xsara intermittent electrical faults

[dei9]

I'll have a look at it, you mean the one in the middle of the inner fuse box? (I have another one at fuse 1, not sure if that's a spare)
I'll have a good fiddle though. Cheers.

[dei9]

Well, I had a good look at it. It seems ok. (the fuse).

The Lexia spat out a load of faults from BSI/Engine/Auto box ecu's about sensors being s/c or o/c or over value. Included immobiliser fault, coolant sensor, speed sensor, accel sensor, ecu's not talking to each other, turbo pressure, pre-post relay, brake switch, blower open circuit (it works fine).

It sounds like an earth fault, so as it was raining today I removed the dash to expose the wires. So I can prod around tomorrow. Again, haven't got round to the engine/gearbox earth yet. Do I get to it from the top or underneath the car? BSI unit threw some faults (as above), but things still work in the car (lights, wipers, fuel gauge (speed/rev/temp gause not working). Immobliser does what it wants, but it starts everytime. The stop light flashes and beeps at me if i don't start it.

So unless anyone has any other suggestions (other than me finding the engine earth) what do I check? Where is the BSI computer located? Where are the earth/s for inside the car? It's all a bit tight by the fusebox isn't it.

[dei9]

The problem was that brown round connector near the firewall on the nearside (in front of it is the AL4 ECU). This connector has two CAN connections (to AND from the gearbox, one from the engine, and the other into the BSI unit). The engine wasn't able to send the speed/revs to the gearbox because of the lack of a CAN line, and therefore it went into limp mode. The temp info wasn't going through either because there are temp info going in/out of that plug too.

Weirdly, the connector's contact breaks when it's screwed on properly, so I had to open it a bit to get the continuity back. Lexia was then able to clear the faults.

[chinkostu]

Might be worth undoing the plug and seeing if you can clean up the contacts/fix the wonky ones. My 206 has rear lights with dodgy wires like that, have to have it partially plugged to work!

Glad you got to the bottom of it though

[dei9]

I've had all the whole thing out, ecu's, cradle, each side of both plugs off the cradle etc. I've played and played with the connection pins on each side to try and find a happy medium between a tight dust free waterproof fit and good connection and it just seems weirdly impossible to get the darned plug working as it should, I just cant work it out other than it not sitting square against the pins as the pins are clustered on one corner of the plug (only 13 pins out of 27 possible pins used).

Anyway, I've glad I worked it out. Just imagine if I had taken that to a garage to sort out?

Cheers!