C5 electric questions

[cachaciero]

Oh! o.k misread your last pm that's more hopeful then and the radio confirms what the light is telling you, not much point in doing the other checks, just don't understand why it doesn't come out of econ mode then, it should do that as soon as you unlock the doors, do all the doors unlock when you use the key or just the drivers door?

[jgra1]

so I have 12V on 8..
and with ignition on , I had a small voltage on 2..

but I don't care





the bloo dy thing is running!

the black multiplug was nudged by accident.. and I heard a fuel pump!

she does run!
when I go to put the fuse box cover on she stops

OMG

!!!


that's good enough for me

______________

calmed down a bit now..
I was a bit reluctant to even mess with this car once it showed these symptoms... I knew I was out of my depth..
but it's just like any other car sometimes! faulty/bad connections are the same whatever they are on

[jgra1]

big thanks too all and especially Tony who has been very supportive!

[myglaren]

Pleased you got it running John, I had major trepidations on your behalf. Imagined cooked ECUs.
I wondered if the after market alarm system could have been involved.

[cachaciero]

Hi John
Nice result, it never hurts to unplug everything and plug it back together again if I had a pound for every time that techniques worked I would be a rich man
The connectors in the engine relay unit I have always thought quite "solid" if plugged in and the latches are not broken. Anyway now you have got over your original nervousness I am sure you will find out what the problem is an sort it. I shall now away to bed with a heavy tot of Brazilian rum (aka cachaca)

cachaciero

[jgra1]

I am slowly sinking red wine..

[myglaren]

I am slowly sinking in red wine..

Fixed that

[Xantidote]

Great news - well done.

The C5 problems being posted nowadays makes me rethink whether a C5 as my next car is such a good idea

[cachaciero]

I think that you need to put that into perspective. Seems to me that every car has one ore two well known issues the C5 is no different in that, for the most part at least on S1 /S2 those problems are well known and have generally been covered on this forum. If you are going to do your own maintenance then IMHO a Lexia is pretty well essential it is the only real way of seeing what is happening within the systems of the car.
This is no different to any other make of car, a Ford Mondeo has pretty well the same systems as a C5 so if for example you want to bleed the brakes you will need the Ford Diagnostic tool or equivalent to set the valves in the ABS system. The only thing a top of the range Ford doesn't have compared to a C5 is the suspension system and it's related ECU.
As regards the problem to which this thread relates well to some degree the problem was self inflicted and occurred because John, not unreasonably, decided to fit some different seats and he started ripping into the electrics without the one tool which was going to help him if he got into trouble i.e a Lexia. If he had had a Lexia at his disposal I doubt that the wider world would have heard of his problem and at the end of the day the problem turned out to be something not entirely unknown on most makes of car, a loose connector.
If you are going to do your own maintenance then accept that you may have to change / increase your knowledge set, an appreciation of networked control systems helps and the ability to think in logical blocks can be essential for some of the more abstruse problems but a Lexia is a pretty good tool and will most of the time tell you which bit has a problem. Just don't let the apparent complexity scare you, take it bit by bit and you will get there, it's also worth remembering that there have been far more faults that have turned out to be a bad connection or U/S sensor than have ever needed an expensive ECU replacing, in my opinion modern car electronics are pretty bullet proof and require a serious amount of stupidity to damage them.

cachaciero

[jgra1]

agree with that post from cachaciero..
I suspect in removing the engine bay fuse box to add a seat fuse, I have probably caused at break or bad contact.. but I should have gone straight back to that area and prodded.. got a bit scared though lol.. could have happened on any car, new or old..

Having read up on the C5 this week, I feel much more comfortable with it (new seats help ) and it's good to 'get into' a more modern technology and try to learn something.. although electrics were never a strong point of mine ...

anyway, I may change my tune when something else more tricky goes wrong, but I may not

car was nice today, even seat heaters work!

[jgra1]

the main reason for this post was not this hiccup

it was about electric seats and another (I now think) simple question..

(In theory) Can i change the ignition lock, door locks and reprogram 2 (proper) keys, to give me back RCL as is easy with a xanita etc?
The seat-donor car has all of these parts at an ok price..
the main issue, the non standard alarm (which I am not owrried about losing)..

