How to Pump-Up Hydrolastic and Hydragas Suspension 

Hi TC, it's so refreshing to find a RU-vid channel that's not stuffed with loud music and flashy graphics. Please don't be tempted to go down that route because they're just not necessary.

this was my job on the track when I worked at Rover in Longbridge. Cab 1 track 2. Fortnight about two weeks nights, two weeks days shift. And my job was working underneath the track pumping up the hydro gas suspension. At its height we were building 50 cars per hour. Takes me back years. Then I moved into the sick, relief position covering any track workers who phoned in sick. One day I’d be, fitting door locks, the next dashboards, then it would be any job. Fitting the seats, steering racks, sun visors you name it I did every job on the mini and metro track as both models were built on the same track. My claim to fame, I fitted the steering rack to last production Mini which was a metallic blue Cooper if my memory serves me well???. Not long after I took my voluntary redundancy of £6,500 when BMW pulled out. Looking back it was a wise choice on my behalf, because 5 years later Rover went bust. As a Longbridge local it was a massive blow to the local area. Drive through Longbridge now you wouldn’t even know a car factory used to be there. It’s a massive retail park now, called Longbridge retail park. Although as you drive in there’s one street sign that Says “the track was your manager” which was true. You started when the track started and finished when it stopped, unless your shift counterpart would take over 5 mins before your shift ended so you didn’t have to queue at the clock out machine, and you’d repay the favour when you came in for your shift. My Rover employee number was 151890. Still remember my number to this day🙂

My late father built his own pump set up for my brothers early mg metro….worked a treat. Dad was a very clever engineer/fabricator and welder.

Being used to Citroen hydropneumatic suspension and it's maintenance, it's nice to learn how differently the British did it. Excellent presentation as always!

Just about to order one of these units from the UK to pump up my 3 litre. Wanted to check this video again before I order. Gives me confidence to do the job myself. Thanks again Ed. Explained very well.

I learned to drive and passed my test in a Rover Metro in 1993. Great to see your enthusiasm for a brilliant little car to drive. 👍

Hi Ed Notwithstanding the fact I’ve never owned a car with Hydragas suspension, I found this strangely fascinating on a stormy Sunday afternoon! Well done……. Mike

Thanks very much for this great video. I've pumped up my parents' MGF with the same pump after watching your video. Done in less than 30 minutes.

I remember having the dealer do this and the improvement in ride was amazing.

I’ve owned both a hydrolastic and a hyrdogas Maxi. I had a local garage that I used to get to pump mine up. I had a hyrdogas unit blow on me - that was fun. In 1988 when it went used units were rare as hens teeth but I got one and changed it in the street. Drove it round on the bump stops for refilling. Typical BL - when they switched suspension types the boot floor pressing remained the same but the valve was about 3/4” further forward so the pump didn’t fit without bending the floor up a bit. Great system.

Really god description of how this all works. Very good stuff, as usual. Thanks Ed.

Appreciate the video, very helpful- Restoring a 41yr old Mk1 Metro that looks pretty cool sat on the floor. Unlikely to get over a speed bump though! Read all the documentation, got all the kit, however it's good to see it in practice. I have the same kit as you and hydrolastic from Morris. Plan to do it today 🙌🏼

My 1989 Austin Metro had to order the same pump and hydro fluid to get my new displacer pumped up and worked a treat, the old displacer burst few months ago but took it out and put the new one in

I watched this being done over on Everything Retro and Beryl the Maxi. Very cool to watch Ed.

Excellent presentation and explanation! The father-daughter team that are hydrogas suspension specialists have been featured on other channels. The nice part is that they come to you! So hopefully you will save up, Melvin deserves the best!

Excellent explanation and how-to video! I wasn't entirely sure how hydragas really worked. Thanks Ed.

Another great video . Well explained . Great piece of kit you’ve got . I remember when I was an apprentice in the 90s if we had an BL cars we used to borrow the old pump that looked about 50 years old back then 😂

I bought a Liquid Levers Hydravac Suspension Pump over 30 years ago and has worked well all be it very expensive. I also have an original BMC garage unit in need of some work! The liquid levers are good at evacuating the system as you can end up with air and fluid if you just pump up all be it you can try and release a bit but can still end up with some air. Great video Ed and will give people confidence to do it themselves, well done.

Love this little car mate, absolutely spotless, very informative video

Great presentation skills. Your videos are exceptionally well made and narrated. Thanks most interesting.

you could bleed your filler hose in the reservoir before you connect to your system..but, i really love that system . I've never seen one in the US! I'd love to use it, my ebikes are a combination of air, fluid and spring suspensions and it's so configurable!! lovit!!

