This week I ar mostly been

[Vanny]

This week I ar mostly been . . .

Making a sphere tester. Mostly with the guidance of CitroJim from such glamorous locations as FCF and the XM Forum.



Obviously still in prototype guise, and not without some initial problems (order your gauge in bars not psi you fool). Pretty easy to knock together. Just need to make it a decent frame and maybe a box to like in!


You can read more about what is needed to knock up your own here;

Sphere Tester - BXProject

[jeremyC5]

That looks like a REALLY useful bit of kit -
- But what could it be used for, apart from testing spheres !

Having a pump and a sphere charged up to a very high pressure...

What sort of pressure do they achieve ?

....
OK, I've read your article now, so, up to 1000psi and beyond !
- Paint spraying ?
- Firing things at the local cats which shit in my garden ?

[Thread Bear]

As the LHM clears and mystic chants are raised, like 'work you bugger', it will tell of future deeds and adventures.

[Mothman]

I reccon its also a component part of a Flux capacitor!

Andy
[great bit of kit though and very useful]

[Vanny]

Well I do have a 12v winch motor to go with it, so potentially in could be part of a portable hydraulic power pack perhaps to lift a dead hydraulic Citroen or perhaps drive a hydraulic trailer. There's no reason it can't be used to test hydraulic items like a strut and height corrector

[electrokid]

Doesn't the C5 use an electric LHM pump ? I once found some transducers which were in the right ball-park to measure the pressure with a 1 to 6 volt output - could be useful to automate part of the process or just act as a cut-off if the pressure gets too high.

IIRC spheres are compressed to around 55 bar - around 800 psi but the pump can go much higher - 2,400 psi perhaps.

[sdelasal]

The guy who tests my spheres, and re-charges them, uses a similar piece of kit but it uses a bottle jack as the pump.

[Thread Bear]

Doing hydroelastic BMC units with anything other than the BMC pump was always a trip into danger. Yet in all the years clearing out places I never got one.

[Vanny]

The genuine Citroen tool is a re worked bottle Jack, it's more compact then this setup, but not as easy to make as it requires some machining. From reading up on the subject it's the method Japanese owners seem to go for. I like this as it's super easy to make, and bar suitable taps, doesn't require any expensive machinery like a lathe.

[citronut]

....
OK, I've read your article now, so, up to 1000psi and beyond !
- Paint spraying ?

what sort of paint are you going to spray at 1000psi and beyond

- Firing things at the local cats which shit in my garden ?

they'v got to SHAT somewhere

regards malcolm

[sdelasal]

"they'v got to SHAT somewhere" - agreed, but what's wrong with "the afterlife" Ours is a Dog + wildlife household! The dog keeps the cats out & the birds thrive.

[Thread Bear]

Dog attacks wildlife, this is now a Wrong. Can be dog is destroyed for it. Cat attacks wildlife. This is OK, because it is a cat. Why? Because dogs are trainable and bidable, cats are parasites but have sense enough to work a few humans into feeding, looking after them and having the shit they did not hide in the new sown lettuce patch in the house under storage. Answer, get girt bird that attacks cat, like a eagle dressed as a budgie. The dog can be trained to go and hide the bits left over. Case Solved!

[MULLEY]

Doesn't the C5 use an electric LHM pump ?

Yes, it's an electric pump, but no LHM

[electrokid]

Also after posting that I had a look for C5 hydraulic pumps on eBay - they are around the £100 mark secondhand and look as though they are under the dreaded software control - so maybe neither a cheap nor easy route to take for use in a sphere test rig, though might still be viable to use in a trailer.

What kind of blood is used in the C5 ?

[JayW]

LHS.