Ive noticed in a few threads people making mention of previously owned Peugeots and Citroens using the venerable XUD diesel engine.

I thought it was time they had a wee thread of their own.

My parents had several 205s, a 305 and a 405 and later 106s.
I learned to drive in my dads 305 estate and it was my first 'solo' motoring.
After my minis I needed a sensible economical family car and moved on to a series of 3 405 diesels, non turbo saloon, turbo saloon and turbo estate.
The pictured one was my favourite of all and a car I wish I still had, a last of line 1996 GLX DTurbo in Diablo red with the 306 alloys as standard and a full black leather interior, it was a lovely car to drive and seemed much quicker than its 92 turbo charged horses actually had any right to

If I turn up pictures of the others I'll add them too.

So what did you all have? Landrover - turning owners into mechanics since 1948

2014 Orkney grey Freelander SD4 GS.
2004 Zambezi silver Discovery 2 Td5 (Gone)
1963 Surf blue Morris Mini Minor Super de Luxe (my little toy)

I had a few Citroen Xantia turbo diesels and couldn't fault them , one covered 235k and ran like a dream , replaced by a Toyota Avensis (boring).

Mark 2009 FL2 TD4 SE (Sadly gone)
2007 FL2 TD4 GS (The wifes , gone after 8 great years)
2012 FL2 SD4 SPORT LE(Gone and missing it)
2015 DISCOVERY SPORT 2.2SD4 HSE (Now gone)
2014 Ford Bmax 1.0 ecoboost ( Gone but what next )
2014 Ford Focus 2.0tdci Zetec S (Gone,but what a car)
2020 Ford Fiesta ActiveX 1.0 Ecoboost
2024 Skoda Kodiaq 1.5 Tsi SEL

Two 405 1.9 non turbo diesel estates.

The first, a brand new “Quasar” special edition, also in my favourite Diablo Red and chosen by the company. 67 BHP, used in a hilly county, often carrying heavy equipment; it was a great estate conversion, with a long wheelbase, huge rear doors, horizontal rear shocks, an upright tailgate and plenty of glass. Unfortunately, for someone doing 35,000 miles a year, it was dog slow, noisy and had a very long arm / short leg driving position. It was catastrophically written off at only 7 days and 900 miles old! I was in the passenger seat that day and it rolled at only about 20 mph, crushing one side of the roof down to door mirror level. I’ve no idea how the driver ever got out alive, certainly without cutting gear!

It was replaced immediately with a new blue one, otherwise identical to the red one. I ran that for over a year until I managed to persuade them to provide a new 406 estate 2.1TD . Now that was a nice car

Last edited by Tigger on 13th Jan 2020 8:39 pm. Edited 1 time in total

I stopped playing with XUDs after I did my 7th head gasket, used to provide drinking money at Uni. I did many of them in car parks, they became so easy.

Stuck an XUD9te into a BX once, well twice,, could actually get 70mpg from it if you went everywhere at 55mph.

XUD was so simple, and so much of that simplicity lives on in the direct injection children it fostered.

Does anyone remember the squeegee, under-bonnet, rubber bulb that you could use the prime the diesel?

bxzx16v wrote:

I had a few Citroen Xantia turbo diesels and couldn't fault them , one covered 235k and ran like a dream , replaced by a Toyota Avensis (boring).

Mark

The XM was the nicest non LR car I’ve ever owned, but I don’t know if the 2.5 diesel was an XUD unit. Was it?

I put 160k on a BX TZDT estate which went like a stabbed rat and rarely needed fuel.

Fully loaded it (including the passenger footwells) with huge rocks for my rockery and drove it from near Scrabster to Manchester and still had about half a tank of diesel left.

It got serviced and had fuel put in it and apart from tyres didn’t get touched.

Suspension was great off road, compared to other 2wd estates it went all sorts of places. Lost a front tyre in lane three on the m25 at night doing a fair clip and to be honest only the noise gave it away.

Eventually It went back to the lease company to be replaced by a V6 mondeo , I was sad to see the BX go and I guess it became a taxi for a few years more before probably the inevitable rust took it.

I have had two Citroen ZX 1.9 in the past.

First was a non-turbo 1.9, and then later I had a ZX Aura 1.9 Turbo.

The non-turbo was quite noisy and slow compared to turbo version.

The ZX Aura 1.9 turbo was a great car. It was fast and quiet.

I only sold the ZX as I changed up to an Audi A4 Tdi

Tigger wrote:

The XM was the nicest non LR car I’ve ever owned, but I don’t know if the 2.5 diesel was an XUD unit. Was it?

306 DTurbo. Bought for £400, perely to run on veg oil.

Had a 300 mile commute between Mon-Fri

Down to the cash and carry, 45L of pure veg oil into the tank, over to the petrol station, and £5 of petrol, the rest topped up with waste diesel, drained out of old fuel filters/contaminated fuel etc

The wife killed it eventually, and sold it for £200, but saved me around £1,000 in diesel in the time I had it

Bobupndown wrote:

The 2.1 was an XUD, the 2.5 was named DK5 (even though it only had 4 cylinders!) with 127 hp. It was also used in Citroen Relay / Peugeot boxer vans.

Thanks

An odd fact was that they had to keep selling the 2.1 as an auto for RHD, at it was impossible to fit the auto gearbox to a 2.5 in a RHD car. It’s not surprising, there was no spare space under the bonnet in the 2.5.

Despite it coming from the van, it was a lot smoother and quieter than the 6 cylinder engine in a friend’s BMW 525d at the time. Very odd!

Had a ZX estate non turbo, seemed to do 55 mpg no matter where or how you drove it, overtaking was a gamble, you hung back waiting for an overtaking point, normally after a bend, build up speed through the bend and hope the road was clear, if not hit the brakes. Had a few Xantia's as hire cars, never quite got on with them, there was always a feeling as you went into a bend that the car was thinking whether or not it would turn in. my PC is slightly to the right of Genghis
2012 HSE SD4 In Orkney Grey now gone, best car ever.

I had 3 (yes 3) Citroen XMs all company cars but all petrol turbos. Superb executive cruiser vehicles with active hydraulic suspension that tightened up on cornering, way ahead of their time. The suspension was so good that BBC had an XM Estate with a camera mounted on top for following the horses at horse races.
The problem was that they were trying to take on the BMW market and the Citroen dealerships were not used to dealing with "executive" cars. I took mine to the dealer in Puddletown outside Dorchester and they had never seen one before so they had to send one of their guys off on a course before they would touch it.
Citroen used to be the real innovators (front wheel drive before the war, directional headlamps, active suspension, clutchless manual gearboxes etc) then Peugeot took them over and now they just make boring cars. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
Now Discovery Sport P250 MHEV SE

Wot dorsetfreelander said.

I had a number of Citroens, mostly BXs and Xantias, and they would see off a lot of "performance" cars, not on power and performance but on roadholding and the ability to get round bends and corners as if they were on rails. Many a time I have seen boy racer types fall off the road and into a ditch while trying to beat the Citroen along twisty country roads. It always put a smile on my face when I heard the slithering of tyres followed by the dull thud of car hitting hedge.

J