Unfortunately this forum is at best help for DIY owners, who are able to recognise the correct use of a spannerSimonM wrote: As you can tell I am very impressed with the car
Car DIY is all about getting dirty hands yourself and sort out the problems yourself and saving money - lots of money - BIG money
You share your car problems with millions of other car owners every day all over the world : cars are not build to be easy serviced by the average mechanic.
Not even if he has been on a training course covering that particular model, and have the worlds most advanced diagnostic tools at his hands.
The story goes on, and level of small disasters is still increasing ...
The rear brakes hunger for parts is a wellknown issue on the Xantiae. As the C5 is constructed exactly the same way, it has inherited the exact same problem : corrosion between the rear arm surface and the brake caliper surface, which then offsets to an angle causing unduly operation and wear. The mechanics OBDII fault code reader however does not tell him this, and he is completely lost as a simple parts changer.
French cars have a bad, very bad, reputation of quality (or missing so) in the electrics system. This includes missing corrosion protected wire terminations in almost any type connector used throughout the vehicle.
The connectors themselves is mostly now of better quality.
The result is all kinds of electric connection problems in cars which have been exposed to a standard Northern hemisphere environment for a couple of years. Salty misted roads during winter time, mostly solely humid to wet, never frosty dry.
Computer systems with lots of sensors (data originators), receivers (actuators commanded by data), possibly bad earth connections and possible bad data communication wires, are bound to get haywock at times. And do so
The mechanic is no electrics or no computer expert, not even close to. he pops in his OBDII fault code reader, get a fault code and replace the rear wiper.
He can not pull down that dusty oscilloscope signal tracer from the shelf and hook in a couple of probes to test the signals on the OBDII databus, just to check if everyting looks normal when the engine vibrates the chassis and the harnesses, or when a high power consumer is switched on.
He wont know how to do it
Or even how to interprete whats on the display
He is a training course certified user of his OBDII fault code reader for the Citroen model he choosed to be a specialist on.
He is not to blame, he choosed a profession as a mechanic, nothing else.