Ben's Citroen in Sweden

[Ben82]

Ben, may I be the first on the forum to offer you both my heartiest congratulations. May you have 4 times as many reasons to laugh or smile as to frown or cry.

Thank you James

[myglaren]

Congratulations Ben and Cay. Don't know how I missed your earlier posts. I just landed on James' initially baffling post.
Best wishes for the future.

[DHallworth]

Congratulations Ben!!

[Ben82]

Thanks Steve and David much appreciated.

[CitroJim]

Ben, sorry I'm a bit late with this but congratulations Excellent!

[Mandrake]

Same here, congratulations Ben.

[Ben82]

Same here, congratulations Ben.

Thanks Simon

Ben, sorry I'm a bit late with this but congratulations Excellent!

Jim, I wouldn't class you as late at all, unless you were actually coming to the wedding Thanks all the same, and no need to apologise

[Ben82]

Been in the UK the past week, but as some of you may have read, I had a visit from Bandit12 at my parent's place on Wednesday to pair up his new key from carkeyhelp.

We spent about 45 mins or so with the lexia hooked up, only a fraction of that was on the key pairing. Cleared most of his faults, and we also had a look around to see if there was a way of disabling the "video shutoff at speeds greater than ~5mph" the reason for this was he would use his iPod for music or so, but would use the connector for the video input to do so. (His car seems packed to the rafters with a cd changer, satnav, etc). We couldn't find anything for it so gave up on that.
Was interesting to see his "Instrument Panel" gave the exact same faults my car gives with "incorrect" engine speed/vehicle speed/coolant temp, and very little detail about why.

Also a relief to finally get another C5 (or PSA car even!) hooked up to my lexia, after wideboyno1 reported issues with his from the same seller (sydmaz on ebay). Looking back wideboy also had a 2.2 mk1 C5 (same as bandit), so seems mine was a good one since we had no issues with anything on bandit's car. I was possibly lucky, who knows

Driving my C5 again today, I can sort of see why they get a bit of negative marks for the "lack of feel" on the steering, after driving a Primera 1.8 "Sport" for a week, the steering in mine did feel a bit lacking.. but it quickly passes and within a few km I didn't really notice it. Certainly not something I would use as a reason not to get a C5

My testing with E85 (or current avoidance of) is ongoing, filled her up again today with just normal 95 Octane, and current approximation is that with ~50% E85 the car will use about 1l/100km more (about 2mpg in UK speak). Going by that on about 60litres of fuel, I save about £6.50, so for me with a rough estimation that works out probably around £225 per year. We shall see if that figure adjusts again at all with this tank, and will go from there.

Fitted a bee sting aerial today that I got in England, hopefully means slightly better reception, and maybe the radio section in the lexia might not moan anymore

Also have a Connects2 ipod adapter that I also got whilst in the uk to put in... might try that tomorrow or next week

[CitroJim]

Ahh now I understand Ben. I thought Bandit12 had somewhat gone to great lengths to go all the way to Sweden to Lexia your car...

You had some good weather for your visit

[Ben82]

Ahh now I understand Ben. I thought Bandit12 had somewhat gone to great lengths to go all the way to Sweden to Lexia your car...

Haha, yes I can see whether that confusion would have came from if someone hadn't read Bandit's original thread asking for help

You had some good weather for your visit

Indeed I did, looks like Sweden had a good week of weather too though (and still seemingly getting better than the UK ~18C here vs ~12C in Gravesend at the mo )

[Mandrake]

Driving my C5 again today, I can sort of see why they get a bit of negative marks for the "lack of feel" on the steering, after driving a Primera 1.8 "Sport" for a week, the steering in mine did feel a bit lacking.. but it quickly passes and within a few km I didn't really notice it. Certainly not something I would use as a reason not to get a C5

A lot of the "feel" of steering actually comes from the tuning of the suspension, stiff heavily damped suspension with little body roll generally gives a sharper steering feel, while softer rolly-poly suspension gives a less direct feel because when you turn the wheel the body roll reaction of the car delays the actual turn in of the steering. (The body roll is lost motion that would otherwise go into changing the direction of the car, and the body roll takes time to reach equilibrium)

I find with a Xantia that the steering is a lot sharper and more "responsive" feeling with the suspension in sport mode, and that's why. Same with acceleration - the throttle response of a Xantia is a lot shaper and more responsive when the suspension is in sport mode because in normal mode the soft rear suspension squats a long way during acceleration causing lost movement - some of the torque is used compressing the rear suspension which takes time to reach equilibrium thus blunting the acceleration...

