact is that nobody – not Audi, not Mercedes, not McLaren, not Porsche, not anyone – has ever made a car that performed as well in the elk test as this apparently humble Citroen once did.

full list.

teknikensvarld.se/algtest/

Feeling optimistic having got the Lada's throttle cable sorted today I thought I'd look into seeing if I could do something about the clutch on the Xantia.

This has been a bit of an issue as long as I've had the car. The clutch works just fine, no judder, no slip no snatching. However the bite point is about an inch from the floor, which gets quite tiresome around town.

Not knowing for certain if there was any way to adjust the cable I figured it would just make sense to find it and have a poke around. I've managed to convince supposedly self adjusting cables to tension up better with a bit of violence before. Now, the engine bay in the Activa is somewhat "busy" to be honest. Nothing obvious there, but I figured it would likely be easy enough if I pulled the air cleaner out.



Hmm...nope. Still can't find it. Let's pull the rest of the air intake elbow and look closer.



Plenty of obvious cables for the gear change...no obvious clutch gubbins. How about taking a look underneath?



Nothing (aside from a minor LHM leak - one of the return line weeps slightly at the reservoir). It looks horrendous in the photo but she's never used a drop of oil, water or LHM and doesn't mark her territory.

Turns out I'm an utter idiot. The Activa in 2.0T form (all we got in the UK) has the ML5 gearbox...which means hydraulic clutch! That had never even crossed my mind...once that gem of information crossed my mind the fact that there must be a fluid reservoir for it (unless it uses LHM...though apparently not) also joined the party. A tip from a fellow Citroen enthusiast has me now knowing where to look. Turns out I'd looked at it a hundred times and never given it a second thought.



I'd always assumed that was the interia switch as that's what it looks like.

So I'll check it there's fluid in it in the morning and see about bleeding it. Fingers crossed that might help a bit as there's no adjustment possible and it's been bugging me this last week (it's the van's fault as the clutch in that is lovely now).

Have seen you about locally a couple of times and must say the car is somehow more handsome in the flesh than pictures.

Good luck locating that cap, that engine bay is very French in its layout!

Number one in "stuff I need to do today" was trying to track down the blasted clutch fluid reservoir cap which I'd in a spectacular show of hand-eye coordination dropped down the back of the engine. Thanks to the "busy" nature of the engine bay in the Activa I couldn't even see where it had ended up, never mind being able to get at it. 

Attempt number one to coerce it to fall out the bottom was by poking an air line down the back of the engine and blasting it in various directions. No luck. This was then upgraded to the hose pipe, equally unsuccessful. Eventually I gave in and got the ramps out. 

After a not inconsiderable amount of poking and prodding the cap eventually dropped out, not entirely sure where from actually as it just randomly landed next to my head from somewhere else. 



Managed to get the thing back on this time. I suspect there's still some air in the system somewhere as the pedal isn't great. That will need some further thought as there's no provision for bleeding the system. For now though it's driveable at least so I'm not going to worry too much.

Well that remains to be seen...if the fluid stays where it belongs it's a solution...if it's leaking though we need to fix it. The reservoir contains a tiny amount of fluid though so I'm not discounting a tiny amount of loss year on year having just run it dry though.

The clutch is still working lovely. In fact far better than it ever has since I got the car...so I'm guessing I was actually nearly out of fluid for well over a year. If I can sort out the rattling front suspension she'll actually be driving perfectly.

This afternoon I took an hour out to investigate a gremlin which has turned up in the last week or so - that the rear of the exhaust had taken up rattling somewhere. It's driving me round the twist.

Being a hydraulic Citroen has pluses and minuses. Needing to pull the axle stands out to safely crawl under it to poke the exhaust is a minus. Not actually having to do the jacking up manually though is a plus.

Obligatory safety disclaimer:
Obviously it's essential to put the axle stands in as should there be any failure in the hydraulic system, the car could drop on you. There are far less stupid ways to die than get squished by a Citroen because you accidentally poked and annoyed the rear height corrector while inspecting the exhaust.

I've had a good poke around the exhaust end to end...I'm precisely none the wiser. All of the hangers are present and correct, the system hasn't split anywhere (nope, not even the usual joint on the front of the back box which usually rots out on Xantias), no obvious dents or anything. The hanger rubbers even look healthy.

The only thing resembling a theory I've got at this point is that someone has smacked my car in a car park, but they've managed to very specifically hit the tailpipe...just hard enough to either bend the system or one of the hangers slightly.

It's all I've got...the rear silencer is fouling on the rear chassis rail (okay fine...I know it's a monocoque, but you know what I mean) and boot floor quite firmly. It's never done this until the last couple of weeks, so either the car or the exhaust has changed shape!

I'd known the rear box was a bit crusty though so wanted to give it a good look over. Of course I'm a complete idiot, so I poked the crusty bits.



Now there are two holes in the box. This one and another one just by where the pipe joins on the front.

