Ben's Citroen in Sweden

[Ben82]

strangely getting a SKF belt kit from mister-auto delivered to here is cheaper than the same one from the UK site (works out about £185 delivered)

I would hope that it would be, presuming that it is made in Sweden. (SKF=Svenska Kullager Fabrik)

Only thing there is, mister auto is based in France if it was directly from a Swedish supplier I could understand. Funny about Swedish products, I get Swedish cat food delivered from Germany cheaper than it would cost to buy it over here. Crazy!

[Ben82]

Ben, when you do the belt it's not a bad idea to do the water pump at the same time. Sod's law says that if you don't....

Jim, thanks, yeah I was already factoring that into the cost. No point in not replacing something that would mean you'd need to repeat almost the whole process again. Probably need to do the spark plugs too, but I'm guessing that's less urgent?

[CitroJim]

Probably need to do the spark plugs too, but I'm guessing that's less urgent?

Actually, whilst you're there Ben, an ideal time to do them...

[Ben82]

Actually, whilst you're there Ben, an ideal time to do them...

Was already budgeting it in They're one of the killers in the budget on the Swedish side... the Bosch double platinum spark plugs are about £25 each.. carparts4less? £6.84.

My main concern with those is the rear intake manifold... always wary of procedures that make a point of saying, don't drop anything!

Received the hose pliers today and they are absolutely HUGE. But seem ideal for the job, hopefully SWMBO'd hasn't got anything planned for the weekend, just incase screw something up

David, whilst I was down there, I had a look around the timing belt... I would say the coolant box is enough to remove (along with the engine mount) to give enough room. Removing the LDS one may help a little bit more but I'm not sure of the procedure for that and whether the gain is really worth the hassle.

[myglaren]

strangely getting a SKF belt kit from mister-auto delivered to here is cheaper than the same one from the UK site (works out about £185 delivered)

I would hope that it would be, presuming that it is made in Sweden. (SKF=Svenska Kullager Fabrik)

Only thing there is, mister auto is based in France if it was directly from a Swedish supplier I could understand. Funny about Swedish products, I get Swedish cat food delivered from Germany cheaper than it would cost to buy it over here. Crazy!

That makes no sense at all.. I was presuming that Mr. Auto was Swedish or that you were buying from a Swedish branch.

[Ben82]

I would hope that it would be, presuming that it is made in Sweden. (SKF=Svenska Kullager Fabrik)

Only thing there is, mister auto is based in France if it was directly from a Swedish supplier I could understand. Funny about Swedish products, I get Swedish cat food delivered from Germany cheaper than it would cost to buy it over here. Crazy!

That makes no sense at all.. I was presuming that Mr. Auto was Swedish or that you were buying from a Swedish branch.

Well I guess Sweden needs to be a bit more competitive in the export market than to its own population.

Did an order from opie this morning to take advantage of their 25% off offer for the servicing bits I need in a few months, since it was expiring at midday, I thought I'd use the saved amount to get some more lt71141 (9l) to bring me up to 10l. Essentially with the discount it was 4 bottles free.

So I might as well ditch my idea of a quick check of the ATF and just do one change using ~5l. If I find that I don't need a second change I can probably sell the other 5L to someone over here so can probably get the money back if need be.

[Ben82]

As per my other thread got the electrovalve replaced yesterday morning without issue, those pliers although huge, were absolutely perfect for the job.

Today marks 3 weeks since the BSI Reset and still haven't had an issue, not out of the woods yes, but tomorrow will be on par with the longest gap between issues since the battery was changed over.

Not had much driving this weekend apart from a short trip down the motorway to a Swedish equivalent of Lakeside (Has some of the same stores too, Game, JackJones, Toys'R'Us and unsurprisingly an IKEA!), but it is noticeably nice that there is no ticking noise coming from that electrovalve anymore.

Hopefully the stuff from Opie will come tomorrow (no bank holiday over here, but they have enough other days off anyway) or Tuesday. But only the ATF is what will be useful in the short term, rest will probably get stored in our room in the basement until near the end of July. Probably will not get round to doing an ATF change now until the end of this month at least.

