dashboard warning light help please

[dbolton]

hello, i have a xantia hdi ,x reg, and recently the stop light along with the red light on the temperature gauge has started to flash, usually a few seconds after i start it up, but then goes out when it has warmed up..the temperature gauge seems to stay cool for longer than it used to, then suddenly goes up, but only to between 60 and 90, which is what it always used to be anyway, any suggestions please??

[Mandrake]

hello, i have a xantia hdi ,x reg, and recently the stop light along with the red light on the temperature gauge has started to flash, usually a few seconds after i start it up, but then goes out when it has warmed up..the temperature gauge seems to stay cool for longer than it used to, then suddenly goes up, but only to between 60 and 90, which is what it always used to be anyway, any suggestions please??

I believe that the red light above the temp gauge is controlled either by the ECU or the Bitron sensor, not by the same sensor that drives the temperature gauge itself - I've had mine flick on for a second or two at random while driving while the temperature was normal (80) but not recently.

On the other hand 60 to 90 seems like a wide range... it should come up to about 80 pretty quickly and stay there while you're driving and only rise to 90 when your stopped at traffic lights at which point the fans will come on. (So it should stay between 80 and 90 once warmed up)

Of course you guys have colder weather than us, so......

Regards,
Simon

[Clogzz]

Does the car have air conditioning ?
If so, there is the ‘Bitron’ controller to operate the cooling fans, and the fault is an intermittency from the brown sensor on the thermostat housing to the Bitron input.
The low temperature indication is caused by the fault switching on the cooling fans at the high speed.
There are a good few topics here dealing with the problem, and I’ll edit them in here when found.
Here is a good start with the map:

http://www.frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/v ... hp?t=17012

[dbolton]

thanks for your replies..
yes it does have aircon, i just drove a few miles this morning to test it again, the red light stayed on for about 5 miles, then i switched the car off, checked all the fluids again, (all ok..), then had undid the wiring connection on top of the coolant bottle, connected it up again, started the car up, and the red light and the stop light went on for a few seconds then both disappeared...i drove the 5 miles home again without them coming on again and temperature stayed as usual(just below the 90 degree mark !! ), so all i can think is that maybe it was a fault with some connection, or maybe its just a co-incedince..can't spell that!! I'll see in the morning when i go to work!!
thanks again

[dbolton]

hello again, well this morning the stop light and red light on the temp gauge only came on just after i started it up,then went off, and was fine on the way to work, on the way home it stayed on until the engine had been running about 5 minutes then went off.. so.. i'll just keep a check on the levels and the temp gauge as usual and hopefully it'll just turn out to be some niggly fault somewhere .