Has anyone suffered a sudden loss of their spare wheel for under the car into the path of a vehicle travelling behind? I did last night,there was a loud bang followed by another as the Passat behind me ran over my spare wheel. Extensive damage to the Passat. The long metal threaded bolt in the rear of my Citroen Xantia HDI SX estate was still intact and the threads undamaged ?
The screw hook on part to the carrier was missing and was not found at the scene. How could this have happened? I regularly check the spare and ensure it is refitted correctly in the carrier and wound up tight so as to stop any movement when you travel on bumpy roads. The tyre was fully inflated. The new screw hook part purchased from Citroen is twice as thick and twice as heavy in metal terms as the orignal.The has been no recall on the fault as far as I know. Has anyone encountered a similar problem? Regards, Mke.
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Mike,
A little worrying this. Never heard of it but some thoughts......
Had a look at the arrangement on the 1996 Xantia estate here today. Has yours the extra safety catch...it should have. This is to the offside of the main screw catch and will stop the carrier after it drops about 1" from the stowed position.
I did notice on this one the safety catch was a little stiff and the wheel carrier frame bent such that the catch was held out of position. This would mean further seizing due to water etc would render it useless.
Bending the frame to properly engage the catcgh and oiling it was the answer.
If you didn't find the threaded hook, and the bolt threads were otherwise undamaged, the thing must have split and fallen off.
How old is your car?
David
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my father lost his xantia spare wheel but that was due to some toerag thief
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Hi, David, the car is a 1999 HDI SX estate bought 7 months old with 14,000 miles on the clock from a Citroen main dealer. It has had two services one with the supplying dealer and one at 24,000 at my local citroen dealer. A towbar was fitted within a week of purchase again by a local towbar fitting firm. I check the car on a regular basis and I have never seen this so called second catch. I am wondering if it was removed for the tow bar fitting and never replaced? I always check the spare wheel out of the carrier and ensure it is refitted correctly.Today I continued a search of the accident area looking for the female hook part, no luck. I now have a heavy gauge steel chain fitted and padlocked to the towbar. Love the car, hate this mystery.
Regards, Mike.
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Mike,
You may be onto something with the towbar issue. Just lookled at a '94 hatchback here today and that has the safety catch. I wonder if they all have it and it was indeed removed when the towbar was fitted.
This is quite likely as I see the catch only just clears the towbar on this hatchback. Also I have know many BX towbar fittments that make it hard to latch the wheel carrier.
The safety catch is a hook about 100cm long that is sprung towards the wheel carrier just to one side of the screw hook. It is also a help when putting the spare wheel back as you can lift it to the position where the safety hook catches and then do up the main hook with ease.
I would be looking at another estate the same age as yours to see if it has a safety hook, then looking carefully for signs where one used to be on yours.
Next step some legal involvement with the towbar people?
Actually you may get further if you see them informally first about the wheel being akward to stow without the second hook and "might they have removed it"?
David
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Hi, David,
thanks for the info. Car currently in the garage for repairs. The offside rear chassis box section where there is a drop down plate to which the tow bar fits has pulled away leaving a hole????.
The alignment checks show the car is out slightly at the back. Further work being carried out to check for more hidden damage. Hopefully repairable. Wll explore the tow bar route but doubt any admissions. May never have been fitted from new. However car serviced twice by main dealer and they never reported any problems (missing part). I suspect because it was new they did not remove it.????. When the spare escaped it did so in normal suspension mode and would have had difficulty in getting out from under neath with out causing damage. Oh well onwards and upwards, a learning curve I think.(expensive one)
Regards, Mike.
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And I always thought that the absence of a PSA spare wheel was due to thieving. Was once made a present of a bit of bin-bag from under a Peugeot 206 which caught in the wiper.
I check the spare wheel carriers on our fleet every time I change the air-filter, seems about the right interval.
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