The centre section isn't bad, but it's not in its first flush of youth either and I know from prior experience that the flange at the rear (for those not familiar with PSA exhausts, these use a sort of spherical joint with a cup on each end of the joining pipes) is likely to be a mess once I remove the clamp and will then be a pain to seal again.

So I realistically need a rear box, probably a middle section...and four tyres. Fronts are worn out, rears have plenty of tread left but date from 2010 and are starting to perish. This is going to be an expensive month isn't it.

About time this car gets some proper attention. She's used pretty much daily and really hasn't needed anything of note beyond regular servicing since I got it at the end of 2016. Not bad for a 26 year old 135K mile car which the majority of people consider to be fragile and overcomplicated. A credit both to Citroen themselves and the care with which the previous owner looked after the car.

Over the last month or so I've started to notice an odd symptom through the steering of the car tending to want to wander under hard acceleration, tending to pull more to the right. From the driver's seat it feels very much like torque steer.

One thing I was aware of was that this had become noticeable right about the point that the front tyres really started to get to the "these need changing" state, so wanted to check whether swapping them around would have any impact on the behaviour. She will be getting four new tyres shortly anyway due to old age which is why I never bothered swapping them a while ago to balance the wear. The rears still have plenty of tread left, but they're shot...



Uniroyal RainExpert (3 I think is the current version) will replace these shortly.

While I had the wheels off I noticed something. A while ago our local council made the genius decision to resurface some of the roads around here, basically drowning the road in tar then throwing some gravel at it. Given the ambient temperatures at the time, the road needed to be closed until it had at least mostly set. As it was they'd just scattered some travel over it, shrugged and wandered off...no signage or anything. The first any poor drivers knew of it was when they suddenly found themselves sliding through gravelly treacle. I wound up with tar and gravel stuck all over the car, including the roof. I need to try to shift this chunk at some point...



That's not just gravel... it's a solid lump of tar and gravel. Couple of new stainless steel clips on the fuel tank filler neck wouldn't go amiss either.

Up front there was nothing obviously amiss aside from spotting a small split in the nearside CV boot. Good opportunity to show off the bits which make the Activa special though.



The important bit is the smaller hydraulic ram connected between the anti-roll-bar and the bottom of the main suspension strut. It's by pushing or pulling on this ram and an identical one at the opposite corner connected to the rear suspension that the car is able to keep itself level during cornering.

While it would have been nice if the problem was entirely down to knackered tyres I knew it was a long shot. Sure enough there is absolutely zero difference apparent from the driver's seat. Having spoken to a few people who know these cars inside out it sounds like the most likely candidates for the symptoms I've got are are worn front control arm bushes. These are quite a faff to change on the Activa so the work will be farmed out to a specialist. There's probably a couple of other bushes etc which will want changing by this age and mileage so I'll probably be giving them an instruction to just sort anything they see that's amiss. May as well do it while everything is already in bits as that's where 85% of the labour charges will be incurred so it will actually save me money in the long run. MOT is up in December too, and having the car turn up with a bunch of new parts fitted always gives a good impression I think.

Alternator seems to be charging okay and so far the battery has behaved after a proper charge. I'll probably look to get it changed under warranty in the near future though as it really shouldn't have died like that and having been that deeply discharged is unlikely to ever be quite 100% again. Probably be a bit of a while until I have time to get to it though.

Today I've got it booked in to get new tyres fitted on Monday. Full set of Uniroyal RainExpert 3. Unsurprisingly they didn't have any 205/60 R15s in stock. Formula 1 are asking £83 apiece, which isn't unreasonable. The best I found online was £73 I think including fitting, and I'll happily pay a few quid more to support a local business. Not like when I was looking for tyres for the Invacar and it was like £44 online Vs £79 there...I wasn't willing to stand for that.

We'll have a look while on the ramp to see if we can do anything with the exhaust...the tailpipe is definitely past it, but can probably be bodged for the MOT, allowing me to investigate that in the near future. Likewise she could really do with a set of corner spheres...but they'll have to wait until the financial dent this next couple of weeks is making has recovered a bit first!

She's also booked into BL Autos on Thursday to have the front end sorted out.

Well that was a waste of a morning.

Turns out the last email I sent to BL Autos never got through, vanishing into the aether somewhere...so they weren't expecting me to appear this morning as they'd never had the message from me saying I'd be there today. This meant that they had nowhere to put the car and their courtesy car was unavailable. So I was left with no option other than to drive back home and book it back in for the tenth.

Not their fault by any means...just annoying. Could have proven really awkward if I'd got pulled over on the way there for driving with no MOT too as the garage wouldn't have had any idea I was on the way. Luckily that didn't happen.

On the plus side it gives me the opportunity to clean the car up a bit before it goes in. I've removed a load of detritus from the door pockets and boot, and will be able to give it a wash to get the moss out of the window rubbers.

The exhaust was reattached to the rearmost hanger (again) and I removed the demountable tow bar having smacked my shins on it for about the 78274638th time.



Just a bit of salt on the roads today!