French Car Forum

Just had a worrying experience with one of the many local speed cameras, in fact this is the second time in recent weeks that this has happened.
I'm travelling past the camera (away from the camera) at a sedate speed as another vehicle on the opposite side of the road travelling in the opposite direction (towards the camera) passes through the...

my brother has just bought a complete mi16 engine/box/aux's/wiringloom ecu etc from a scrappy, with 69,000 miles and full service hist. from a crash damaged bx 16v for £150. bargain.

The chassis number on my 95 Xantia 1.9 td LX is 11 cars up from the original model change over hence I have a face lifted Xantia built from every available bit of the old model (on a Friday afternoon around 5 pm I think ! )that dosn't show. Its a complete nightmare to buy bits for either from Citroen,factors or scrap yards. Can any one of you get...

Ok I'm about to sign a pact with the Devil and buy an HDI xantia of some sort, What's the feeling about these engines? are there any weak points? Can I service it myself? are parts much more expensive than the ones for the good old 1.9D/TD? what sort of fuel consumption do people get?
thanks people, you might even persuade me to stay with the Bx a...

Next time you get a funny noise from under the bonnet, don't be so quick to take a look.
You never know what you might find.

Hi Guys,
well I went into the local autobarn store today to get some new plugs and leads for the 2cv, big surprise, they any that fit.
So I head upto Boursons Automotive and head in side with the 2cv manual (as it has all the spark plugs listed in it) and the old leads. The guy behind the counter looks at the picture and says You have a 2cv?? I...

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.
MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on boxes containing Genuine seats and...

Off load, an engine burns least at idle. On load, am I right in thinking that, given more torque, fewer horsepower are used to move the load? If that is true, the body of the car imposes the least loading on the engine at peak torque (ignoring aerodynamics just for the moment!) Is this also the point of lowest fuel consumption? I can't quite see...

Sorry for my ignorance could someone tell me the engine cc size for the lowest road tax category. I thought it was 1000cc for the lowest and have been scanning the ads for a 1000 cc station car. Someone told me that in fact you can go up to 1300 maybe 1400cc at the lowest rate.
Thanks in advance
Mark W

Something for everyone

A reliable friend of mine reckons he saw a 1999 2.0 litre petrol Xantia at an auction in Birmingham yesterday for.........GBP500.
Now this is just ridiculous. Had FSH and one owner, started perfectly, ran without any smoke, had no noticable accident damage and therefore (looking really closely) wasn't a cut 'n' shut.
To me this is an insult to the...

has anyone got a new xsara 2000 onward and what do you think of it have u had any problems. i have a 2002 xsara 1.6 16v vtr coup the problems i have had are flange on exhaust(causing carbon being blown out of exhaust? still happening though) failed,o/s door dropped clutch release brg making noises ( they said the cable needed adjusting but i...

not really a car topic, but is interesting going on all the stuff in the news about light pollution.
shame that it three years old
dom

Can anyone advise about the problem of the smell that waxoil leaves if you have to use it.
Had to use it for the inside of the wheel arches on parents feista which is disintegrating from the inside, unfortunately that means spraying it from the boot spaces which lease the smell slowly filtering through the car.
Have thought about some how using...

At 150,000 UK pounds it would need to be.
Use it to getaway from the bank hold up you just did to pay for it!!

Alan S

Check out this rather large engine

Ok, I thought this would have been up for discussion first thing today but not. So lets have your views on this subject. Please be carfull as I dont want to incite any organising of a blockade or to encourage this but it would be nice to hear your views on the fuel tax situation and should people have the right to cause this disruption.

According to that august journal, the Sun ! these are the cars that people who own them would or would not recommend to their friends from the results of the latest Which? survey:
MOST RECOMMENDED: BMW X5, Toyota Yaris Verso, Skoda Octavia, Mazda MX-5, Audi TT, Jaguar S-Type, Lexus IS200, Mini, Toyota Yaris, Skoda Fabia.
LEAST RECOMMENDED:...

Is it my ISP playing up or does this forum go offline occasionally?

As I've mentioned elsewhere, we're just back from a tour of Italy. One afternoon near Venice, I drove onto the forecourt of a roadside fruit warehouse. I drove in, turning to the left, stopped and reversed to a parking spot to the right of the gate. We left the car to walk to the shop. I was horrified to see, on the block paving, a trail of black...

My youngest daughter was keen to maintain the warranty on her year old Xsara HDI, so she put it in to the local Citroen agent for its first service. The bill breaks down like this:- labour £97, 4.6 ltrs of oil £35, Purflex filter £7.86, Pollen filter £27, sump washer 81p and screenwash £1.46 (This gets topped up every weekend). A total of £175....

