Xsara Picasso fuel problem

[paul in normandy]

Car is a 1999 2.0Hdi. Recently it totally failed to restart after a shopping trip - to buy a loaf of bread - local Citroen garage dragged it 200 metres to their premises and diagnosed the intank pump to be faulty, then gave me an estimate of around €800 to replace it. As the car is only worth about half of that, I declined. The owner of the garage managed to get it going again, but suggested I needed to replace the pump. After doing some research on the internet I decided to fit an exterior one on the basis that if it conked out again it would be much easier to replace. Fitted pump, fired it up, and it went fine for a few days. Car ran fine on the way to a house about 18 km away, but on the way back it went into 'limp home mode' and would not rev. I noticed a small leak from the outlet side of the pump, fixed that and road tested again. Fine on the way out, stopped the car, restarted, back to limp home mode......
Rechecked all the connections - fuel and electrical - now it will run for about 30 seconds then the pump shuts off. The yellow engine management light is on.
Any suggestions as to what to do with it (apart from blow it up!!).

Thanks in advance for any help.

[myglaren]

Could be the strainer on the in-tank pump is clogged so the flow to the new pump is similarly restricted.
I believe that changing the pump is neither difficult nor expensive* - BUT on the Picasso the tank needs to be dropped and that part is no fun at all.

* I've seen that pumps have been sourced from Poland for around €80~€100.

[paul in normandy]

Hi, Tank has been taken out, cleaned, and replaced without the strainer in it, but with an inline filter before the replacement pump.
Original problem was most likely muck in the strainer. (Had exactly similar problem with the camper van only a couple of weeks before!)

[myglaren]

Hmmm. Won't be that then

Another possibility is the fuel pressure regulator, seems to have been at fault in several fairly recent cases.

If you have a Lexia it should show what the sensor thinks is the fuel pressure.

[paul in normandy]

If you have a Lexia it should show what the sensor thinks is the fuel pressure.
- I was going to come to that, there appear to be several types of these advertised on fleabay, anyone got a recommendation for a particular one or supplier, as I suspect it might prove to be a good investment!

[Hell Razor5543]

Although they are not cheap, Easy Diagnostics do a Lexia clone that is very good;

https://www.frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/ ... 15&t=56324

[wheeler]

Just curious, why would you have went to the hassle of dropping the tank to clean it out & not replaced the in tank pump at the same time ? They are not that expensive.
If the faulty pump is still left in the tank i dont think fuel can be drawn through it if the pump is not running, the the broken pump effectively becomes a blockage unless you have removed the insides of it.
€800 is well excessive for this job, even from a main dealer, i think the book time is only around an hour.

[paul in normandy]

In tank pump, which in my opinion is a stupid idea anyway, is around €120 http://www.mister-auto.com/pompe-a-carb ... 47076.html an external one is available for about £35 and if it goes wrong its easy to change. The old pump, and filter were removed, like this http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to- ... -connecte/
the only thing I did differently was to put an inline filter just before the new pump - cost a couple of quid, you can easily see if its blocked, and takes about 2 minutes to change it.
There is a handy space underneath the tank to fit an inline pump, and even a threaded stud to bolt the big P clip on to - it appears as if Citroen may have intended to fit an inline pump originally.