Xantia clock

[CitroenCrazy]

Hi chaps
My daily driver (S2 Xantia, 110 HDi, 225K miles) has had a wonky clock for years. It started off as intermittent, but now it's pretty useless.
Symptoms
- will not retain the time; set it with the ignition on, come back later & it's reset to some random time (never 12:00, as one might expect)
- fades at random while driving along, from normal to completely off
- the temperature gauge seems to work ok, when it's visible

This weekend, I finally got round to swapping it for another one. Symptoms unchanged.

So, it could be that these devices are plain unreliable, and the replacement has the same fault,
OR, it could be a power problem. Given that it has problems both with ignition on and ignition off, my first thought is that it has a poor ground, but I've no idea where this might be. Apart from the usual intermittent contacts on the instrument cluster, which is a different issue, there's no other evidence of poor earthing in and around the dash..

What think you ?

[Lenny]

All I can offer is empathy.
The only thing that doesn't work properly on my Xantia is the sodding clock.
Exactly the same symptoms as yours and I've also tried swapping the clock which made no difference.

[chinkostu]

definately sounds like a problem with the wiring to it. whip the clock out and measure the voltage across the plugs, if possible while its running. could be an earth.

i did notice when fiddling with mine there is 2 fuses for the radio and one also covers the clock (on the S1 at least) so check its not blown.

[ecohouse1]

Hi - my clock does the exact same thing. Runs OK for days even weeks at a time, then for no apparent reason start resetting or fading away or a combo of both. Real PITA

I used to think it was to do with the state of the battery, and wondered if it was linked to glow plugs and starting causing a volt drop, but sometimes it does it in the middle of the night, or half way through a long motorway journey.

If I have the time I was thinking of wiring a new earth in or even a perm supply to see if that helps unless someone has tried this to no avail!

Cheers

Alan

[CitroJim]

There is a bizarre aspect to the Xantia clock. It finds its earth right on the main earthing plate by the battery. From here it runs as all the way to the clock via the infamous 10AV loom and the massive interconnect plug..

One thing you can try is to run a new earth to somewhere nearby the clock....