C4 Picasso parking brake intermittent fault

[Patur]

Good day

On our Citroen C4 Picasso 1.2 gasoline, the electronic parking brake will occasionally fail to engage. Three symbols light up on the dashboard, as well as beeping and error message on the console. The local shops are not the best at fault finding, so I was hoping to get a clue or direction before we move on with attempted repairs.

Aft calipers were replaced a couple of years ago. They were not original, but I suspect they are not the cause. Typically when the parking brake fails to engage, starting the car and driving at slow speed for 30 seconds will clear the error, and the brake will engage next time. Sometimes it engages during those 30 seconds driving, but only if the speed is dead slow. It releases again immediately in that case. If you try to force it to engage while there is a fault - by using the manual push - it can happen that the brake will get stuck. In that case it is only possible to release it by first disconnecting the battery for a minute.

Sometimes when the parking brake continually fails, and stopping and starting the car fails to reset the brake, disconnecting the power will also help, and the brake will then engage again.

I don't have access to the tester or error codes currently.

I have heard that replacing the manual switch is often enough, but I do not know how reliable that information is. It was my intention to try that first, but maybe other Citroen owners have some experience?

[PaulC5]

I do not know what year your car is but there is a long topic here that may help viewtopic.php?t=64916

[RichardW]

What year is the car? Early cars use 4 wire motors with position feed back, later cars (face lift, about 2017 on) use 2 wire with no position feed back. Early cars are prone to the sensor wires rotting along the rear trailing arms (along with the ABS sensor wires - what other faults are you seeing?). Really you need to get it on a diag machine to pin point where the fault is.

[Patur]

The registration says the production year was 2016. Car was originally bought in 2017. The model is PT130 (?)

[PaulC5]

On the tyre pressure sticker the top number is the rpo which can be used to get the date the car was made, if you put it on here it might help. An example calculator to get the date http://www.citroen-ds-id.com/gen/Gen_Organr.html

[Patur]

By all appearances it was made on 27 September 2016 in Vigo, Spain