Time to say goodbye to Xantia

[ecohouse1]

After fruitless hours trying to get my Immobiliser issue sorted and having almost a half a success in that it did run then again, half an hour later it was beeping at me I decided to throw in the towel. What with the cooling fan shennagins last year which I had to bodge and then the non working speedo and temp guage and the recurring immobiliser issues, I have had to accept that the wiring is literally breaking down. I am out of my depth with the electrics and I will have to trailer it to an auto electrician which would cost me £55 for the trailer plus £150 labour not to mention a new speedo sensor at £35, god knows what is up with the temp guage. Rear arm bearings are cracking on settling and there is a dampness around the rear N/S cylinder. This year it needs a new timing and auxillary belt plus new spheres later this year so I will be looking at the thick end of £500 + hours of hassle doing the jobs. To top it all off I was using my daughters ex car Pug 206 as alternative wheels and the starter packed in stranding me again!!!. As I live out in the country I need at least one reliable and decent car that I can jump into and know it will get me there and back so I will splash out the cash on a 8-9 year old car and be very picky what I get. Sad as the old Xant looks great with a great engine, let down by crappy low quality wiring. Might look at a C5 but sort of lost my confidence with older PSA cars, and more recent Peugeots are having a pasting online for reliability. Sad day

[GiveMeABreak]

Sad to hear, but I guess you're being realistic if you need it to be reliable for work, as opposed to a hobby / leisure car!!
One thing to remember with newer Citroens (and most cars nowadays) is the wiring is much more reduced, owing to the multiplexed wiring network. Reduced Wiring on the one hand, but with the addition of more modules and ECUs that control most aspects of the vehicle. In some ways it helps troubleshooting as you can communicate with the individual ECUs to help localise faults - but on the downside, as these ECUs rely on information received from each other, you have to fine tune the issues to remove false positives. If you are a DIYer and are thinking about another Citroen, a Diagbox diagnostic kit will really help you troubleshoot and and it can provide fault finding tests and checks. So it's all swings and roundabouts!

[chinkostu]

Such a shame really, but you can't run a car forever. I've binned cars that needed jobs doing as the outlay to get them back to a decent condition or to get the problem fixed plus the lost work hours would be more than just getting another car.

Do be choosy though! I'd rather walk away from a potential nightmare even if it was easy fixes (the Xantia is the exception as it was dirt cheap!)