Recently purchased a C5 X7 1.6 hdi model with the 109 hp and a regular suspension.
The car had driven 380.000 km and is from 2008, so as expected - there's gotta be some things to address.
Coming from a pug 206 1.4hdi as a daily and an mr2 with coilovers as a not so daily ... this c5 felt like i am floating on a cloud .. i kid you not, the first morning i had to go to work (still half asleep) took the c5 and i thought to myself when did they fix the roads here ...
But as all old cheap things - many problems to address.
To start with there was an outer driveshaft joint to replace, aparently one of the injectors had a correction of -10mg, the car had a hard time starting ... i felt it like if the glow plugs never turned on (you know when its cold ..), the engine itself was running quite bad ... had a hard time keeping stable rpm's and when under about 2000-2500 rpms was always "hacking" when on low load. Horrible sound when turning the wheel almost like the whole suspension has lost its rubber bushings and is about to collapse ..
So far so good ... took the car knowing all these things as a generral idea.
I gotta say - the citroen guys did a great job in making sure you will have a pain-in-the-ass task to do any work on the suspension .. not that its bad made ... its just not thought through for easy work on .. But thats a topic for another time.
So i got the cv joint replaced, meanwhile changed the oil in the gearbox, because ofcourse when popping the joint out - the whole drivefhaft popped before the joint
The horrible sound when rotating the steering wheel turned out as expected - very little to no oil in the servo tank ... topped it up and it was ok, luckily the pump had not starved completely so this is a nice reduction from the bills ..3
Got a new injector and got it changed - fixed the ecu correction problem after recoding and about an hour driving..
As coming from the world with easy to work on suspension where comfort is not a neccesity ... i was surprised how soft all the bushings in this C5 are ... is it normal to be all considerably soft than this 206 daily that i drive ... Like ... they are not soft as of being bad and torn ... but they are soft .. (or maybe they all need changing?)
The hard to start problem still persists ... i have to keep the key turned for like a second more after i hear the car start, just to make sure it wont die the moment after i release the key ... And about half of the times i can turn the key and crank it as long as i want and the car wont start at all until i release the key and try again .. (this is a weird one - it cranks, starts for like 1-2 revolutions and then dies and goes on to just crank). So far i have suspected the injector as obvious problem, but this is fixed and the problem persists. The other things i can think of is maybe failing EGR? Anyone who can shed some more light on what to focus? Glow plugs? Somehow an airlock of the common rail!?
The hacking from the engine ... the part where it just does not drive right ... is still here, but i noticed it was less of a problem right after i have done work on the engine ... and it turned out to be the turbo intake gasket (the one that stays between the turbo and the intake hoses from the air filter side) Aparently it slips and almost falls off the turbo. Once put pack on - it works a little bit better but i believe i can still feel the hacking ... Anyone with another idea to start looking ... (it can still be air in the fuel or egr!?) The hacking is mainly in the are where egr is active and the ecu is using maf control ... Once the turbo pressure builds up - no more hacking ..., i did change the maf and it did not help
It may be a common problem with the inability to hold rpm's stable at idle also ..And now the million dollar question - when i go over bumbs the whole front creaks ... as mentioned above - maybe the rubber bushings are not good anymore ... but if i lean on the car to compress the shocks it just is not enough to make it creak ... i belive it is not the shocks bearings ...
Well that was a long post ... if you are reading this - i also got tired from writing it