I wont be taclking this for a few days obviously will visit a lexia owner..

[Xantidote]

John: You're obviously enjoying the C5 now the seats are sorted

even seat heaters work

, despite it being August

Cachaciero: Thank you for helping put things into perspective. In my own mind I accept all what you say as correct. I think we are all guilty of making judgements without looking at the wider picture - in this case I'm influenced by the posts of all the C5 problems that seem to be getting more frequent, but at the same time ignoring the fact that there are an awful lot of cars which don't give trouble, or which have their problems traced & resolved without us hearing about them.

I guess I'm old school, in that my first play with cars was with side valve engines, quite a long time ago. I can get my head around the Xantia's hydraulics, but rather more reluctant and not so sure about electronics and networks. A case of Old Dog and New Tricks I think.

Cheers - Martin

[jgra1]

well I had to try them Martin

re C5 post frequency.. just because more of us own them now maybe

[Peter.N.]

I felt the same way about the C5 before I had one, seeing all the wiered faults they were throwing up, now I have one I feel much more confident about it, in fact its so far proved easier to work on the the XM - which scared me witless when I had my first one, now I have done practically every job imaginable succesfully they don't worry me, hopefully I will feel the same about the C5 in due course.

Peter

[cachaciero]

Side valve engines? yes I remember them, worked on one once when cutting my teeth as it were so many years ago now an Austin I think it was. Had ago at a 14 cylinder twin row radial with sleeve valves once too, didn't rotate quite so freely after I put it back together as it did before I stripped it as I remember .

Frequency of C5 posts, yes reckon jgra1 has it right, there are lots more C5 owners on here than there were only a couple of years ago, seems as though XM and Xantia posts have decreased in similar proportions to the increase in C5 posts though that could be my imagination .

Fear of the unknown is largely due to unfamiliarity, bit like jumping into a pool of deep water, once your in the depth becomes irrelevant the only important thing is to have the wit and enough knowledge to start swimming, once your are swimming everything starts falling into place and you realize that the hardest part was the initial step into the pool

As regards networked control systems well at one level for me it is easy, my day job involves working with such equipment and I long ago appreciated that the advent of the digital computer and software modeling allowed the building of control systems with a degree of precision of control that mechanical systems could only ever achieve at prices which only the military / aerospace users could afford.
It is worth reflecting that the ESP system and it's solid state angular rate and acceleration sensors are more advanced than similar systems fitted to many aircraft currently flying today where mechanical gyro's and accelerometers will still be the order of the day.

The big problem with any modern car is finding adequate data that actually shows how it goes together (happens in the day job as well!). I was lucky in that somebody gave me a disc which had an awful lot of Citroen related Training Notes pretty well everything for the C5, these are documents that give you the top level data and they are very good showing all the networks, what's on them and how they relate, without that I would have been struggling because there is nothing on the Citroen Service site that gives you equivalent data. Yes you can see parts breakdown, you can get schematics of bits of the car but there is nothing in that data that tells you for example that the steering wheel angle sensor is on the primary CAN bus the same as the injection ECU and I fail to see how without that kind of information you can fully understand how the car works. So I do think that for the average bloke even somebody quite clever it can be difficult, when trying to diagnose some of the problems which crop up, which is where forums like this come into their own because with a bit of luck if you don't know there will be somebody here that does.

Now having said that and apropos the problem we have been looking at there is something I can't find the answer to. What is the exact mechanism / signal /parameter that gets the BSI out of economy mode? according to the book as I understand it in economy mode most of the car is shutdown that includes the injection ECU. When the ignition switch is turned on the lift pump runs but that seems to be simple relay logic, the same is true of driving the starter motor but until an "Engine Running" signal is present the BSI will still be locked down into ECON and the injection ECU apparently will be powered down so we can get the lift pump to run in ECON we can get the starter motor to turn in ECON ECON won't be cancelled until the engine runs the engine won't run until the injection ECU is powered which won't happen in ECON mode.... This is as I understand it so what signal, which bit of hardware is responsible for creating engine running?.

cachaciero