Intermittent juddering/engine cutouts from cold

[grahambeale]

Hi there,

I wonder if anyone can help us, we’ve been experiencing intermittent problems with the semi-automatic gearbox on our 2014 Picasso Grand over the last year.

Our local Citroen garage say ‘they have no answers for us’ and are unable to isolate the problem, yet we feel the symptoms of this problem could easily put our families safety at jeopardy should it occur at the wrong time/place in the future.

There are two symptoms:

1. Violent juddering when departing from a cold start (often resulting in a stall/engine cutout)
2. Stalling/engine cutout when leaving a junction following a cold start.

The second symptom has left us stranded in the middle of busy roads - though fortunately without incident thus far.

We have been to the Citroen garage about 4/5 times so far and the problem started whilst we were within the warrantee period. The car is low mileage (only local school/nursery traffic) - 32,000 or so and we’ve had no other problems apart from cheap plastic fixings breaking.

We love this car and are keen to get it fixed, but if Citroen are unable to help us I’m not sure what else we can try.
Does any one have any potential solutions? In the meantime I was going to write to Citroen UK and make a complaint, but if we don’t make any progress soon I will be forced to buy a new car given our safety concerns.

Graham

[wurlycorner]

Hi there
This sounds very poor if the problem started while still under warranty and they've not been able to fix it, the problem continuing beyond warranty expiry shouldn't make a difference?
Do you know what the dealer has done/checked/tried already? is there any detail on the service worksheets they've provided to you after each visit? Or anything they've told you?

Does the dashboard cut out when the engine dies, or does that stay illuminated normally?

I think I'd be tempted to start with the basics and check that all engine to body and battery to body grounds are in good condition and secure.