Great video Ed. Ive recently bought the same pump for my Allegro!

Brilliantly explained, thank you. I have now purchased a similar pump to raise my Rover Metro. Cheers

Thanks for the excellent explanation, I have the same pump, and trying to use it on my MGF soon. Well done!

Magic video thanks Ed. Right on point for me as I have recently purchased an Austin 3 litre. Rare car in Australia as they were not sold here.

Extremely useful to watch mate.

A good informative vlog 👍👍

Great video and really interesting. I wish this system was still used on newer cars, why not it was totally brilliant.

Really well done/informative video Ed, thanks:) Cheers to you and Melvin from the "Colonies".

Great instructional video Ed, well done

Really interesting as always, Ed. A neat video indeed. I doubt I will ever own a car with Hydrogas suspension, but nice to know about the system anyway.

Well done Ed. You learn something new every day. :-)

Nice one young un. Very well explained. Have you ever contemplated teaching at the Tech?

Published by this channel on my birthday :)

Ed: An excellent description, explanation, and demonstration! You could be a successful teacher/trainer/instructor if you didn't perhaps have other occupational ambitions. And even though you admit to a bit of off-camera profanity (something that doesn't bother this profaner at all) I appreciate your on-camera 'clean' style. It makes a nice change from today's smart-arse, expletive-laden norm and shows what a true gentleman you are - without being a stuffy prick. Happy motoring in your elevated Melvin! PS: You mentioned how water in the system will ruin it. Anecdote: In the early '70s I had a rather battered Citroën DS19, and took it on a long drive (about twice the north-south length of Great Britain) into Australia's interior - about as far as it was possible to get from a Citroën mechanic. A suspension line failed and I consequently lost suspension, brakes, steering, and gear-changing assistance. After a 150-mile tow, I managed to get the broken line patched, if roughly, only to learn there was no way of obtaining more fluid. (Stupid here hadn't considered the need to carry some spare for emergency use, D'oh!) There wasn't even sufficient alternative such as brake fluid, so in desperation we replenished with, um, water! You can image what a fatal mess that made, but at least it got us home (just) before everything seized up. Given the small purchase price of the already-battered machine, I wrote it off - sold it to a Citroën spares dealer. Lesson learned - and my missus declared "No more funny French cars!"

Fabulous educational video .

Fascinating. You made that look much easier than it sounds. May have been advantageous to wear gloves and put something to cover the floor but you did well at keeping the fluid in the system anyway. As you rightly pointed out it's much better to have correctly functional suspension than a low riding car.

Hi, great video, I have an actual hydro mastic pump I bought many’s ago for my Austin maxi and princesses. Before that I own Austin ambassador it was done at the time by Austin rover garage- dealership abs they riches the car on each side when they pumped bye suspension up to stabilise and Check the ride height . Regards mark

I see in your future a larger garage with a lift to make your videos in. Another great watch. Thanks for your time and work and posting.......

Another great video. It’s nice to see younger enthusiasts keeping interesting cars going. I have a ‘95 Cadillac Fleetwood and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. There’s something very satisfying about having a unique car as I’m sure you know. Melvin will be around for many years to come. Take care.

I will get one of those pumps for my old mini. Nice one!

Great video. Very useful as I own a hydragas car and didn't realise it was so relatively simple to do this. Might have to invest in a pump rather than pay the local mechanic.

Hi Ed, I follow a channel called Old Classic Car. He has just done a vlog on French Cars. I am with you, I think the most beautiful classic car is the Citroen DS (in that lovely deep royal blue colour). If I could afford one and had the space that would be my classic car of choice. Also like the Citroen H van. Would make a fantastic classic camper.

I never knew I needed this.

Great video, very informative 😎👍🏽 You should be on TV mate presenting your own show as its very professionally done 👍🏽 Love the VW Golf top too...I have spent 25 years driving VW Golfs from the Mk2 to the Mk7..wouldn’t be without one, 😄👍🏽 My Mk4 GT TDi 150BHP was the best out of all of them 🙂👍🏽🎉🎉

The nitrogen acts as the spring the fluid being incompressible connects the suspension to the hydrogas units , nitrogen is used in many applications as a spring or in accumulators , the British main battle tank uses a form of Hydrophumatic the working gas again being nitrogen , we often use nitrogen to charge brake accumulators on Routemaster buses , there is one Routemaster with full active hydraulic suspension using 12 Citroen spheres as well as two additional accumulators all charged with nitrogen. Excellent vid, so have a check out of uses of nitrogen as a spring, we even have a nitrogen spring in some hydraulic road breakers as well also look up Routemaster RM116 I think on my channel there is a little movie of the suspension lifting up on start up

Another interesting video,my 1981 metro need pumping up,, I also now know why the caps are difficult to undo,so new plastic ones are a good idea.looking forward to the next video.

