Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by citronut »

if anyone can fix it i belive Sir Jim can, as he has under his belt a XANT V6 auto box full strip down and rebuild, as far as im aware still going strong,

regards malcolm
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by Richard_C »

This might be so basic as to be silly, I am not a gerbox expert (well, not post 1967 Hillman Hunter, but with that you could see how it all went together) but all these components will be earthed somewhere. I had an irritating set of false bulb out warnings on our C3, then decided to drill a hole in the bulb mounting plate and run a whole new fat earth lead to a bolt in the inner wing. No troubles since. Might be worth checking any earthing wires aywhere near the gearbox ecu or other bits. Even a low impedence where none is expected can confuse the electronics, and variations in temperature/moisture combined with a bit of corrosion can give intermttent faults. At least it is free to try out.
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by cachaciero »

With reference to code reader / Lexia.
First just to say I know nothing about sensodrive gearboxes.
However the Lexia on all the systems I have looked at allows you to not just look at codes but also the data sources that produce those codes, in addition where there are actuators attached to ECU's it will allow you "manually" as it were drive them. So as regards the senso drive I would expect a Lexia to allow me to move the clutch actuator and verify that it is working correctly I would expect it to read the data from the gear stick and if I knew what I was talking about tell me a lot more about the system. Of course what I expect is not neccessarily what it would give me but on all the other things I have used it on it does give that depth of insight and controle and much I have looked at and fixed wouldn't have been easily possible without it I would hope it does that for the senso drive system as well.

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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by CitroJim »

citronut wrote:if anyone can fix it i belive Sir Jim can, as he has under his belt a XANT V6 auto box full strip down and rebuild, as far as im aware still going strong,

regards malcolm
Yes, all three of them Malcolm :-D :-D :-D

I do like gearboxes :P
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by PeterT »

add more thoughts..

previously this car has been jump started, which if research on the internet is correct (!) can do all kinds of wonderful (NOT) things to the ecu..
at three years old (just within warranty) the alternator packed up, so it just shutdown when braked to a halt, and disabled throttle and gears, leaving me sat at a dark junction in a car that wouldn't drive..
to get it home (200yards) I had to parallel another "handbag" battery across it to get it to drive home at walking speed...
I knew enough to get it looked at, without unhooking the battery, to get the history to show the new alternator was under Citroen warranty to save me a quoted £800!
then
Three years or so on the battery died and it did need a jump start as part of the process of getting home and proving it wasn't the alternator again... I wonder if that has made it unstable - any comments from the forum ??
so...
I wonder if getting the ECU reman'd might be a way forward..
a replacement one etc from Citroen would cost more then the car is worth?
would I see a fault code from the ECU saying "an numskull has jump-started me and fried my brain - fix me" ?

note to self, don't ever jump start the non-sensodrive C3 we have!

Checking all the earthing nuts etc is on tomorrow's list; as today's experiments with Lexia software and a standard £16 ODBC lead show it doesn't want to work.

At present it -will- let me start the car, then immediately go snowflake-error before selecting a gear, then will let me select gears and pootle round a bit, in 1st 2nd and reverse, whilst still errored..
when actually at speed, usually in third, if it goes snowflake , it stays in that gear until braked to halt, when it goes in to neutral and you are in a paperweight :- once it died in a gear, and couldn't be pushed anywhere.
so now it is behaving differently..

I thought logic should be applied, but someone keeps changing the goal posts...
---------------------
ADD - I thought I posted the above a day or two ago, but found it in a tab..
---------------------
having gone through the reset including 10minutes of the car's +ve and -ve connected together to flatten capacitors...
then after reaching through the window and turning side lights on; the gearbox sounded like it was doing a full cycle of try each gear..
but it still won't give a neutral and start.

