63 Electro-valve and hard ride Suspension
Citroen XM Internet Reference Version 1.0 91
3/3/99
63 Electro-valve and hard ride
Hello my friends
For some time now I have been trying to discover why my Mk1 XM suspension rides hard.
I have fixed the earth problem in the front wings.
I have checked the spheres; as I thought two had lost internal pressure because the fluid level in the oil
tank fell so as the warning lamp flashed. This turned out to be a small leak in a hose.
Now I have a theory that I would like to share with you... sorry if you have heard it before :-)
When I have driven the car with the rear door open (as when carrying some timber the other day) I found
that the suspension was lovely and soft and quite comfortable. I switched from auto to sport and the ride
went hard..OK. Then I tried switching back to Auto and the ride remained hard..OK. Next I switched off
the engine and restarted with Auto selected and the ride was soft again.
So I got to thinking...If when the door is open, the car switches the electro-valve to a position to
’equalise’ the hydraulics, (apparently to avoid sudden drops in the body when you start engine with extra
weight in car) then leaving the door open and starting the engine makes the computer keep the
electro-valve in soft position.
So to keep the ride soft but still have sport over-ride so to speak, all I need to do is cut the wire going to
the computer from the rear door boot lamp switch.
Have any others come up with this solution and tried it out ?
The correct solution I suspect is to find out why the computer selects hard all the time... I think this is
most probably one of the sensors for steering, brake, body position etc. that has gone faulty. Difficult to
find.
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Your on the right track,
all of the doors including the tailgate are conected to the suspention ecu,so that it can antisipate a
load,so check your door switches, also check for a dry solder joint on the electro valve resistor,
this can be found by removing the ecu cover, it’s the big green one that stands up from the pcb.
one more thing to check is the small inline filters, one next to the safty valve and one inline from the main
accumulator.
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Hang on didn’t this guy say that the ride was softer with the door open. I thought the idea was that the
suspension hardened up with doors open so as to reduce movement when people get in and out.
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