My Xantia gave up on me

Rostami · Post by **Rostami** » 26 Apr 2005, 21:36

Well, lets hope for the best!
So far no feedback.

Post by **Thunderbird** » 26 Apr 2005, 22:22

Rostami,
Water is the enemy number one on the HDi engine! It's important to drain the diesel filter often, and change it every now and then. Always use quality diesel on that engine.
Good luck!

Rostami · Post by **Rostami** » 27 Apr 2005, 14:44

Thunderbird: what does "Always use quality diesel on that engine" exaclty mean?
I have some trouble distinguishing between the quality of our different brands of diesel. Are you talking about the so-called hi-energy variants? They don´t convince me much...

Post by **Thunderbird** » 27 Apr 2005, 16:21

Rostami, as you probably know, in France there is a sort of network that keeps statistics of the problems of most cars. Not just from a 50 cars sample, but from thousands of them. The major complication of the first generation HDi was fragility to water in the fuel. I was just quoting that report which recommends using high quality fuel without any water.
Now, another question is "how do we know if it's high quality fuel?".
That I don't know.
The water present in the fuel will sink to the bottom of the filter and must be drained off manually at revision intervals. When water passes through then there may be serious complications and damage to the HDi mk1 engine...
I had problems with Galp and Shell diesel (not water but dirt that blocked the filter).
I changed to BP Ultimate. So far so good.
The curious fact is that Citroen took six hours to discover that the problem with the car was a dirty fuel filter!
At least in Portugal, most official Citroen garages are totally incompetent!
Now, if there was water in the

Kowalski · Post by **Kowalski** » 27 Apr 2005, 16:33

Water in diesel is pretty common, mostly it happens when rain ends up in the storage tanks at a petrol station, fuel from refineries tends to be pretty good.
My older Xantia's injector pump was making a bit of noise, on pulling the fuel filter out I discovered that it dirty, gradually getting more dirty towards the bottom of the filter, changing the filter cured the noise.

Rostami · Post by **Rostami** » 27 Apr 2005, 19:01

Hummm...
I had a simmilar problem in tha past with my BX16 (RIP)... and have heard many stories about the water getting into fuel deposits.
The issue is that the engine suddenly stalled. it just stopped out of the blue. Would it be reasonable to say that water in the system would cause intermitent problems, say even for a few seconds, and then the engine would give up?
Thunderbird: My day-to-day life at work has a lot of statistics so I am a believer! Lets see what happens when I take the car to the mechanic...

fastandfurryous · Post by **fastandfurryous** » 27 Apr 2005, 19:22

Ever wondered why fuel is so dirty? Next time you see a fuel tanker on the road, notice the 6" diameter flexible pipes stored alongside the tank. These are used to deposit the fuel into the fuel station tanks. They pick up all manner of road dirt, water etc, and are used for all grades of fuel, without being cleaned out in between (and often have a good number of litres still in them when being changed from diesel to unleaded say.)
Tanks at fuel stations often leak too. One of the fuel stations I used to work at while I was in college had a major problem with one of its unleaded tanks taking on water. It was often 10% full of water, and I'm sure some of that ended up in people's car fuel tanks.

Post by **Thunderbird** » 27 Apr 2005, 19:38

Kowalsky, fastandfurryous, I share that opinion. I believe water gets in at the storage tanks at a petrol station, especially those with seals poorely maintained. The politcs of maintenance of fuel stations may vary from brand to brand. I thrust BP and have been lucky so far.
Rostami, according to the french articles, the DW10 mk1 HDi engine(found on Xantias) is extremely sensible to water, that usually provokes severe damage on the engine by destroying the entire injection system. When this happens, the engine stops working, of course, and repairing it is very expensive (over 2500 Eur).
It is recommended to use high quality diesel and to drain (purgar) the diesel filter every 10.000Kms or more often on these earlier HDi's, to reduce the risk of water get into the engine.
Probably your problem is of an entirely different nature.
Good luck!

jeremy · Post by **jeremy** » 27 Apr 2005, 21:26

Don't some Citroens have a light to indicate water in the fuel filter. I know BX and ZX don't but do some Xantia's? C5?
jeremy

Kowalski · Post by **Kowalski** » 27 Apr 2005, 21:38

If you get a load of water in your fuel tank, it'll fill the fuel filter housing / water trap pretty quickly and be in your engine before you've got chance to do anything about it, regardless of whether the light comes on or not.

Johnno · Post by **Johnno** » 28 Apr 2005, 03:54

I will happily bow to superior knowledge but I believe that with a diesel engine if you have compression and fuel, you will get ignition. Therefore, you are either getting no fuel or at all or fuel at the incorrect time. I am assuming, of course, that the electronics in the modern diesel are there only to promote efficiency. If I were designing such a system then I would input a default mode whereby if there was a significant fault then the electronic system would reset to a "get you home" mode. The pumps and injectors are essentially mechanical and hence if fuel arrives at the injection pump, something is likely to happen. If any of this is vaguely logical, it does suggest a cam belt failure. Unless you have a wire off the fuel cut-out switch! It's late and I may be talking nonsense, so I'll get my coat. Good luck!

jeremy · Post by **jeremy** » 28 Apr 2005, 06:31

As I understand it this engine is an HDi and has common rail fuel injection. the injection pump simply provides presurised fuel to the rail connecting all the injectors together and the electronics open the injectors at the appropriate time. in fact some of these engines have 6 nozzles in each injector, operating in 3 pulses and the fuel pressure is several times that used in mechanically pumped engines.
I agree there may well be a limp home mode but the electronics will still have to function to some extent as will the pump.
Jeremy

Rostami · Post by **Rostami** » 28 Apr 2005, 13:14

There is a "limp home mode" and a few months ago I experienced it. The engine "problem" light came on, and the car lost lots of power but it did take me home. It looked like a problem with the MAF. I took it out, blowed some air and cleaned it and the problem disappeared.

Post by **Thunderbird** » 28 Apr 2005, 15:28

According to the french article, when water reaches the HDi mk1, the entire injection system is destroyed instantly [:0] and the engine never works again until replacement, a very expensive operation.

Rostami · Post by **Rostami** » 28 Apr 2005, 15:38

Well, I certainly hope that this is not the case!!!
Thunderbird: the car is still under guarantee of the salesman. If water caused the problem, it would be unreasonable that the salesman is made responsible. So lets hope for the best!