Greetings from Norway

[Hadmund]

My name is Odin I'm a 19 year old from Norway. I've just bought a 1996 Xantia activa 2.0L 16v and I'm looking forward to trying to restore to some of it's former glory.

My only previous experience working with cars is getting the 2cv my dad bought about 10 years ago running again, which has been a blast so far! Not surprisingly the Activa seems to be a whole different beast, it really makes the makes the 2cv feel like a horseless carriage in comparison.

When buying the Activa my plan was to have at least one car running at any given time so that I would always have a daily driver. Sadly this hasn't gone entirely as planned and both cars are currently not looking to hot. I knew the Activa was going to need a bit of work when buying it but it seems like the planned obsolescence timer must have rung the the same week i bought it. There's a knocking in the rear right, the outside trim on the front right door came loose, my indicator switch set fire to itself, there is concerning rust where the springs/hydraulic cylinder connects to the frame and the speedometer goes to zero seemingly according to which direction the wind is blowing on Mars.

After all this I'm still confident I can get it back on the road without taking out a mortgage to get a mechanic to fix it.

-Odin

[GiveMeABreak]

Hi and welcome to the Forum Odin. There's plenty of Xantia, Ex-Xantia and Activa members here, so hopefully you'll have some help along the way.

[Hell Razor5543]

Hi, and to the Forum.

With reference to the strut tops there is a company based in Lithuania who refurbish them in a way that looks to be safer than the original. While I do not have personal experience of them, I remembered the thread;

https://www.frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/ ... hp?t=49089