Citroen Relay 2003 2.2 Hdi - A few issues...

[Tetsu0san]

If you want to read the waffling story please keep reading. If not, I’ve just got a couple of questions if you would be so kind as to throw some light on…

Firstly, the engine management light keeps coming on and going off when the engine is cold. The engine can cough and splutter sometimes (again when cold) and you can sometimes hear the revs go up and down at 10-20 second intervals. I’ve tried a generic code reader on the van which doesn’t find any faults at all. Engine sounds fine, doesn’t appear to breath and I’ve given it a service with new filters and oil. Any ideas?

Secondly, the radiator fans had been disconnected. I connected them back up which seemed OK, but then last night when the engine was cold and only driven about 50 feet then stopped they came on and didn’t seem to want to go off. I ended up disconnecting them again. Is there a controller for them, or perhaps the relay is at fault?


And if you’re still reading, well done! Now I'll give you a little background to the van. I bought it off a family friend where it has been used very lightly for about a year or so. It's about 90K miles on a 2.2 Hdi and in overall pretty good condition. I knew there were a few issues to resolve but that was fine as I like tinkering.
I noticed the engine management light issue within a few days of ownership so about a week ago I had some quiet time so I thought I'd look into this and I discovered a few bodged jobs and a few 'problems'. Firstly, the glow plug relay had gotten very hot and melted the plastic around the feed terminal (which I have now fixed), the horn in the steering wheel has been totally bypassed with wire going from the battery to a switch put into the dashboard. The rubber mounts for the radiator and intercooler were completely shot and the radiator was only being held in with the pipework to and from the radiator and intercooler. There was a missing plug for a sensor on a breather (I think) pipe which is directly underneath the glow plug relay, and two broken wires which I presumed went to it. The gear lever is pretty stiff and seems a little misaligned, although the cables were meant to have been changed. And the radiator fans had been disconnected.
Looking around at a couple of scrap yards it seems that the sensor on the breather pipe was meant to be connected to these two broken wires, so I fished through a few old car looms and found a connector that matched the sensor on the breather pipe and I soldered this back to the two wires. This seemed to make the engine pull a little better, although this might have been just in my imagination. Engine management light still comes on when cold.
I replaced the top mounts for the radiator and replaced the missing rubber bung underneath the radiator so it sits correctly and is actually held in.
I’m going to remove the steering wheel and check the wires and hopefully get the horn on the wheel working again. I don’t like the button on the dashboard affair at all, but I’d like to figure out the more pressing problems first. And I need to check the paths that the gearbox cables go because if the rest of the van is anything to go by they’ve probably been bodged up too.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

[Bick]

The fans coming on is usually the coolant sensor its a pretty common fault, the gear change cables can be lubricated if you have the patience of a saint with some gt85

[Tetsu0san]

The fans coming on is usually the coolant sensor its a pretty common fault, the gear change cables can be lubricated if you have the patience of a saint with some gt85

Thanks for that. I'll try lubricating the cables. As for the coolant sensor, where is this located? And is this the same one that controls the temp gauge in the cab?

[Bick]

In the 2.0hdi yes its the same sensor and its in the thermostat housing but on the 2.2hdi im not sure. Is your temperature gauge acting oddly? If the heater is getting warm but the gauge is showing a little low this could also why you are getting an engine light on as it does affect the fueling on the 2.0hdi but like i say im not even sure the 2.2hdi is a Citroen engine?

[Tetsu0san]

In the 2.0hdi yes its the same sensor and its in the thermostat housing but on the 2.2hdi im not sure. Is your temperature gauge acting oddly? If the heater is getting warm but the gauge is showing a little low this could also why you are getting an engine light on as it does affect the fueling on the 2.0hdi but like i say im not even sure the 2.2hdi is a Citroen engine?

My temperature gauge seems to be working fine which is why I think it either has another sender somewhere or there is something else wrong. AFAIK the engine is a Peugeot/Citroen engine, and it looks almost identical to the engine in my Peugeot 307 which is a similar age (2004).

[Bick]

In that case i would start looking around the head for temperature senders.

[Tetsu0san]

Long time no update. Sorry about that.

So, the engine management light was due to the glow plugs being shot to bits, as well as the wire from the plugs to the glow plug controller being very melted. Replaced the controller and wire, replaced the glow plugs, and the engine management light is no longer showing.

The fans were down to the temperature sender. Over the years I've been driving it I noticed that the temperature showing on the dial was slowly getting colder but the engine was fine. Put a code reader on it and one side was showing as 235 degrees and the other wasn't really working, so I replaced the sender, wired up the fans again, and all is good.

Horn still not working on the steering wheel. I suspect the squib is knackered. No biggie really.

But I have another problem. It's always been tough to start (if at all) when the weather gets cold, and this is only getting worse. I've replaced the crank sensor, the starter, and the battery, and it still fails to start on cold days. The engine seems to crank over fine, but it just won't fire. Jump start it off another running vehicle and it spins up quicker and fires straight away, so it looks like it's the cranking speed not being high enough for the ECU to let fuel through to the injectors. I've cleaned up all the earth wires, all the positive wires to the starter etc, but still nothing. I'm in two minds about buying a Bosch battery but that's about £120 all in. A lot of money if it doesn't fix it.

I've been reading and this is a common problem with later vans, but I presume this is stll the same problem as mine. Does anyone know if there's a way to tell the ECU to not expect as higher crank speed in order for it to work? Or does anyone have any other suggestions?

[Tetsu0san]

An update....

So the starting issue got worse and worse to the point where on the day of its MOT it point blank refused to start. I'd recently bought another battery in an attempt to fix the starting poblem, and even with another battery wired up in parallel it still wouldn't start. Eventually I got my Dad's van, wired up the jump leads from that while it was running and it fired up straight away. I was annoyed and very confused. Although I was late for the MOT, they still managed to squeeze it in, and it passed. Bitter sweet..

Anyway, after the dust settled I tried to use it again and yet again it wouldn't start. I had this funny thought that the crank sensor I'd fitted was the problem so I fitted the old one back in, and low and behold it started up fine. I drove it all day, no issues at all, so I thought that perhaps I'd fitted a faulty sensor after all. Next day I decided to go and get another sensor but the blasted thing would not start. After abandoning it I managed to get out and pick up a new sensor, fitted that (as well as a cam sensor, just in case) and it still wouldn't start. By this piont I was about ready to set fire to the thing and be done with it.

After a bit of a break I started googling a bit more. I read online about a leak off problem so I bought a tester and plumbed it in. This is what I found:

The other injectors were all showing equal amounts of fuel in their their pipes but injector 2 was as shown, so perhaps this was the problem all along and it was just getting worse and worse over time? I've bought another injector, but now I'm struggling to get this one out as it's well and truly seized in there. I've tapped it with a hammer, tried to rotate it, tried to prise it out, and it's still stuck. On the plus side though I think that the tapping it has actually sort of fixed it because in a dessparate attempt to remove the injector I thought I'd try getting the engine warm to see if that helped and after reconnecting all the pipes and electrics I turned the key and it started quicker than it has ever started before. So I think I'm on the right track.

Just need to get the injector out.

I'll be back!

[Tetsu0san]

Wasn't sure what tool I needed to buy to extract the injector so made a tool instead and managed to get it out. It was really rusty and not easy to pull, but at least it's out. Cleaned up the hole, fitted the replacement injector with some copper ease and a new washer, and it started just fine.

Going to give it a bit of a run today but hopefully that's the end of that.