A good part of what might make the Primera steering feel more responsive is just the stiff suspension...sharp turn in by itself doesn't necessarily equate to good handling though.

[Ben82]

Thanks Simon, that is very informative, I knew that there was a correlation between the stiffness of the suspension and the feel of the suspension but not really too much why.

Interesting on the sport mode, is the difference supposed to be fairly pronounced? As for me the difference feels very subtle, to the extent that in all likelihood if someone turned it off or on whilst I was driving (and I didnt see them do it) I would likely not realise they had done it.

[Ben82]

Well after a good run of months without any issues (bar the gearbox grumble), tonight she managed to play the "I'm not starting game" again. Just over 14 weeks after the BSI reset seemingly cleared the issue. She's probably felt a bit neglected over the past 2 weeks with not having a great deal of use. And she was loaned out to my brother in law on Saturday for transporting bikes to a nearby town, so they could cycle around there, and back again.

I don't believe the latter is the cause though. Maybe a few rather short journeys on saturday night and today kicked her off. The usual disconnect the battery and reconnect it got us going again.

Now I have more experience with wiring diagrams, I may look at seeing if there's a way of doing the Xantia Starter Relay mod on the C5.

However we have a long 5hr journey on Wednesday, so won't be doing anything before then, I was hoping to get the ATF changed last saturday but due to the impromptu car swap with the brother in law it unfortunately meant I couldn't. And I'd rather not fiddle with it so close to a long journey. At most I may do another BSI reset tomorrow.

Also got busy weekends now until late august, and got to try to fit in changing filters and the engine oil for the "MOT" in August, though I may push the MOT back a few weeks to help fit it in. (Isn't due for a few more months, but I would prefer any issues to be fixable whilst the weather is good, rather than it dipping to be freezing cold).

[Ben82]

On my Citroen, not much news to give, still occasionally goes into the "not starting" mood every now and again, but usual unplug from battery and reconnect and all is well.
She passed her MOT fine and dandy (just an advisory on a side light being out), but I still need to do the service and gearbox oil change, it's just finding the time to do it, weekends I've either been unwell or we have been too busy to fit it in.

However there's a new Citroen in the family, my parents bought a 2010 C4 Grand Picasso 1.6 VTR+ Manual about a month or so ago, and today I've got to drive it
Absolutely love it, the 1.6HDI is surprisingly perky for the size of the car, and is very frugal (they average about 50.4mpg and have done about 250miles with mostly town driving). Ride is very comfortable, and surprisingly low body roll for the height.

I did warn them about the turbo failures but dad thought it'd be ok, its fairly low mileage (about 25K), certainly suggested to him to blank off the EGR valve to help with that. Warned him about the clutch too, as I think there's more of a temptation to "ride the clutch" with the Electronic parking brake.

Dad is really pleased with it, and was glad he listened to me to get a Citroen, he was looking at a Toyota Verso before (he wanted a 7 seater since he now has 5 grand children).

Only slight downside is the lack of parking sensors. Not sure if they can be retrofitted, as there doesn't seem to be blanking holes for them in the rear bumper, but I didn't have a decent look at the time.

[Ben82]

Been a while since I last posted here, but I have been lurking around a lot, so haven't been gone completely. We now use the car a lot less than before... Daughter catches the (public) bus to school, and rides the school bus most of the way back home, and uses her scooter the rest of the way. That will most likely only last whilst the weather is good, and no doubt I will probably need to pick her up from where she gets dropped off by the bus.

A few things have happened with the car since last October

The "I'm not starting" problem seems to occur once a quarter these days now, so nothing too major.

