My new XM

Lost the ability to edit a post - if I select Edit an empty box opens, as for a new post.

Was going to add an item to the list of issues to be resolved - rear parcel shelf broken into 2 halves, and the glue holding the boot mat style fabric cover onto it has completely given up - just sitting over the fibreglass shell.

OTH, the boot mat itself is pristine! No sign that there has ever been a water leak in there!

Mike told me that for a while he had an XM wreck, from which he was able to get some parts for this car. However he said he made over $2,000 selling parts to other people, who 'heard about it on the grapevine'. He gave the rest away to a friend, still with motor and transmission :rolleyes:. Would have been a good buy if he'd thrown that in with this car instead!

Cheers

Alec
 
Does anyone know where I could get a good XM workshop manual? I'm prepared to pay, but I really want a manual that covers the ES9J4 motor, and the 4HP20 transmission.

Cheers

Alec
 
No biggie, throw some newies on. Shouldn't be expensive on fleabay. It might be worth checking the big screw in ball joints.



I remember fixing this on mine.... Maybe a quick aussiefrogs search will find the answer. As I don't remember much.


.....

seeya,
Shane L.


Shane do you know if the looong thread you created about your green diesel XM survived the GoDaddy crash? If it did I'll certainly refer to it, but I'm guessing not, since that saga seems to have been prior to 2011...

Cheers

Alec
 
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The Russek manual is useful, but does not cover the ES9J4 engine.

Pug info would be useful for the ES9J4, but remove-and-replace info is XM-specific. I may have some files on a hard drive somewhere, will check.

Roger
 
Does anyone know anything about these ones? They are all huge (over 18 GB), and run under VMWare.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Download...772582?hash=item4671039ba6:g:~a4AAOSwvD5aGrS~
(19 GB!)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Service-...m=163136990198&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851
(27 GB!!!!)

https://www.emanualonline.com/Cars/...MfMdj1zKTGFkvoHVdj5khKtw4F95jH7BoCW9AQAvD_BwE
(18.6 GB!)

The two eBay ones have wording like the following:



"This factory manual has no connection with Haynes, Autodata, Car manufacturer or other products. The content of this item is our production and the information are gathered by us due to our experience or thanks to information distributed freely and globally under the terms of the GNU Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and interpreted by us.

"We do not violate any copyrights. We are not using anyone's intellectual property nor their publications or documents. We own copyrights to this item and we reserve the rights to this workshop manual. It doesn’t not violate any eBay’s policy, VERO, car manufacturer rights’ or copyrights. All logos or trademarks, brands (if used) in this listing are property of their respective owners (all of them are used in this listing for identification purposes only - use of these names, logos and brands does not imply endorsement).

"This listing complies with all eBay listing rules and copyright regulations and the full description of the listing has been created by us."

but also claim:

"This is the Official Factory Workshop Manual, exactly the same as used by the car manufacturer to build your car and exactly the same as is used by the car manufacturers and services when they are fixing your car! Follow official repair and diagnostic procedures & step by step!


Are these just "backups" of the Citroen factory manual(s)?

Cheers

Alec


 
I cannot advise about those, but I have the factory paper manual for XM series 1, and it consists of 5 ring binders, each of them about 2 inches thick. So there is a lot of documentation!

Roger
 
Someone may have scanned the pages from the printed manuals. However, as that would be a great deal of effort and these vendors are usually just selling someone else's work, it is more likely they are pinching manuals from one of Citroen's doc backup CDs intended for offline use with filtering only by model and basic specification.

You can get parts info for your VIN at no cost via Citroen Service. If you need to, you can also subscribe to that service to obtain repair info. You can print them to pdf for later use.

Probably the most useful thing for you to obtain is the relevant "Mechanic's Handbook" for 1999 or 2000 as it contains almost all the info you will need for servicing. There are some 4HP20 documents floating around also.
 
