drmini in aust wrote:
odd wrote:
similar to a Citroen suspention setup?
In some ways yes, but it's not really. Think of it as rubber cone suspension (which it is) with a waterbed inside it.
Drive one that's well set up, for road use in a daily driver, they are hard to beat. The ride is superb compared to the rubber cone Mini's buckboard ride.
I drove our dry car 2000Km round Tassie last year. Kept thinking- "should have taken the hydro instead".

BMC's hydrolastic setup is sort of like a 'static' version of Citroen's hydropneumetics. While pressure in the Citroen system is actively maintained by a hydraulic pump (and also runs the brakes, steering and often the gearchange), the BMC version is set to a pressure and sealed.
I've often wondered how difficult it would be to use Citroen suspension spheres and cylinders in place of a Minis hydro bags. There was a Mini 'prime mover' in MiniWorld years ago that had a full Citroen ride-levelling setup. . .but I'm more talking about setting up each corner sealed and independent and just varying the gas pressure in the suspension spheres to set the stiffness. Bleeding air out of the fluid half of the sphere would probably be a problem, though. . .
Enough musing!!
One for the future. . .maybe. . .