This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Samuel Kvarnbrink. Original Post: Serving the Citroën Feed Title: monkey in the middle Feed URL: http://www.contegix.com/rss/feed.xml Feed Description: Ruby, Rails, Macs, PostgreSQL and life in general. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Samuel Kvarnbrink Latest Posts From monkey in the middle

Now I've finally made my debut as a "real" hobbyist Citroën mechanic! Yesterday I removed most of the gas spheres on my Citroën, and took them to our local Citroën oracle for a much-needed refill. The operation took about six hours and went surprisingly painlessly - even for a newbie like me! In case someone else with a hydropneumatic Citroën reads this, I've summed up my experiences below:

Why and when

A hydropneumatic Citroën is equipped with anything between four and ten nitrogen-filled spheres, providing suspension and pressure buffers for the brake and power steering systems. The spheres gradually lose pressure and should be refilled or replaced with five-year intervals (roughly). Common symptoms may include:

• Less comfortable suspension
• The rear end dives while braking for a longer while (for instance at red light).
• The front end dives during heavy use of power steering.
• Clicking sounds from the engine compartment

My experiences

• It can be very hard to get a sphere to come off. The easiest, and cheapest, way is to use a sledge hammer and a chisel.
• Each sphere connection is sealed with a gasket, that usually falls out when the sphere is removed. Whatever you do, don't lose any of them.
• The main accumulator sphere is the most important one, as it acts as a pressure buffer for the entire system. It is situated in the engine compartment, but can be bit tricky to remove.
• The rear suspension spheres have to be loosened with the system fully pressurized (i.e. with the suspension set to the highest level) - otherwise the suspension cylinder will be severely damaged! Naturally, they shouldn't be removed fully, just loosened slightly.
• On an XM, the anti-sink and rear hydractive spheres are almost impossible to find and even harder to remove. You basically need to disassemble the entire exhaust system to remove the hydractive sphere, so save that to some other time if you're in a hurry.
• Don't forget to tighten the depressurization bolt when you're finished - it took me quite some time (not to mention the panic!) to realize why the XM warned about general hydraulics-related disasters.
• When finished, pressurize and depressurize the suspension system three or four times by using the level adjustment lever.

For anyone interested in seeing more crappy cell phone pictures of the operation, I've created a short slideshow on Flickr. Enjoy :)