Back in the 80s my parents were running a 1969 Mk2 mini with hydrolastic suspension which regularly needed pumping up; we drove it to a local enthusiast who had the kit and was happy to do it for a few quid. Unfortunately during one such mission, a pipe on the car burst with a massive bang and the car lurched down onto its bump stops on the driver's side. Sadly the bumpy drive home was its last trip, it was stripped for spares and then smashed up for charity at a village fete.

Nice informative video.. I could probably do with re gassing mine but they won’t look original anymore and it will do such little miles I will live with it.. plus the 20 year old metric tyres I won’t change

It floats on fluid (more now than before). If you need a regas, just park Melvin outside the Houses of Parliament. Plenty of gas comes out of there!

Excellent and informative video Ed, it does seem to be a simple process to carry out. So would this have been carried out every time it was serviced at Rover?

This took me back to the 1980s when my Riley Kestrel was leaning heavily to one side before I took it in for a “pump-up”, thus avoiding a potential catastrophe!

Another good video. Only thing I would say is get your gas checked and re pressurised before adding the fluid

When I worked at a rover dealer ( doves of croydon) we had a little chart that gave you the height the car should be according to the ambient temperature

We've got one those pumps at work, more complicated a setup (ie more commercial/ trade equipment) only used on first series MGF's and the very occasionally 100 series but now that these are getting few and far between its not been used it for years. Ours has two levels, one does the fluid but no idea what the other one does as never used it when doing a hydrogas top up.

I remember my Dad's Princess 2200HLS. We loaded it up for a trip to France and it was so low that the rear tyres were rubbing inside the arches. We unloaded and my Dad went off to get it pumped up. It came back looking like a 4x4 but was ok again once full of luggage. Happy days.

Good job 😍😍

A well explained interesting video.

Had 3 metros in the 1980s, fortunately I didn’t have problems with the suspension, have seen it done though, which until I had, I didn’t really understand it. Great post 👍🏻😎

great vid ed

Cracking little car.

Very interesting, we had A a couple of Minis in the family, but with rubber cones, so I never came in contact with the Hydragas system.

Just about to try and stop my GTA scraping on slightly uneven Road surfaces 😅 Great video, thanks mate!

I try to repair mine as my wheel arch gap front and rear it’s only about Half an inch Only to find that both my shrader valves don’t work I can take fluid out but they don’t pump up so new valves are on the way hopefully get my suspension pumped up but at the moment with a suspension lower all round It doesn’t half handle amazingly would love to leave it like this but it will harm the suspension, another great video as always twin cam👍

I was only aware of Citroën using such a suspension, this system seems very serviceable! Also, I have come to look at shock absorbers or dampers (a better term IMHO) as a disposable item, other than top dollar Konis or similar which can be torn down and overhauled. The factory units on your Metro must be well engineered to survive like this.

Fairly sure a good pressure for close to factory ride height is between 300 and 350 psi. And pumping because it's sunk means you're replacing the gradually lost gas with more fluid - Eventually you'll have near solid suspension, and be risking puncturing the inner rubber diaphragm. At 450psi I'd be popping the units off and sending them for a regas. Not amazingly cheap, but less expensive than trying to source replacements - That'll need a regas anyway.

I put shocks on the front of hyro Minis and Metros. It especially stopped that bouncy bounce going around corners in Metros, fast. Bump stops too on Minis, to stop it front to back ducking and jumping.

I had an Ambassador which failed MOT on rear suspension mounts. The manual said I should depressurise the suspension to get them out. It then said that after fitting the new ones, I should drive very slowly to a dealer to have it repressurised. I managed to figure out a way to change the mounts without depressurising, using a bottle jack to push the suspension arms away from the chassis. The irony was that the old mounts had nothing wrong with them but just looked rough at the edges. The new ones did serious damage to my wallet.