When I changed to the Summer tyres around June/July time one of the bolts sheared on the rear drivers side, I panicked and took it to the local garage to get sorted. In hindsight, I possibly could have tried sorting it myself, but might have not had the confidence to drill into the bolt without damaging the drum.

It gave me a chance to ask the garage how much it would cost to have the 4HP20's oil changed if I gave them the oil; which turned out to be about £35, so I didn't think was too bad considering hiring of the car lift to do the work probably would have cost me £15-£20 alone.
I sort of regret that, as I took the car in, in the morning, and they rang me just before closing time to say that they needed to get something from Citroen to do the rest of the job (they had drained it, so the car was up on the lift without any LT71141 inside), the bit they needed obviously was the filling tool. In the end it wasn't until gone lunchtime the following day that I could collect the car. On the plus side at the time the car seemed better for the oil change but still making the "grumble noise", but now it doesn't seem too different to before, so probably needs another round of LT71141.

About 2 weeks ago, we got some new front tyres, the old ones were *ahem* getting bald. Got some Hankook Ventus Prime 2s on there, they were just Ventus Prime before, was tempted to change to some Dunlop Blu Response tyres for the quoted quieter road noise, but wasn't going to be worth the extra ~£15 per tyre. With the amount of tread on the new tyres it makes me wonder if my winter ones will be legal this year (They're supposed to have at least 3mm of depth to them to be legal), and I think the rear tyres will probably only get maybe 2 more years.

A few weeks ago I noticed the windscreen wash wasn't spraying, but the pump was running, I tried topping it up to see if it was just lack of liquid, but this didn't seem to be the case. On Saturday the wife and I went to try to see if we could get to it and diagnose it further, couldn't get the bumper completely off due to a surprise of having the gubbins for the headlamp wash and wipe in the bumper, but could tell the pump was running but didn't seem to be pushing anything through the hoses. Put it all back together and ordered a new pump from the UK so will be fitting that after it has arrived. Bandit has given me some tips on the front bumper removal, and the wash bottle, so hopefully will be easier next time. It does seem like some cowboy mechanics had the bumper off at some point..... most of the screws etc were not the same as they were listed in the service docs, one had been replaced with a cable tie as well.

Also on Saturday I changed the pollen filter, which was a bit of a fun job, the filter that was in there didn't have any plastic bits that helped determine where the existing one was, along with the instruction being for a manual gearbox, and the trim being slightly different for an auto. Managed to work out where it was, and get the old one out which was nice and dirty. One credit for the filter in there, it did have a "peep flap" so you could see how dirty it had gotten. Got the new one in and took the car out for a drive to see if there was a noticeable difference, there was, with the old one, there was a bit of a smell (not something that reeked, and unpleasant), but it was noticeable that the smell had gone since putting in the new one.

Today, I finally got around to changing the engine oil on the car, I intended to do it last August, but kept on losing weekends so was really overdue. Only main trouble I had was getting the sump plug started... I first went for the 8mm square socket, but the ratchet wasn't big enough to allow me to budge it, so changed for the larger ratchet with the 24mm socket, which was still very tight but easier to start it off. I noticed the new sump plug that I bought did not have the 24mm socket option, and only the 8mm one, so I kept the same sump plug but just swapped over the half rubber washer. I will probably look for a replacement sump plug that has both options for next year. She guzzled ~5.25l of oil to get to the max marker. I started off with 4l, and kept adding increments of about 200ml each time to get to the max line, as there seems to be conflict as to how much oil the ES9J4S takes. Next time, I will most likely dump the whole 5l bottle in, and go from there. For anyone interested I used the Shell Helix 5W-40 Fully Synth oil in there.

Over the past few months the car seemed to start getting a bit confused with the oil level on the old oil, the digital gauge would often seemingly be random somewhere between max and half way (a difference of about a litre I believe), at least when filling up with the new oil, both the dipstick and the digital gauge seemed to agree with one another, and in the couple of times of taking the car out for a drive since doing it, the digital gauge has firmly been on max, but we shall see if that changes.

Other than the above, there's not really much else to report, she's taken us all the way to Oslo, Stockholm, and to the south of Sweden, without issues. Hopefully will stay that way for at least a few more years