Tales of a C3, a Goddess and some BMW's.

Unread post by **myglaren** » 24 Dec 2009, 00:20

[orf topic]

Earlier this week I wired in one of those rechargeable glovebox torch sockets to my HDi that I'd removed from a BMW being broken some time ago, the only problem I've got is finding somewhere to mount it other than have it laying in the cointray as it is at the moment, all (sensible Laughing ) suggestions welcome.

I noticed that a lot of CX's have a lamp on a flexible lead on the side of the central console. Is this a standard fitment or some after market equipment>
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DickieG · Unread post by **DickieG** » 24 Dec 2009, 01:39

Reading about Xac's starting woes reminded me of something else I'd done with the V6 as a result of the cold weather. I'd noticed that when starting the V6 the turn over speed was a little on the slow side and after couple of times of putting the battery on charge (she's not driven very frequently) I'd then found that the charger showed the battery at a full charge after just a couple of hours

clearly not correct so I dug out my Hydrometer and used it to test the specific gravity on each of the six cell's on the battery, five were showing an acceptable reading but the last one (next to the negative pole) was very low (as was the electrolyte level) both of which are pretty good indicators of a battery on it way out so I've replaced it with the one I removed from the Goddess (wrong fitting) and normal starting performance is resumed

(also a bit of preventative maintenance here as its a right old palaver re-setting the rev counter on a S2 following a flat battery

).

DickieG · Unread post by **DickieG** » 24 Dec 2009, 22:28

An interesting day today which started off with the search for a rear strut sphere for the V6 to match the NOS one I had in a batch of genuine sphere's I'd bought a year or so ago, so I visited a dealer who is selling off NOS spares and came away with a large number of sphere's and enough LHM to change the fluid in the whole of my Citroën fleet several times over, well as you do

oh and a couple of sets of rear brake disc's and pads, the whole lot pretty much filled my estate and once home finding the space to store this lot was quite a challenge. Jim uses LHM as a hair tonic, I prefer to bathe in it

Getting the oil level correct in the V6 posed quiet a challenge, I filled it to the bottom mark on the dipstick when cold then took the car out for a drive to warm up the oil (but still had to rev the engine with a gear engaged and the handbrake on to reach 80°C). When I checked the level it was over the maximum mark (big no no on these gearboxes) so I had the delightful job of undoing the sump plug and draining out about 1/2 a litre of very hot oil whilst it ran over my hand (ouch!

) finally the V6 is now sorted with all servicing and outstanding jobs completed

.

Unread post by **CitroJim** » 25 Dec 2009, 11:10

Santa came early this you Richard

LHM for life by the looks of it!

On the Christmas theme, your estate must have looked like Santa's sleigh with that load on board. All loaded up with presents for Xantia owners everywhere

DickieG · Unread post by **DickieG** » 25 Dec 2009, 11:29

CitroJim wrote:On the Christmas theme, your estate must have looked like Santa's sleigh with that load on board. All loaded up with presents for Xantia owners everywhere

Yes it did

I'll be putting a post in the For Sale section in a few days as I have a number of sphere's for BX's, XM's and C5's, so if you're looking for genuine new sphere's at a bargain price keep an eye out.

DickieG · Unread post by **DickieG** » 29 Dec 2009, 01:14

Returned home this evening from doing the Christmas relative visiting rounds, firstly to Bournemouth for Dawns family where I installed a Parrot Bluetooth hand free kit into my BILs' Lexus IS200. After staying for a couple of nights it was then off to Seaford to see my family where this morning I did a sphere change on my other BILs' Xantia 2.1 Exclusive. Removing the N/S/R sphere brought about a shower of LHM for the cars' underside as the diaphragm had ruptured

a quick drive around the block revealed that the car drives very nicely at 140,000 miles apart from a knock on the N/S drop link, the BIL will sort that out this week.

I used the HDi estate for the 350 mile round trip which served us very well, being supremely comfortable for the three of us and Barney, my mad fun loving Airedale and a boot full of luggage/pressies.

This photo was taken a week or so ago when Barney decided to bury his head in the snow

Unread post by **CitroJim** » 29 Dec 2009, 07:12

That was a good practical Christmas Richard

Far more enjoyable than sitting comatose in front of the TV having over-eaten and so on. My kind of Christmas 8)

That's a great picture of Barney!

I feel another caption competition coming on...

"It's 'sno joke you know..."

DickieG · Unread post by **DickieG** » 10 Jan 2010, 22:09

For Christmas Swimbo bought me a Parrot MKi9200 Bluetooth car kit as an upgrade from the CK 3100 to allow me to play music from my Iphone through the car speakers so I spent a couple of hours changing over the two kits, the older one I will install in my VSX as I rarely drive that car.

Today I collected a load of Citroën breakout harnesses to use in connection with the Lexia which by a quick check should give me the full set of Xantia ones, I will inevitably have several duplicates so I'll offer those out when I know what I have.

The seller is a Citroën Technician who during a lengthy chat mentioned something I'd not heard previously, namely that the auxiliary belt on some C3, C4, C5's is elastic so therefore does not have an adjustable tensioner. To remove the belt it has to be cut off and to fit a new belt a special tool is required in order to stretch the belt over the pulleys, what chance anyone outside the dealer network? Anyone else heard of this?

vince · Unread post by **vince** » 11 Jan 2010, 21:39

Cant say that ive come across this yet.....

DickieG · Unread post by **DickieG** » 23 Feb 2010, 23:43

Its been relatively quiet with my fleet recently, the Goddess and VSX have been tucked up in bed under cover with the BMW and V6 working faultlessly. On Friday the additional heater fitted to the HDi threw another tantrum (or should I say glowplug) as it stopped working complete with a screeching/groaning noise. Fitting a new glowplug has got it going again but I'm now wondering whether the glowplug is the cause or the effect, was the groaning the electric venting motor failing or whether the metal gauze fitted around the glowplug is wearing thin (it works similar to the wick on a gas camping light)?