Brilliant - the way you present these maintenance videos makes even someone as technically incompetent as me believe I could do the work without creating a minor disaster! 🤣🤣🚗🚗

In 2003 my 100 Kensington SE was pumped up at a Rover main dealer (it was about 8 years old at the time). 1 week later one of the Hydragas units blew out a seal and the suspension collapsed on one side (luckily wasn't going fast when it happened). £400 bill to repair, with the same dealer being the only place readily available to take it to. Was never sure whether it was a dodgy unit that couldn't take being pumped up or if they over pumped it to achieve the ride height when actually it needed regassing. Always worried about pumping Metro suspension up again after that. It does seem odd that Rover published no specs on the maximum pressure the system could take which might explain why this happened.

A job well done. I'm wondering if I made a mistake when I put hydraulic fluid in my 1977 Allegro? I had a constant problem with those shock absorbers, and I used a brake pump from Morris, with extra valves on the stand. Where did I go wrong? The car was very, very stiff, and the 'bombs' started leaking after a while, they leaked liquid. I used antifreeze, and added 200ml of 100% alcohol to the system. I had no one to learn from, I had to do it myself, because it was there were masters for English cars here in Macedonia, before the arrival of the new Mini.... There were only two or three Allegros in the whole of Macedonia, and about 10 Austin 1300s from 1972. I don't count the Minis, they didn't have hydrogas/hydrolastic, in fact very few them. Well, tell me where I went wrong, and how did those shock absorbers (10 of them) always shoot from the side? I pumped 35 cm from the central strafe on the joint, never from the ground. Thanks.

merci, grace à vous j'ai pu regonfler ma MGF. grace à vos précieuse indications, j'ai pu le faire facilement et très rapidement. thanks a lot

MERCI pour votre vidéo excellente pour une première recharge je reviens vers vous après mon essaie ;-)

Great tutorial, is it necessary to have a pump with a vaccum function to get rid of any air in the Hydrolastic, or is only pumping required? My own car is a 1967 Wolseley Hornet that has been sitting for 30 years so is obviously very low at this point. I thought of attempting to pump it up for now and then deciding after if I need to get it taken to a professional.

Are you using a different camera? Everything looks super crisp on my tv (I prefer to watch RU-vid on a big screen!) Interesting content as ever sir.

Thanks!

Thank you. Very informative and useful. Just going to do my MGF.

You made a blooper you said the front left is conected to the front rear.??? Good video like all your others,keep them coming.

Absolutely fascinating. I've always wanted to know how hydrogas suspension actually works. Can I ask, are those Yokohama A509 tyres? If so, what do you think of them?

Hey Ty Ive got a rover 100 in Italy that so low Is almost undrovable and i ha e to charge It up Where can i find all the equipment?

Does the Hydragas have less life than the normal car's spring? I want to buy the Rover 100 with Hydragas, but I wasn't really sure if there are parts available when the Hydragas go wrong like the Citroën.

Do you link where to buy that same schrader valve

Hi, I bought a pressure pump for my 1969 Austin 1300. however after I had pumped up the suspension I washed the portable pressure tank with water which froze the pump handle. silly me! is it o k to not flush the tank? or what should one use for cleaning the pressure pump system.

04:29, hehehehe the font rear wheel, I’ll have two of those thanks Ed.

Hi is it 340mm from arch to centre of wheel? Thanks

Love it showing this on a BL Metro while wearing a VW Golf top🙂

nice modifications ,how about a nice sound system install?

Добрый день подскажите какую жидкость нужно заливать в систему гидропневмоподвески для автомобиля Ровер Метро? Зарание спасибо

Thanks for that I can now do this on my MGF

where did you buy pump and all stuff for pump it?

If the expelled fluid is not in a suitable condition to reuse, how do you safely dispose of it?

Find an avenger to do a review on please ...👌🏻 Great video

does the system use Spheres like Citroëns?

Do you have an alternative website to the hydragas one provided. It doesn't work. Cheers

I need you to do this to mine !

Hello. Maybe I'm a bit stupid but why are you using Hydrolastic fluid to pump up a Hydragas system? I have an ADO16 and this has confused me. Do both system use Hydrolastic fluid despite being different? Would the fluid you are using be ok for ADO16s? Many thanks.

this is only hydro gas as far as I can see , what about the hydroelastic like on the maxi ??????

I liked my Gta. But there are no more Rover 100 or Metros left in the Netherlands.

If the suspension hardware last almost the life of the car i don't see it like a bad thing, in normal suspensions you need to change the hardware (Springs, shock absorbers) here you change fluids and gas.

Previous owner converted my MGF to coils. :(