Welcome to the XM club..
You need to get onto the UK XM forum. There is so much information on there, it'll make your head spin.
For instance, that plastic lens in the headlight, can be restored using a chemical & UV light. Do not remove it entirely, as it's job is to focus & aim the beam.
I've tried hid & led (both quality items, not cheapies) & the beam spread & cut off were rubbish. Like what was mentioned earlier, upgraded halogen globes are the go. Having said that, they are only fair at best.

I could go on forever, just having dragged a series 1 back from the dead, feel free to pm me if you need help.

But.. Get onto that uk forum.. So much information there, and very intelligent, respectful people.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using aussiefrogs mobile app
 
Try unplugging the rear hydractive solenoid. This will lock out soft mode. It will be nowhere near as soft!

All right, all right, I heard you the first time!

1. Can hear the rear solenoid but can't see it or touch it. Unlike on a Xantia, it's tucked away above a heat shield, which in turn is above the sideways muffler (this car has the same complicated exhaust as the PRV-engined 605s and XMs).

2. Front one is accessible from underneath (behind the transmission). As I expected, unplugging made no difference (apart from stopping the whistling). The front may be a little stiffer, while the rear is just as wildly soft, so if anything the imbalance between front and rear may be worse! This confirms my theory that the rear hydractive sphere (and possibly the front as well) is stuffed.

Whatever the spheres are that I put on, I doubt that they are suspension spheres. Time will tell.

Cheers

Alec

Note to self - don't get sucked into doing things that you know won't work just because Shane tells you to (esp. when it's obvious he hasn't really read the posts).

As expected, unplugging a solenoid (thus preventing hydractive system from working) made no difference at rear. I expected this because:
a) I already had evidence that rear hydractive sphere is flat
b) current spheres I have fitted at the rear seem to have virtually no damping - bouncing so freely that it was unlikely that hydractive system changes would be noticed.

The front however was a different story...

Took the car for a drive today - just because I could (having been away more than a week). Rear was still like a water bed - just out of control (I drove very slowly and carefully) - but front was rock hard - worst suspension I've ever experienced! The combination of marshmallow sloppiness at rear with no movement at all from the front has to be experienced to be believed!! of After a few km I remembered that the hydractive solenoid was still unplugged, so the suspension was permanently in hard mode ... :rolleyes: . Thanks Shane ...:(

Testing it at home, in hard mode there was absolutely no front suspension movement - doesn't this suggest that the front spheres are flat (or ruptured)?

Now another surprising thing - after reconnecting the solenoid, I took the car for a short drive, and was confident that I once again had front suspension. Back at home, with the solenoid singing, I was able to rock the car (just pushing down on an open driver's door). The front had suspension again. However before the solenoid even switched off (which it should do when the car is not running), the front had switched back into hard mode. I have tried leaving the car and then sneaking up on it again later - nothing - no suspension movement - even though there is a definite click, followed by the high-pitched whining noise when I open a door.

It has now occurred to me that this might explain the terrible road shock - including steering wheel shudder - that I was feeling on the way home when driving on poor road surfaces.

Can anyone explain what's happening? Can a hydractive valve be faulty even when you can hear it singing (whining), failing to switch out of Hard mode when it should?

Cheers

Alec
 
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Note to self - don't get sucked into doing things that you know won't work just because Shane tells you to (esp. when it's obvious he hasn't really read the posts).

As expected, unplugging a solenoid (thus preventing hydractive system from working) made no difference at rear. I expected this because:
a) I already had evidence that rear hydractive sphere is flat
b) current spheres I have fitted at the rear seem to have virtually no damping - bouncing so freely that it was unlikely that hydractive system changes would be noticed.

The front however was a different story...

Took the car for a drive today - just because I could (having been away more than a week). Rear was still like a water bed - just out of control (I drove very slowly and carefully) - but front was rock hard - worst suspension I've ever experienced! The combination of marshmallow sloppiness at rear with no movement at all from the front has to be experienced to be believed!! of After a few km I remembered that the hydractive solenoid was still unplugged, so the suspension was permanently in hard mode ... :rolleyes: . Thanks Shane ...:(

Testing it at home, in hard mode there was absolutely no front suspension movement - doesn't this suggest that the front spheres are flat (or ruptured)?