This is really a question for Alan S but I would be grateful if anyone has any thoughts. During my stay in the States and especially California I noticed a plethora of beautifully kept vintage cars, from 60's/70's Beamers and Mercs to post war TBirds, Corvettes and VW Buggies and 80's Lamborghinis - all in everyday use. But what amazed me was that...

...and the front foglights are out in force again. T*ssers.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro!

I'm just amazed at some of the figures reported on this site.
My xantia 1.9TD aquired in March returns on average 34 MPG. This figure is significantly above the book figure of 31.7
The car is in excellent condition and was serviced end of March including air filter.
I recently did 1600 miles on a trip to Brittany. I used a very light touch on the...

I have just watched the first programme of the new series of the above on C5, and for once even I am speechless.
May I take this opportunity to apologise to my wife, from what I have watched to night she has a black belt in driving in comparison.

Mind you, I do not claim to be any sort of expert either!

Has anyone else noticed that problems posted seem to come in waves of a particular subject.
For example, we're in an electrical and starting phase at the moment on the citroen board, give it a couple of days, and I bet there'll be a change to hydraulics !
Very strange !

If you have a sad fascination for the cars of the 60's and 70's, then check out this excellent website

Once I found it I was on it for hours, every single BMC/BL car is documented, together with many in-depth development stories, plus the history of the various company's failures.
All credit to Keith Adams, the site owner, its one of the most...

AOL have included the BX in their list which is the usual puerile and predictable rot. What a shame they haven't any real researchers. Still, it keeps the BX cheap!

A sobering story filed from court today - of interest solely because of the car being driven:
A drink-driver who killed his fiancee and their first child in a high-speed crash after bragging he would top 140mph in a £30 car with no brakes was jailed today for six years.
Steven Green, 25, who was banned at the time of accident, had bought the...

Had a call from a mate of mine telling me that his e-mails he was sending to me were being bounced.
After a lot of chasing around, I discover that my free web based e-mail service is so chock of garbage courtesy of the Sobig virus, that they have had to shut up shop to sort it out. I posted on a board in Oz & discover that even some of the...

I have just noticed that Dave Burns has posted over 1,000 messages on this board. That is a lot of help to a lot of people. Thanks, Dave and congratulations! One thing puzzles me: when do you find time to drive your car?

Just thought some of you might be interested in seeing this.
It's a Falcon that has decided to build a nest on top of an apartment block in Brisbane, Queensland Australia.
The building I think is about 35 stories & the crazy bird has nested right on the edge; I don't think it's dawned on anybody yet that when these chicks are a few days old &...

As my Zx is now getting high in mileage I really think I need to start thinking about my next car. But the question is DO I go for the Diesel or stay with a petrol and have a LPG conversion done. As a regular visitor to Holland for Food parcels for the good lady in doors. A great number of cars over there run on LPG, its cheap and they all say its...

I live in a country so big that the UK & Europe could almost disappear in it; when I say this, I'm not being disrespectful or trying to sound like the old stories of the Texas cowboys but Australia is a big place. Fly over any section & you'll soon see what I mean.
Out here, the average mileage for a car is around 20,000 klms a year, in fact most...

You've spent too long with your car when . . .
you have two copies of the Haynes
you have two copies of the 'other' haynes book (engine manual)
you buy LHM in 20 litre drums
you drive everywhere with enough tools to rebuild the car at the side of the road
even your grandparents take the mick out of your car
its dark
anymore??

Our Siamese thinks she's in paradise. Having recently transplanted her from suburban Aberdeen to rural France, we've watched her metamorphose from a happy little house-cat into a rabid, slitty-eyed drooling little killer with an attitude problem. We're getting expert at identifying random rodent remnants and the shredded shapes of small corpses...

Any forum members who, like me, may be fed-up with paying extortionate prices to cross the channel (for anything other than a day-trip) should look, and register on a new website at www.channelpirates.com

Here's a guy who took his car into a dealer for an oil change; the apprentice did the job, then took it for a test drive.

Alan S

On Friday evening I had the choice of crawling under the Xantia with a can of WD40 or planting some Strawbery plants. Inexplicably I chose to do the planting ! It was only after I had completed the planting and walked around to the front of the house that I noticed the Xantia on the drive, and my blood ran cold. So am I ill, is it the onset of old...

I came across this website yesterday - www.phantomplate.com Surely it must be illegal - if it works, that is!

Having just serviced the BX I checked the tyre pressures, brimmed the tank and set off covering 340 miles in two days. I then returned to the same pump and brimmed the tank again. The sump is gratifyingly dry on the outside at long last and nothing fell off. I am noticing the benefit of the rev counter as well; 70MPH=3,200RPM in top. Peak torque...