Newbie –Xantia Owner + Key fob tip.

This is the Forum for all your Citroen Technical Questions, Problems or Advice.

Moderator: RichardW

Post Reply
Napolian
Posts: 9
Joined: 12 Jan 2010, 19:20
Location: Wessex
My Cars:

Newbie –Xantia Owner + Key fob tip.

Post by Napolian »

Newbie –Xantia Owner + Key fob tip.

Hi all, just a little about myself. Motoring for 35 years with well over million miles under my feet. Owned cars from Minis to Mercedes however I have found French cars to be the most robust particularly since Mercedes was taken over in the 90s and the quality dropped.

Current car is a ‘97 1.9td Xantia. Bought it at 80k miles 4 months ago and done 9k miles since then.

IR Key Tip for faulty IR transmission.

I was puzzled why my IR key along with so many other peoples keys and so:-
Unscrewed the case and withdrew the PCB (Printed Circuit Board). It was apparent that the design was very poor in that the largest chip is mounted near the edge. Over time flexing and dropping the key would break the connection.

To resolve the problem I used electronic solder flux pen (from Maplin) and liberally cover the legs of the chip and then run a soldering iron over the legs so that the existing solder flowed onto the BCP. I found that it was only necessary to heat the legs near the edge of the board. It maybe necessary to do both sides of the chip.

In order to increase the field of the IR beam, I carefully lined the IR-LED housing with a small piece of foil to act as a reflector. (Make sure that the reflector does not touch the PCB.)

The result is one supper IR key.

What I have learned about Xantias.

I bought the car with FSH, however it seems that garages do not service the car as per the Citroen schedule. Particularly greasing, lubrication and suspension seems to be neglected.

Changing front spheres is a dodle.

There is a lot of BS about how complicated Citroens are to work on when the fact is they are just different.


Current problem (since driving through heavy snow :oops: ) is the height corrector is intermittently not working. Squirting WD40 around it seems to have freed it up a bit.

I have ordered two folding axel stands so that I can have a poke underneath. I recon these are a must for Citroens.

Thanks guys
Enchanté de faire votre connaissance
citroenxm
Posts: 8061
Joined: 30 Dec 2004, 23:10
Location: Somewhere in North Wales, Anglesey
My Cars: M reg Xm S2 2.1td Auto Exclusive. 269k and rising
L reg XM S1 V6 12v Manual SEi
L 94 XM 2.1 TD auto total resto

2008 Peugeot 207 Sw 1.6 16v hdi. 217k and rising
2010 Peugeot 207 SW 1.6 8v HDi 161k and rising
x 71

Post by citroenxm »

Welcome to the Mad house!!

Ive ALSO discovered the fault that you have described about the Chip on the Board comming away!! Ive also succesfully re soldered the legs back on with a Weller Iorn - and with sucess too..

The way to tell if the legs have come away is in the way the RED LED in the key front flashes, or rather litterally flickers!!

Nice post!

Regards
Paul
Sharing a pug 207 1.6 hdi Sw 16v.
M reg Xm 2.1 td auto exclusive S2 269k and rising
L reg XM V6 12v SEi auto .. Light project

A very sad...
1994 XM 2.1 d auto
Xantidote
Posts: 1146
Joined: 03 May 2009, 22:07
Location: Merseyside
My Cars:
x 5

Post by Xantidote »

Another failure point on IR plips is the internals of the button switches themselves.

I've just used a meter to confirm a button switch wasn't working, and changed it for a good switch off a non-working plip. Needs a small soldering iron to do the desoldering, and resoldering - I used a small 25watt iron.

No more struggling with the key in frozen locks (I hope!)
Martin

1995 Xantia TDLX (deceased :( )
Post Reply