I suppose it is now a solid "fault" but I have just wiped any logs prior to :(
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by cachaciero »

I would make the following comments any error logs will be saved in non volatile memory so removing power will not lose the data.
Snowflake and third gear sound very much like the fail default state of "proper" auto boxes.
I would be surprised if the ECU was fried, modern car electronics are in my experience generally as near bullet proof as anything can be.
My best guess is that the ECU is getting data from either the clutch bit or gearbox bit that something is amiss, I seem to re-call reading somewhere that the clutch system has wear detectors, what happens when it detects a worn clutch? I don't know the answers.
To sort this you will need two things, a Lexia and a good technical description of how the system works. The former is only a question of money, the second is much more difficult, ideally a set of Citroens training manuals is what you need but unless there is someone on here who has done the course and is prepared to "share" the manuals then you will likely be out of luck. You may get some clues from the Lexia menu's
Might be worth opening an account at service.citroen.com and see if there is anything in the info diag section of the site re senso drive boxes, this will cost you about 5 Euro's an hour but you can download a lot of stuff in an hour :-)

As starters it would seem to me that there must be a sensor that senses clutch plate position or possibly proximity to the other plate. There must also be a sensor or sensors that can detect gear selector position.
Assuming the forgoing is true how are these mechanically calibrated. The gear stick is an electronic unit that must tell the ECU electronically what gear is selected what happens if the gear selected by the stick disagrees with the gear box selector sensors?
More questions than answers I am afraid more a dump of my mental thought processes were it to be my problem.

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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by Gibbo2286 »

Richard_C wrote:This might be so basic as to be silly, I am not a gerbox expert (well, not post 1967 Hillman Hunter,
Bet you didn't get to fix a Smith's Easidrive Hillman Minx :-D Now there was a box of electronics pre transistor and semi-conductor, a real electrician's nightmare.
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by xantia_v6 »

Gibbo2286 wrote:
Richard_C wrote:This might be so basic as to be silly, I am not a gerbox expert (well, not post 1967 Hillman Hunter,
Bet you didn't get to fix a Smith's Easidrive Hillman Minx :-D Now there was a box of electronics pre transistor and semi-conductor, a real electrician's nightmare.
My dad was once asked to fix one that wouldn't select gears properly, and I spent about a day reading the service manual and learning the fault finding procedure... was really disappointed that it was just worn brushes in the Lucas C40 generator...
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by FrenchLeave »

We had similar faults with my wife's 1.6 sensodrive; sometimes not allowing an engine start, sometimes refusing to engage a gear. I put my Lexia on it and made the mistake of testing the actuators, this resulted in a series of loud bangs that you could feel through the structure following which the car was stuck in gear and immovable. That culminated in a £150 rescue to the nearest Citroen agent 30 miles away where they reprogrammed the computer, the car has behaved faultlessly since then.

I agree with Lightly, it's a straightforward 5-speed manual gearbox and if it works sometimes there's nothing wrong with it. Similarly the actuators are what it says on the tin, they are actuators and if they work they work. As the main agent has reprogrammed the control box with no improvement I suggest the fault must lie in the control box itself or in the intermediate wiring (unlikely).
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by cachaciero »

FrenchLeave wrote:We had similar faults with my wife's 1.6 sensodrive; sometimes not allowing an engine start, sometimes refusing to engage a gear. I put my Lexia on it and made the mistake of testing the actuators, this resulted in a series of loud bangs that you could feel through the structure following which the car was stuck in gear and immovable. That culminated in a £150 rescue to the nearest Citroën agent 30 miles away where they reprogrammed the computer, the car has behaved faultlessly since then.

I agree with Lightly, it's a straightforward 5-speed manual gearbox and if it works sometimes there's nothing wrong with it. Similarly the actuators are what it says on the tin, they are actuators and if they work they work. As the main agent has reprogrammed the control box with no improvement I suggest the fault must lie in the control box itself or in the intermediate wiring (unlikely).
You have missed the little point of the sensors which must be in the system, yes it may be the the ECU, could well believe that it doesn't have the latest program std but that doesn't mean that it's U/S. but my money would be on an external sensor failed or out of calibration.
I suspect that the Citroen garage did more than re-program the ECU, what did you look at after you found the car stuck in gear?, you had a Lexia you must have used it to have a good look around, can you remember what the Parameters page offered in the way of things to measure.

