XM

The following sequence should do the trick: wash the car well. Apply a special finish restorer like T-Cut (Automotive Chemicals Ltd, Bury, United Kingdom; phone: +44 161 764 5981) or Farécla G3 (Broadmeads, Ware, Herts., United Kingdom; phone: +44 1920 485548). These special products used to remove oxidation are available from car paint specialists—don't confuse them with the average All-You-Need-Is-Our-Product Magic Color Restorer available at gas stations and advertised by infomercials.

I had nothing but bad experience with Bosch wiper blades, be it revolutionary, twin, aerodynamic, whatever. I stick with Champion and Valeo. But one word of caution: when it starts to streak, never rush to buy a new one. Get some alcohol and kitchen paper towel (it's better than Kleenex). Pour some alcohol on the towel, pinch it between your fingernails and literally scrape the blade edge, but hard. Dirt can stick to it with great force. You do this twice or thrice and lo and behold, you blade will probably return to its new condition immediately.

We've all seen this readout once or twice in the life of our XM. Rectifying the problem is not always simple although possible. Here we deal with another side of the issue: the display itself. While the ABS is actually out of use for any reason, this warning is very intrusive on the dot matrix display, practically preempting it and masking most other information messages like open doors, radio stations and similar.

The dot matrix display to the left of the steering wheel of the Series II is known to develop an annoying fault: missing pixel columns. Being rather unsightly to look at, this might sometimes completely ruin our enjoyment of the all too common ABS OUT OF USE readout. :-)

The XM has a couple of billion electrical parts. It's not always easy to find where a specific item is located.

The factory manual and the circuit diagrams denote every part with a reference number. The listing below uses these numbers. Left and right, as usual, refers to the driving position.

Non-obvious parts in the XM

53 Water temperature control unit - LHD: Remove the glovebox. The unit is housed in a black Bitron box attached to the firewall side of the opening. RHD: The unit is located above the accelerator pedal.

The ECU operates three electrovalves to switch the suspension between hard (default) and soft modes. There are three parts involved in this operation:

Although there is a so-called repair kit for the brake valve, this only contains replacement rubber seals. These seal the valve to the outside but they have nothing to do with the functioning of the valve itself; the sealing of the working elements rely on the very close tolerance between those parts. Once the pistons inside the valve or the cylinder they travel in wear out, the valve starts leaking (this means leakage into its return lines and not to the outside world).

Before you disconnect the battery on a Hydractive I XM, never forget to wait for the system to release the pressure. If you fail to observe this, serious damage can occur the next time the system is started.

When you retrofit items not originally fitted to your car, you often have to tap into wires or make new connections not already present in the electrical circuitry. The best way to do that is by soldering. Although making nice soldered joints requires a little bit of training and experience, it's still far from rocket science. Practice here doesn't mean months or years, much more like five minutes, especially as we're not speaking about soldering delicate semiconductor components on multilayer printed circuit boards but a couple of thick wires...

Avoid silicone based products, they are rather harmful, although it might seem different at first sight.

The long hydrocarbon chains that make up the rubber of the tires are attacked by both ultraviolet rays and ozone. As the molecules break up, the rubber loses its elasticity. The manufacturers use carbon black to protect the rubber against UV rays (this is why we only have black tires). A wax based protector is also used: as the tire rolls on the road, additional wax is forced to the surface and absorbes the harmful effects of ozone.