Citroen Reliability..?

[cachaciero]

O.K well I will add a little food for thought here.

Last week I needed to fit a new HID lamp, now this turned out to be a front bumper off job to remove the headlight assembly, while doing this I discovered a problem with the headlight washer. Now in all there's lotsa clicky bits of plastic here headlight washer covers, jet assembly's into pistons, lamp covers etc. This was done on a coldish day with the best care in the world several bits of plastic got broken resulting in the requirement for some "new" bits.
The cheapest way was to purchase a complete secondhand light assembly, that arrived today .
While removing the bits I wanted I picked it up by one of the mounting lugs which looks quite substantial as I rotated the lamp, for a second all the weight of the lamp which is not substantial was taken on this lug which promptly snapped like a rotten bit of wood, this really surprised me, the plastic is I believe a polypropylene variety, and my assessment based upon thickness and design was that it should not have broken.

This led me to think a bit.
From my limited understanding of plastics for most common plastics plasticisers are added to improve flexibility molding characteristics etc. These plasticisers deteriorate with time, the less added in the mix the quicker they disappear and the more brittle and weaker the plastic becomes.
Of course undoubtedly the less amount of plasticisers added the cheaper the plastic is to produce.
Now I reckon that this is one area where the manufactures can probably gage almost to the month when assemblies will lose the minimum amount of strength required for successful assembly disassembly depending on the plastic and its' mix.

I will leave the audience to ponder on the implications of this given the vast amount of plastic material used in the modern motor car.

Oh! and if you need to work on click together plastic bits best to do it in a garage heated to 25 degrees with the assemblies having been allowed to stabilise to this temp and on a 5 year + car (and that includes a C6) and i bet you will still break a few tabs and latches

cachaciero

[Citroenmad]

Interesting what you say.

I cant think of any trim or catches that ive broken on the C5s yet. They seem surprisingly well made to me.

Plastic will always be more brittle in the cold, but as i say ive not had a problem with Citroens plastic.

Plastic on Fiats, now thats another matter. Closing the door on our 52reg Stilo one day and i was left with the entire door handle in my hand and the door still open. Every bit of plastic would snap on that thing if you so much as looked at it. Nasty.

That Fiat was a 1.6 petrol and had a DMF, which was failing.

A lot of cars develop rattles as they age, usually from the dash and other plastic areas. The C5s ive had have all been rattle free.

[Geoff Lebowski]

cachaciero, I agree about Cit cutting corners on say plasticisers etc on production cost grounds but they won\'t of manufactured anything to actually purposefully fail with a view to selling more parts - that would take more engineering resources that would end up being financially counter productive.

Cars are engineered for lean manufacturing. The fact that you have to remove a bumper to replace a head light (which is simply ludicrous) is of no concern to Citroen, in fact, as a by product of manufacturing the cars in increasingly large modular components, the labour incurred in replacing a head light can be a good earner.

Most manufacturers don\'t make money manufacturing a car, it\'s the servicing, parts, labour and finance deals they make money on.

Crazy world.....

[cachaciero]

cachaciero, I agree about Cit cutting corners on say plasticisers etc on production cost grounds but they won\'t of manufactured anything to actually purposefully fail with a view to selling more parts

With a view to selling parts ? no, they have to meet two requirements:- one to build the car well enough so that it gets through the warranty period with preferably zero failures, and two to build the car down to a a price at which they can sell it in what is economically a cut throat arena.
So if specifying a plastic mix that lasts five years is cheaper than specifying one that lasts six then guess which is going to get specified.

From the manufacturers point of view the only money that is to be made after selling the car is in the supply of high mark up value spare parts to the franchised repairers. Even at this level competition is I suspect fierce because many of these same items are produced by sub-contractors who themselves supply directly to the non-franchised repair market where much of the post warranty repair work gets done so there is little scope for making money there.

selling price, after that - that would take more engineering resources that would end up being financially counter productive.
Cars are engineered for lean manufacturing. The fact that you have to remove a bumper to replace a head light (which is simply ludicrous) is of no concern to Citroën, in fact, as a by product of manufacturing the cars in increasingly large modular components, the labour incurred in replacing a head light can be a good earner.

Yes I understand all about lean manufacturing and in reality removing the front of the car is not difficult or time consuming apart from the washers the book time to do the whole job is only 1.5 h and I doubt that much of that money flows back to the manufacturer.

Most manufacturers don\'t make money manufacturing a car, it\'s the servicing, parts, labour and finance deals they make money on.