Another question the gear change actuators are they external to the gearbox or internal?

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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by wheeler »

The gearchange & clutch auctuators are fixed to the outside of the box, there is nothing different to the internals of the gearbox, its just a standard MA gearbox as found in Saxo's & AX's. There is also another 'crankshaft' sensor fitted to the outside of the box that reads the secondary shaft speed so it knows when the clutch bites. Another thing I would always check on a sensodrive is unplug the ECU connectors & check for sings of water ingress, the ECU is attatched to the gearbox facing the front so it can take a beating from all the elements & puddles.
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by alfanumerical »

Hi Guys,

I'm going through the motions of trying to track down what the issue is with my GF's C2 VTR Senso.
It drives really well and actuator functions are fine and fully working. We do however have an intermittent bug where we will be driving and the sensodrive will fault.
It beeps and displays the snowflake and auto on the display hence locking you in whatever gear you happen to be in and disabling all paddles and shifters.
I have found that if you continue to drive, the box will eventually reset itself. It will also do this by slowing down gradually and letting it drop down through the gears til 1st.
The other method of course is to turn off ignition, lock yourself in, count to 30 until the dash display turns off and then restart. This resets the box and we can keep driving no problem.

I've read so much about Actuators etc but I know full well that they're functioning fine so there has to be something else causing these problems.
I have a theory regarding system pressure. I have an Alfa with the Selespeed gearbox which is essentially the same concept. The Alfa will present the same problem if the selespeed fluid is low, causing low circuit pressure. This is very easy to sort as you can simply top it up under the bonnet and the pressure circuit is back up to pressure. However, the Sensodrive doesn't have separate fluid for it's system pressure and uses the gearbox oil (STUPID). My theory is that any loss of gearbox oil will result in low pressure in the hydraulic circuit. The wrong grade of gearbox oil will overheat and cause diff seals to distort and pass oil. Only a small amount but over time this adds up.
My project this weekend is to drain and refill with 2 litres of EP80. I'm hoping this will restore pressure in the hydraulic circuit and therefore stop the fault from happening again. The EP80 isn't affected by extremes of temp, nor will it change viscosity.
I'll let you know how I get on.

Whist I'm here, does anybody in the west midlands area have Lexia? I have everything for Alfa but sadly not PSA Citroen. It would be great if somebody could help with firmware update on the Citroen.

Cheers
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by myglaren »

That all sounds plausible but:
alfanumerical wrote:
My project this weekend is to drain and refill with 2 litres of EP80. I'm hoping this will restore pressure in the hydraulic circuit and therefore stop the fault from happening again. The EP80 isn't affected by extremes of temp, nor will it change viscosity.
I'll let you know how I get on.
Do verify that the box really wants EP80. Many if not most PSA gearboxes that aren't fully auto use Total BV 75/80 or the Comma equivalent.
This is crucial to the life of the gearbox, anything else will ruin it eventually.
Whist I'm here, does anybody in the west midlands area have Lexia? I have everything for Alfa but sadly not PSA Citroën. It would be great if somebody could help with firmware update on the Citroën.
Lots of our members own Lexias and will, according to their individual skills and experience with them, offer to read codes and reset them as appropriate, usually for a small consideration.

Take a look at this thread to find and contact someone near you.
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by alfanumerical »

Regarding the oil, I have it on good authority that PSA Citroen R&D had stated that the oil used in the boxes may have caused the aforementioned problems with diff seals etc.
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Re: Sensodrive C3 - a write off..?

Post by myglaren »

Have they made any recommendations for alternative oils then?
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