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

[DickieG]

With the appearance of this fine spring weather I brought the beast out of hibernation and renewed the road fund tax using the DVLA's new website. Well from my experience I'd offer a word of caution to anyone doing the same, the car had been SORN'd but having renewed the tax and reading on the website that you don't need to wait before using the car on the road I was then rather alarmed to discover that it took the DVLA 48 hours to update their website to state that the car is now taxed. Thankfully I kept a copy of the email on my phone, had I not done that and then got pinged by an ANPR camera I could have ended up in a tricky situation, be aware!

[Stickyfinger]

With the appearance of this fine spring weather I brought the beast out of hibernation and renewed the road fund tax using the DVLA's new website. Well from my experience I'd offer a word of caution to anyone doing the same, the car had been SORN'd but having renewed the tax and reading on the website that you don't need to wait before using the car on the road I was then rather alarmed to discover that it took the DVLA 48 hours to update their website to state that the car is now taxed. Thankfully I kept a copy of the email on my phone, had I not done that and then got pinged by an ANPR camera I could have ended up in a tricky situation, be aware!

! Bet 3 points that he ANPR system is instant as well....when there is a fine to collect its funny how gov systems work....but any other IT system and FAIL: ! costing billions

[CitroJim]

That sort of delay between computer systems is unbelievable Richard... Shame as the new taxing site is generally or other side very smooth and slick.

I must admit when I used it I printed the confirmations and saved the emails... Now we have no physical tax disc to prove I feel the need to have something tangible to say the deed has been done...

[citronut]

i also print a copy of the confirmation email out as well,

maybe i will size it so it fits in a tax disc holder


http://www.creativetaxdiscs.co.uk/page15.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Stickyfinger]

I still have a Tax Disc that is Date Valid for my Car ....it runs out on the very last day .....31-08-15...

There is an Arsenal Members Badge in the holder now.....now THAT is a TAX I am happy to pay and as a Plus they are sponsored by Citroen................. I urge you all to support Citroen by supporting Arsenal

[DickieG]

There is an Arsenal Members Badge in the holder now.....now THAT is a TAX I am happy to pay and as a Plus they are sponsored by Citroen................. I urge you all to support Citroen by supporting Arsenal

Sounds good to me, Gooners!!

[Northern_Mike]

I urge you all to support Citroen by supporting Arsenal

Given that I'm a Burnley fan, and taking into account today's fixtures, I kindly invite you to bugger off.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[DickieG]

Here's one to make your eyes water, the Mercedes service due warning has just popped up on the dash so whilst it'll hurt like hell to hand the car over to a dealer to service the car it's pretty essential on a car like this to maintain a main dealer service history for when you later look to sell the car so I contacted my local dealer and was quoted for a minor service including changing the spark plugs (16 of them) plus fuel and air filter plus brake fluid change the price of £1369.26 strangely enough the dealer close to where I work in London quotes for the very same job £873.16, try working that work that one out

I urge you all to support Citroen by supporting Arsenal

Given that I'm a Burnley fan, and taking into account today's fixtures, I kindly invite you to bugger off.

[CitroJim]

I urge you all to support Citroen by supporting Arsenal

Given that I'm a Burnley fan, and taking into account today's fixtures, I kindly invite you to bugger off.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

As Richard says....

[Stickyfinger]

About Burnley FC or will it be 4 ?

Gooners

[Northern_Mike]

I bet that's what the Man City fans said the other week..

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[Stickyfinger]

fair play...they held Spurs to 0-0...that's a worthy point to grab for them

[DickieG]

I took the Mercedes in for a service at the dealer in Colindale on Tuesday then had a bit of a shock when I went to collect it the following day when I was presented with the bill, £1,486.88. Bearing in mind that this was for the smaller 'A' service with the additional items mentioned above I was led to believe that the total should have £873 and queried this figure and had it verbally confirmed prior to dropping off the car.

Thankfully a few days earlier I'd opted to take up an offer from Mercedes UK whereby you can spread the cost of servicing over a set period of up to 3-4 years and pay a monthly fee, I went for the £100 per month for one year which allows two services regardless of what is required (other than brakes and tyres) and as the next service is the larger 'B' one I reckon I've had a bit of a result as Mercedes UK are picking up the bill so I'm already £287 better off with another service to come all paid for. Had I not done signed up for the service plan there would have been a bit of a heated discussion taking place.

Running this Mercedes doesn't come cheap, in about 3-5,000 miles the front discs and pads will need to be replaced and as this car is fitted with the additional option of a 'performance pack' the front brakes are much larger than those normally fitted to AMG SL's and are only available from Mercedes who list a pair of disc's @ £1,676 and pads at £250, ouch!

[CitroJim]

[DickieG]

A friend who had recently bought a 56 reg facelift Citroen C3 1.1 dropped it off to me on Friday asking me to diagnose a problem as in the engine would only run for a few seconds before stalling and no amount of revving could keep it running.

A session with Lexia brought up the following faults;



Observing live data stream showed that both lambda sensors weren't operating, just staying in open loop at a constant voltage of 1.1. Looking closely at the upstream lambda sensor on top of the exhaust manifold revealed some recent spanner marks on the body of the sensor as well as both plugs for the lambda sensors had been played around with as they were hanging loose rather then being clipped to the engine mount. Clearing the above codes didn't make any difference as they instantly re-appeared but a bit of delving into the history stored with the fault log revealed that someone had cleared faults five weeks ago. I also checked the data stream for the accelerator for a smooth flow as a common fault on C3's is for the connection plug located behind the glovebox which extends the harness across to the drivers side on RHD cars can suffer from poor connections requiring the harness joint to be soldered as a remedy, however I didn't observe anything unusual there.

After doing a bit of digging around on the internet this post on FCF from our Citroen Guru "Wheeler" helped me trace the cause, I removed the plugs connecting to the engine ECU and found this mess;





A quick look at the coolant temperature sender unit showed it had recently been replaced with a bright shiny new one and looking at this plug/socket revealed someone had also been there before me and attempted to seal up the joint by squirting some silicone into the joint, however just by tapping the plug on top of the car battery caused quite a quantity of water to drop out of the plug, likewise from the ECU when I did the same with that on my bench showing a very surprising amount of coolant had travelled along the temperature sensor wires. Opening the back cover of the ECU revealed a couple of greasy fingerprints on top of the gel covering on the back of the circuit board (I felt like Scott of the Antarctic with this job ) which unfortunately you cannot get any further into in order to dry out the circuit board.

So, long story short, it appears that a split in the housing of the coolant temperature sensor has allowed coolant to travel along the harness by way of capillary action into the ECU (despite the distance being about a meter long and in an upward loop) and cause all manner of mayhem. A new ECU is £364 and engine harness £380 so for the price of a component costing less than £20 it's all but written off the car! I imagine the story with this car is that the previous owner had the problem diagnosed, found out the cost of a proper repair then part exchanged the car in against another one just to offload it leaving the dealer to sort it out.

I dried out both components as much as possible and managed to get the car running OK but clearly this is very likely to be just a temporary measure but the good news about this story is that the trader who sold the car has agreed to buy it back at the same price, well done him I say