The manufacturer may well make money on financing deals but I doubt that they make much out of servicing, parts or labour for reasons already stated.
The fact that it is so difficult to make money out of manufacturing is precisely the driver for value engineering / cost control taken to the limit.
I believe the reason why so many new cars from a variety of manufacturers now appear to be suffering from failures that only a few years ago would have been unthinkable in the numbers which are now appearing is simply that the value engineering / cost accountants have in a few areas cut too much and in some cases this is obviously having an impact on warranty budgets.
However bad things are for the owner of a car direct from the manufacture the secondhand purchaser is going to get an even rawer deal.
There is I suggest a general consensus that if in say 2002 someone had purchased a secondhand average mileage eight year old XM or Xantia in reasonable condition it would have given the purchaser another 40/50K of comfortable driving with little risk of incurring significant cost for major repairs such as clutches / flywheels suspension components, apart from maybe spheres.
The same could not be said for purchasing in 2008 an eight year old C5 1 and even less so a C5 3. For me personally while I would have had no problem buying an older XM or Xantia with 80 or even 90K on the clock looking at todays crop I am beginning to consider that maybe for current cars on the secondhand market then the cut off point maybe needs to be drawn at five years and / or 50K in order to get 40K of motoring befor facing heavy bills.

Crazy world.....

Indeed it is

[Peter.N.]

One of my XM's is at about 160,000 miles and the other nearly 300,000 and they are from my point of view still viable, my 406Hdi has 190k and that's still going very well, it seems that the very early Hdi's are pretty good but many other modern cars seem absolute rubbish, I certainly couldn't afford to run one.

Peter

[Citroenmad]

The same could not be said for purchasing in 2008 an eight year old C5 1 and even less so a C5 3. For me personally while I would have had no problem buying an older XM or Xantia with 80 or even 90K on the clock looking at todays crop I am beginning to consider that maybe for current cars on the secondhand market then the cut off point maybe needs to be drawn at five years and / or 50K in order to get 40K of motoring befor facing heavy bills.

I disagree, but as an example.

In 2009 i bought a 52reg C51 HDi 110 SX. Its been virtually faultless and cost only wear and tear items since i bought it. I thought about selling it recently but im loathed to part with it, its such a good and reliable car. Id go anywhere in it, if i had to drive to the south of France tomorrow i know it would get me there and back without a drama, it already has.

There are no plans to move that C5 on for at least 2 years and im confident it will provide great service even then. In fact id love to just pile miles onto it and see how high i can get it.

Cars now are doing a lot of miles, you just have to look on ebay and autotrader at the cars on the cheaper end of their scale and you soon spot modern cars with 200K plus. Thats not to say its been an easy mileage to get to, but the owners wouldnt keep problematic cars for such distances.

I dont think modern cars deserve such a hard time, ok so the DMF might be an issues on some cars - though i do maintain driving habits has a bearing on it. There will and always has been weak points with all cars, varying issues which might arise during ownership.

To think now how reliable Xms are, back when they were new many garages didnt want to go near them!

Im confident that the C5s we own now will be reliable for many years to come. If its looked after, serviced, driven with mechanical sympathy and any niggling issues are dealt with promptly, then expensive repairs should be minimal.

Finding an Xm with 80-90K on will be hard enough, though if its been a neglected car - as with anything, then costs will still mount.

Knowing what is a reliable car and a reliable model helps.

Yes cars might be a bit more complex now but its for many very good reasons. However in 5-10 years time, im sure we will be looking back on the cars of today and thinking how much more reliable they are ...

... then again, a plug, electrical flex and electric motor should be pretty easy to maintain. Just like the fridge, plug the thing in and away it goes, how dull!

[Clogzz]

promptly snapped like a rotten bit of wood

It doesn’t look like they still use much polypropylene.
Most plastics seem to be ABS, a relative of styrene.

I’ve only had the C5 for 18 months but am already looking around for what will come after it.
On the TV news I look at footage from poor countries where usual transport is by donkey or swing rope.
Whatever cars they can afford must be repairable on the cheap, and that’s what I’ll get next.

[Peter.N.]

That's what I still run

[addo]

Cloggz: A carbureted Peugeot 505?

[cachaciero]

promptly snapped like a rotten bit of wood

It doesn’t look like they still use much polypropylene.
Most plastics seem to be ABS, a relative of styrene.

A wide variety of plastics are used, according to the codes molded in to the shell the headlight shell is polypropylene, the outer lens is polycarbonate and the reflector assembly polyamide

I’ve only had the C5 for 18 months but am already looking around for what will come after it.
On the TV news I look at footage from poor countries where usual transport is by donkey or swing rope.
Whatever cars they can afford must be repairable on the cheap, and that’s what I’ll get next.

That sounds like tomorrows U.K

cachaciero