Over the past week I turned my hand to helping out a good friend with a knackered Suzuki Vitara by replacing the head gasket, what appeared at first sight to be a relatively simple task took a turn for the worst when I attempted to remove the camshaft (in order to get the head skimmed) as the camshaft retaining caps are retained by countersunk Philip screws which refused to undo even when using an impact driver. Luckily enough we had access to a good donor car so I removed the head from that car and fitted it after a good clean up.

Another job on the Vitara was to sort out a dragging front brake caliper and split driveshaft gaitor so I took the simple route and swapped over the complete O/S/F suspension assembly with the donor car. Yesterday brought good news with the car in that it passed its MOT with just one advisory of a small split on the passenger wiper

This weekend was a rather heavy affair for me with three days of

and eating out as my 50th birthday was on Sunday. Friday was

and curry night with a couple of mates from work, Saturday out for a meal with Dawn, Danielle and a few close friends for a meal followed by a gathering back at our house and loads more

finally getting to bed at 2.30am, followed on Sunday by popping down to Seaford to see my Mum, Dad and Sisters family for another meal and

, not surprisingly I'm feeling my age as I'm still in the process of recovering.

After collecting another job lot of spares and Peugeot workshop manuals at Linslade, I popped up to see Jim and drop off a trolley jack I'd picked up at Costco's for him, excellent value at just £70 for a very solid (and heavy) low entry jack, my garage is now stuffed full with car spares so I'll be spending most of the weekend listing them on Ebay if only for the space.

vince · Unread post by **vince** » 24 Feb 2010, 23:09

Congrats on the 50th Richard.....

Sounds like you drank your weight in beer

DickieG · Unread post by **DickieG** » 25 Feb 2010, 19:15

vince wrote:Congrats on the 50th Richard..... Sounds like you drank your weight in beer

Thanks Vince, it did seem like that, just as well I took the first three days of this week off work to recover (and dry out) as a penance I decided to work some of off today by cycling to work, not a good decision as I got soaked to the skin coming home

DickieG · Unread post by **DickieG** » 27 Feb 2010, 23:19

A busy day today started with a good friend popping round in her VW Polo which was suffering from the ABS light being constantly illuminated, a common cause of ABS issues on Polo's is a poor connection between the fuse box on top of the battery and the connector on its side. A diagnosis session identified that the ABS ECU had recorded the fault of inconsistent power supply at terminal 30. A few months ago I effected a repair by simply cleaning up connections but the problem returned and no end of cleaning up connections managed to get things going again. At this point I got my volt meter out and discovered that 3 volts were being "lost" beyond a fuse connection so I soldered in an additional wire piggy back style which appears to have sorted out the issue.

My (or should I say Dawns' V6) had been suffering from a noisy front end for a few weeks, upon initial investigation a couple of weeks ago I couldn't establish what side was to blame or whether it was a driveshaft or wheel bearing. However a couple of hundred miles later and it became more obvious that the offside wheel bearing was to blame, luckily enough I had a ready made spare hub by utilising a spare one I had removed from a CT turbo estate a couple of years ago. Having completed the job a quick test drive revealed that the front end noise/rumble had gone but just as I slowed to turn into my road I discovered a new problem in that as the car slowed under gentle braking that ABS activated which caused the car to run on until I pressed the brake pedal harder.

Subsequent testing has revealed that whenever the road speed drops below 10 KPH the ABS activates

a diagnosis session established that no fault codes are recorded in the ABS ecu, however what I did discover is that when reading datastream of the speed being recorded by the four ABS sensors, the O/S/F sensor reads zero whenever the road speed drops below 10 KPH so tomorrow (weather permitting

) I'll try cleaning up the ABS ring around the driveshaft to see if that sorts it out.

I recall that this fault was reported on some time ago on the forum but despite searching through the previous threads I cannot find a definitive answer to the problem.

Unread post by **CitroJim** » 28 Feb 2010, 10:57

Don't chuck the old hub away Richard! I can press new bearings into it whenever the need arises.

If your weather is anything like ours; a diving suit will be needed

On your ABS problem, I'd be thinking the sensor output is falling off with speed and at low speeds there is insufficient amplitude to give a strong enough signal to the ECU.

I'm wondering if the tip of the ABS sensor is close enough to the ABS ring teeth. Too much distance here will reduce amplitude considerably. Dirt in the teeth too will reduce the signal.

Hope the weather clears up later....

DickieG · Unread post by **DickieG** » 28 Feb 2010, 11:17

CitroJim wrote:Don't chuck the old hub away Richard! I can press new bearings into it whenever the need arises.

Don't worry about that Jim I've put the hub to one side ready for a new bearing to be pressed in, dunno where I'll be doing that though

CitroJim wrote:If your weather is anything like ours; a diving suit will be needed

You're right there, I've just returned from walking Barney over what I normally regard as fields, today they resemble one very large lake.

CitroJim wrote:On your ABS problem, I'd be thinking the sensor output is falling off with speed and at low speeds there is insufficient amplitude to give a strong enough signal to the ECU.

I'm wondering if the tip of the ABS sensor is close enough to the ABS ring teeth. Too much distance here will reduce amplitude considerably. Dirt in the teeth too will reduce the signal.

Hope the weather clears up later....

I've been having a good look around the internet re this problem, it appears to be quite a common problem affecting any car fitted with ABS, the general consensus seems to be dirty or broken ABS rings on one or more of the hubs.