Very cold cold start!

[centurus2400]

My C5 (2.0 Hdi, 138,000 miles) has been sitting on the drive all weekend. I removed the thick covering of snow from it yesterday in order to make a quick getaway to work this morning

I've owned the car from new (51 reg), and in all that time it's never failed to start first turn of the key. However, with the thermometer reading -12 this morning it took three goes at starting before the engine fired. To be perfectly fair it's probably got at least one dead glow plug as I've never even bothered to check them...

Once it fired, it stumbled momentarily and then chimed in to a smooth idle on all four, so given the extreme weather not a bad result I guess.

I treated it to a Varta Silver battery last year, which cranked the engine over no problem at all. A very impressive performance, definitely the best battery I've tried.

[HDI]

Nice one !
Little tip, it's in the owners manual but anyway, press the clutch pedal down before starting the engine at very low temps, less drag on the engine means an easier time for the battery.

[citroenxm]

Its quite likely all your heaters are down. As HDi engines dont really need the heaters unless really cold as we have now..Obviously we're not going to notice this problem untill we have the weather we have got.

Ive noticed the Xantia taking longer now, then when in summer.

My guess is, fit a set of heaters and she should go first time!

Paul

[mooseshaver]

I didn't know I had a glow plug light untill this winter.
I presume that if its below 0 then we should wait for the glowplug light to go out and then start like an old diesel?

This morning I could hear the suspension pump slow down whilte starting the engine, which also took longer. And battery guage was low. Poor little car. I put some expsnive BP diesel in to say sorry.

[spider]

I didn't know I had a glow plug light untill this winter.
I presume that if its below 0 then we should wait for the glowplug light to go out and then start like an old diesel?

That's correct. They do have them but they are only used in cold temperatures, it does actually energise them for half a second at 0°C but you`ll not see the light for that.

See here for the warning light time vs temp.

[RichardW]

-12 is getting close to the filter plug point for UK winter spec diesel. My Xantia HDi coughed a bit last week when it was saying -16 but had been used the night before. SWMBO's Picasso HDI was reluctant to start when it was about -8 after the -16 episode, but it hadn't been used for a few days. Our friend's 307 refused to start at -15 when it had been stood for 2 days - OK once the temp came back above -10