BX Club Forum

We had some lovely weather a few weekends ago down here in Melbourne. So what better thing to do than spend a warm afternoon changing the spheres on my Series 1...



The ride had become very hard and I replaced front and back spheres with a set of Comfort spheres from the Sphere Shop, and replaced the accumulator too. The resulting ride was amazing - as good if not better than when I bought it ten years ago. There are speed bumps up the hill from my house and I can hit them easily at 40 kmh now. The feeling of floating on air has come back (though I can now tell the right ball joint needs replacing...). The following weekend I also followed instructions on various threads here and cleaned and lubricated the front struts (I used silicone grease with PTFE) and flushed the lower strut volume through the leakback hoses. These jobs made a slight further improivement on ride - the main noticeable difference being the smoothness of the rise of the front on starting, presumably form the silicone lubrication.

Something strange I noticed though - initialy after changing the speres the suspension would stay up for several hours without dropping. Now, a few weeks later, the rear of the car drops farily quickly.... Any thoughts why?

Also, the rear end of the car is dipping on strong braking, and jumps back up when the brake pedal is released. This never happened before I changed the spheres, and I can't work out why just changing the spheres would cause this. Any thoughts on this too?...

I also took the chance of having fine weather and tools out on the drive to repalce the front pads and disks.



Cheers
Mark

Great photos Mark, makes me miss my GT, is that the 16TRS with a GT wing? Looks great!

New spheres on the rear often make the rear stay up for a little longer at first.
It will also drop quicker on warmer days, and with old LHM (when did you last change it?)
Rear dipping under braking could just be very soft rear spheres/air in the system from the change (it will self bleed over time), or maybe they're loosing pressure internally via the brake valve (this could also explain the rear dropping fast).
What is your tick time like? does the rear rise fine when started? If it's fine I wouldn't bother

Interesting thread for your perusal: http://www.bxclub.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6351

Also have a read of the Fast ticking and Fast sinking of the rear end sections here:
http://citroen.tramontana.co.hu/hu/node/80
You could confirm a large internal return leak from the brake valve by taking off pipe 4 in the diagram.

Cheers,
Chris in Brisbane

frog wrote: Rear dipping under braking could just be very soft rear spheres/air in the system from the change (it will self bleed over time), or maybe they're Cheers,
Chris in Brisbane

Don't think they will self bleed out of the brake lines as they are a blind alley and will need the brake bleed nipples opening to release the trapped gas.

Correct, brakes need to be manually bled.