[CitroJim]

Excellent Ben, it's all getting nicely sorted and you must be really glad that wretched ticking has finally gone. If it was on my car it would have driven me half-crazy by now...

IKEA - best shop in the world. We have one just a swallow's flight from here in Milton Keynes - my house is a shrine to the place...

[DHallworth]

Ben,

I certainly managed with just the coolant reservoir removed. I did wonder about removing the LDS reservoir but couldn't see it adding that much of a benefit to be honest.

The belt change was a fair bit easier on this then it was on the XM V6 as the engine bay is wider allowing for slightly better access between the chassis rail and the cam pulleys.

David.

[Ben82]

Ben,

I certainly managed with just the coolant reservoir removed. I did wonder about removing the LDS reservoir but couldn't see it adding that much of a benefit to be honest.

The belt change was a fair bit easier on this then it was on the XM V6 as the engine bay is wider allowing for slightly better access between the chassis rail and the cam pulleys.

David.

Thanks David.

SWMBO seems to be on board with getting a very similar car to what we have just manual instead, she realised that I'd have knowledge of both cars very well to be able to do work on them.
I have two concerns with it though....
1) the odometer with 365,000km on it! But the price does reflect that (by swedish standards anyway) - at just under £1K, the other one I was looking at had done 100,000km less, and cost 3x as much
2) That it's unlikely to have had the 360K service done, as the parts in Sweden alone come to at least £700, I really can't see it being the case. This in itself isn't too much of an issue, as I want to do the stuff myself, but driving back ~120km, I think I'd be on tenderhooks, especially since it's about 5000km over.

Hopefully if it hasn't had the 360K service done I can knock the price down even more or get them to include (at least some of) the parts for the service.

However at the moment I'm under orders not to do anything until a certain big day is out of the way a week on Saturday

The Opie stuff turned up today, so really pleased with that For some reason they decided I needed 6 copies of the invoice (to be honest I didn't even need one!)

[CitroJim]

For some reason they decided I needed 6 copies of the invoice (to be honest I didn't even need one!)

Maybe there’s some obscure law when exporting stuff to Sweden that says you need six Ben!

I bought some stuff from CPC Electronics the other day to do cruise repairs. They're almost as bad with the paperwork!

[Ben82]

For some reason they decided I needed 6 copies of the invoice (to be honest I didn't even need one!)

Maybe there’s some obscure law when exporting stuff to Sweden that says you need six Ben!

I bought some stuff from CPC Electronics the other day to do cruise repairs. They're almost as bad with the paperwork!

Generally I wouldn't mind if I could just throw them in the bin, but they have my name, addresses (UK and Swe), email, telephone number on etc, stuff that I would rather some random would not get their hands on.

Found another C5 V6 manual last night from a private person, which is more expensive (they're asking for about £2k), and it's done less miles than my car... only real issue is it's almost a 4hr drive away! So could potentially be a negotiate over the phone thing, and take public transport down there, and drive it back. It's completely obvious why they are selling it though - it has 114,000km on the clock! So the timing belt timebomb is ticking. Another benefit that SWMBO won't like...... it's the exact same colour as ours!

Interestingly I searched my email to see if I still had the quotes I got for the timing belt change, which I do, so can back up a reduction in price based on those.... the car is valued (swedish parkers style thing, but more configurable with mileage and other options) at between £1920 and £2460, but that would assume it doesn't need a major service. Will have to see what SWMBO says though. Would be nice to spend more knowing it has less mileage.

[Ben82]

Well, this is a turn up for the books, SWMBO is enthusiastic about the car, so much so that she wants to handle a lot of the talking before going to see the car, and laying out a plan of action for getting it, especially at a knocked down price.

That's a result for me, as I find it difficult talking to Swedes on the phone (don't mind in person), obviously I get a say in how much we pay for it.

[CitroJim]

Sounds like an excellent plan coming together a treat Ben here's hoping all goes well and it works out. With SWMBO at the helm of this I'm sure it will

[DHallworth]

One thing that is worth checking on any C5 V6 that you're looking at is that both radiator pipes are at the top of the radiator.

You can't get the older style rad any more so you need to buy new pipes from Citroen to fit the new rad. One is £6 the other is about £48.

Might be another bargaining point if it doesn't.

David.