Ciroen C5 2.0 HDi, cooling system and speedo questions.

[bodykitboy]

First of all, Hi and sorry to be the person who signs up with a question but needs must . Im a member on a few other motoring forums so im no stranger to my type.

Basically i've recently acquired a 2002 C5 2.0 HDi, its pushing for 150,000 miles but generally in good shape, i just have one or two little glitches that im trying to sort.

the car soon after i got it 'overheated', but when i opened the bonnet the rad fan was spinning but the rad and pipes going to it were cold, so i suspect the thermostat is sticking, and upon inspection of the coolant, i discovered its not coolant but just water.

i need to change the thermostat and coolant and was just wondering is this possible to diy? does anyone know the location of the thermostat and bleed screw? and do i need any special tools?

also my speedo has stopped working, when i drive it twitches a little and can be heard clicking. from google i believe this is a common problem with the 'stepper motor'. im just wondering

if i get gauges from a scrapped C5 elsewhere will they read my old mileage?
could i repair the stepper motor or replace it with one from any other citroen model as im finding scrapped c5's hard to find.
and how do i remove the gauge cluster itself?

i would really appreciate any help guys, i've used the search function to not much avail.

Thanks in advance

[Citroenmad]

Welcome to the FCF

As your coolent is just water id suspect its either using coolent or its leaking/has been leaking.

The thermostat is not something ive changed on a 2.0HDi, but I think its a fairly easy job and the coolant shouldn't be too challenging either.

As for the speedo, i had this problem with ours a few months back, the speedo just stopped working. It was the stepper motor, i priced up a new speedo unit which is quite a shocking £600 or something! Luckily i managed to find a brand new one which had been sitting on a shelf in a local French car parts place and got that for £70 - it was the exact one for the car too.

You can of course fit used clocks, but make sure they are for your model of C5 and have the same functions etc.

Mileage: If you get replacement clocks with mileage less than the mileage your car has done, then the car will imprint its mileage on the new clocks and your display will give you the right mileage.

However, if you fit clocks from a higher mileage car then the car will keep this higher mileage and store it in the ECU. The old mileage will then be gone and even if you fit lower mileage ones after that the higher mileage will remain.

So be careful!

[bodykitboy]

i feared it might be something like that. it has a full citroen service record up to 130,000 miles, then it was serviced once by an indy garage @ 140k and i had done it myself just last week when i got it.

the oil was a 'good' colour (for 10k old diesel oil ) no signs of contamination from coolant etc. so i dont think it could be hgf, unless i have an external leak, which again there are no obvious signs of.

i only ask, as i read on searching this forum that a special adapter is needed to refill the coolant as the header/ expansion tank is lower than the highest part of the cooling system so airlocks could be created, but im not too sure.

thats great advice with the gauges, and a clever idea on citroens part to match the higher mileages, thanks very much hopefully i can just find a lower mileage set than my own before i try repairing/ replacing motors. its just over here in the ROI there are very few c5's around

nice find with the new gauges for 70 quid i'd never be so fortunate.

[P616VKX]

The thermostat on a HDi engine is a piece of pie to do...

My Picasso required a new thermostat housing as it'd broken (For some reason) and it took me about an hour with all the faffing around to do. It was spot on after that.

I believe there were bleeding apparatus on the housing itself, it sits very close to the top of the engine.

Stuart.

[bodykitboy]

thanks for that! just a simple screw the old one out, screw the new one in like the olden days is it?

[myglaren]

I haven't replaced my thermostat or had it done but refilling and bleeding is quite simple. There are three bleed valves. They look like tyre valve caps. Two should be bright blue.

Open them when draining and refilling and let coolant flow out until the bubbles stop then tighten each one in turn as coolant flows with no air evident.
Run the engine up to temp, bleed again and check that the top hose gets hot, as well as the radiator - you may need to give it a run to get the radiator warm.

Also the stepper motors are easy to change with a little care, sidesteps the mileage issue.

[bodykitboy]

thanks for the info are the bleed screws plain to see? i havn't stumbled upon them. somewhere near the thermo housing i presume?

i had read that if you replace the stepper motor that it has no 'calibration' as such and the speedo could be reading very wrong when you reassemble. that doesnt concern me so much as finding one.

its very troublesome to find a c5 around here, i was half wondering if i took a stepper from say a saxo or xsara or something a little more common are they any way likely to be the same?

[myglaren]

Some are and some aren't.
A quick fix is to use the stepper from the rev tachometer.

There is a thread depicting the bleed screws and I have some pictures, somewhere.

If I can't find them I will post new ones tomorrow evening but they are not hard to find.

[bodykitboy]

thats fantastic, i really appreciate it

i spent a good hour or more in the search function before i registered so i hope you have a good hunch

[wright]

if you change the stepper motor it can be calibrated with a lexia, where are you

[bodykitboy]

Ireland

[wright]

i kopped that much when you said you were in the roi

[bodykitboy]

apologies i dropped you a private message. most peculiar

[Jeff]

Firstly you will need to remove the display out of the dash, it involves adjusting by lowering and pulling out the steering wheel and from beneath, using two flat head screw drivers (or similar) prising the display upwards and outwards. It takes a bit of prising and you may have to remove some of the casing around the steering lock etc.

The most common problem with the stepper motor (SM): there's two little pastic cogs inside the SM body, one of which sits on a plastic pin that shears off from the SM plastic body. The body is in two halves which can be pulled apart. I fixed mine by matching a small shiny metal pin nail to the cog bore, then cutting it down to the required length and drilling a similar size diameter hole in the SM casing and aralditing the metal pin in. The cog then sits on the metal pin instead of the "sheared off" plastic pin.

I set my speedo (when initially removing the SM from the back of the display cluster you will pull it away from the hand dial), by driving past speed warning signs and removing / replacing the hand dial. Mine shows my speed very accurately now and it was easy to reset, like setting a clock really.

If you speedo is "twitching" the chances are its the problem I have explained above. Give it a go, its a "feel good factor" repair when you consider what you saved.

[bodykitboy]

cool, i reckon then its definitely worth a bash at repairing before replacing

so basically drop the wheel down and out as far as it will go.

then stick a screw driver or similar into the gap that dropping the steering wheel has created and prize the gauges up and out?

are they easy to split once they are out? and is fiddling with the motor something you have to be an electric wiz to do or is it idiot proof?

another great reply, very thankful i signed up!