Citroen c5 1.8

Rowem

I'm looking at a 2008 Citroen c5 exclusive 1.8i.. How reliable are they and do they cost much to maintain?

colm_mcm

New or old model

ednwireland

do you know an indy that understands the suspension? would love one myself but cant bring myself just on that point (everyone i talk to says hydro pneu what)

colm_mcm

A lot of the new model ones have conventional suspension.

Rowem

Old model it has the hydra active suspension

dougie-lampkin

The suspension is no more work than a conventional car, really. Put aside the height adjustment, as that's really a separate system to the actual suspension. Rather than having a spring and a shock on each corner, you have a sphere. It effectively does the same thing as a coilover. Hydractive 3+ (which you have in the mk2) complicates things slightly by having an extra sphere front and rear to soften things up, which are bypassed with the 'sport' button. I have a '03 C5 on the original spheres at 110k miles, and it's still as floaty as the day it left the factory. I don't think the same could be said for most sprung cars. Working on them is no more difficult than conventional suspension, you just need to find an indy with the diag software. There's no special tools required to change the spheres unlike with springs, they just screw off and on. The price of spheres is also roughly in line with replacing springs and shocks. I would say the suspension is actually far simpler and cheaper to maintain than say a Mondeo or Passat of that era, there's no multi-link trickery going on. The downside of this is that it handles like a canal boat when you push it on.

The main mechanical issues I'm aware of are rear trailing arm bushes (my N/S rear is on the way out :mad:), rear calipers and the height sensor linkages for the suspension. Electrics wise you can be very lucky or very unlucky. Mine had the comms unit behind the wheel done before I bought it, we've another Citroen in the house that needed one. Budget for replacement of the driver's interior door handle also

I'm not really familiar with PSA petrols, I've the early 2.0 HDI in mine which has been nothing short of fantastic. 'Row' on here works in a Peugeot dealers in Galway I believe, and really knows his stuff. He might be better able to advise on the engine.