Now another surprising thing - after reconnecting the solenoid, I took the car for a short drive, and was confident that I once again had front suspension. Back at home, with the solenoid singing, I was able to rock the car (just pushing down on an open driver's door). The front had suspension again. However before the solenoid even switched off (which it should do when the car is not running), the front had switched back into hard mode. I have tried leaving the car and then sneaking up on it again later - nothing - no suspension movement - even though there is a definite click, followed by the high-pitched whining noise when I open a door.

It has now occurred to me that this might explain the terrible road shock - including steering wheel shudder - that I was feeling on the way home when driving on poor road surfaces.

Can anyone explain what's happening? Can a hydractive valve be faulty even when you can hear it singing (whining), failing to switch out of Hard mode when it should?

Cheers

Alec

I thought you said the hydractive worked on the car :confused: XM's drive really nicely with dead hydractive spheres and CX main sphere (guess how I know :) ).
 
I thought you said the hydractive worked on the car :confused: XM's drive really nicely with dead hydractive spheres and CX main sphere (guess how I know :) ).

That's the point - I'm finding that it works sometimes. Don't yet know what causes that - could it be computer, or is it more likely to be physical - a valve sticking, dirt in fine valves etc...
 
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Hi Alec,

I'm so pleased that someone is making the journey in an XM. They are a great car. Mine was a series one but I will make some comments anyway.

1. Shudder under brakes. Disk rotors look very worn.
They are a big car and one crash stop warped my front discs. They were machined and were much better

2. Cruise control not working.
This can be a contact on the brake pedal. Remove the rubber pad, unbolt the little black box on the front of the pedal, pop it open and clean the contacts.

3. T-bar hand-grip padded outer layer cracked and pieces missing.
Series one were same as BX and I replaced mine, but this was the ZF box.


6. Spheres - some issues have arisen already.
The car should not be uncomfortable in sports mode. This will only happen if the suspension spheres are low pressure/blown/wrong spec and the centre (hydactive sphere) has to take up the slack. I found that with all the spheres correct (right type and pressure) the only difference between sport and normal mode was the amount of body roll.

7. Oily underneath, although not dripping. Will need a good clean before trying to identify leak(s). BTW nobody told me I was going to need a hoist - seems that a number of things are more accessible from below.
I spent a lot of time under an XM using some very solid and well placed jack stands and a garage creeper. My oil leak was the rear main seal which dried out when I didn't drive it enough. You must drive it more often.

By the way, removing the plastic lens in the headlights is a good move.

Enjoy the journey. There is no better looking car and they just love the long open road.

Peter
 
Thanks Peter for your suggestions and support! All the more appreciated after talking to Martin from EAI, who told me he sold his XM because it spent so much time off the road waiting for expensive parts to arrive from Europe!

Cheers

Alec
 
News Flash:

If you open the front door of an XM the suspension goes to hard mode. This is, I believe, to prevent it sinking as you load it with people and luggage. The recommended way to trick them into soft mode for removing the centre spheres is to do it with door closed, driver's window down and LEAVE it that way.

CC not working COULD be the physical vacuum connection to the CC on the throttle body. I know yours is a later V6 but on the 12V V6 there was a nylon bush doovy that was the physical connection to the vacuum rod and the throttle. Ours broke on a trip Wollongong - Cooma - Wollongong and I had to drive most of it with no CC - bugger. Of course the part required was not listed, but I took the mangled remnants to a hardware store, asked an old bloke for a bush thingy and he came up with a pair of aluminium window rollers. I deftly made the ridge in the roller deeper so it would fit the place it had to go on the throttle, removed the end of the link rod, placed the modified roller over it and fitted it again. Worked perfectly for the rest of the years I had it.
 
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