Steering Wheel electronics dont work

[marinfilipovic]

Hello everyone !

We own a Citroen C4 Picasso 1.6 HDi, built in 2014 with 308 000 km traveled. The car was imported from France, he has had a lot of errors and was quite often serviced. This one error the mechanics couldnt manage to repair, it shows up mostly while summer. The following happens, at some point, all electronics that are on the steering wheel do not work, including the turning signals. It can happen during driving or not, we have the feeling that the car overheats because it works in the morning. Today everything worked after 100 km while driving the steering wheel electronics stopped working ( all buttons on the wheel, turning signals, screen wipers, horn) the only thing that works are the steptronic gear shifters.

We are trying: parking the car in the shadow, cooling it off, unplugging the battery and so on. Nothing seems to work, we asume that the issue is an sensor or a contact failure.
The Citroen mechanics had replaced 2 times the whole „center console“ or „instrument panel“ (not sure if the term is correct).

Any type of help would be grateful.

Best Regards, Marin

[GiveMeABreak]

Hi and welcome.

Can you please post your VIN, so we know the exact model you have, as you have stated 2014 above, but your profile says 2016.

If they have fitted the wrong steering wheel control unit then there will be problems as these are quite specific units.

[marinfilipovic]

Hi Mark,

Yeah sorry about that, the car is 2014.

The VIN is: VF7**************[VIN obfuscated, can be read by forum staff].

Thanks for the responds

[GiveMeABreak]

It's gong to be hard to say what the issue is with this - It may be more than the steering wheel control module at fault - as you have all these other controls failing and it would be extremely rare for a steering wheel control module to fail 3 times!

I would be looking at the wiring harness - especially the thick bundles that can break some of the single wires inside them, due to the sheer weight of the loom. Check your engine fuse box and the large wiring bundles in that area. The remote gear paddles are separate, but I think they do travel through the large loom that also links the steering wheel control module connections.

I hate to say it but these C4 Picassos and later models have terrible wiring and it can make troubleshooting harder because of all the interconnections - for example a wire may start off in one colour at the beginning and go to an interconnection and emerge as another colour - which makes it hard to trace.

If this was a one off isolated incident with say problems with the exterior lighting and indicators - the first thing I would suggest is the steering wheel control module, but as you have had it replaced several times already, I think you have something else going on there.

[marinfilipovic]

All right man, thanks

When we have time we will check the things you listed and tell you.

Thanks for the help, all the best.

[marinfilipovic]

Hi friend !

Your advice was very helpful and useful. We checked the thick cable bundles throughout the car, in the fuse box, around the fuse box. We disassembled and found the cables under the steering wheel. After a few light
touches and pluggings and unpluggins the car worked as normal. It worked for a few days then it stopped again (the temperature was very high, outside as well as in the car). We did the same thing we pressed the cables
we unplugged some of the switches and plugged them back in, it fixed the problem. In the past 3 days it has been working without any problems, today we travelled 300 miles, everything worked perfect.

Thank you very much for your advice, you saved us quite a sum of money, not only that your advice solved the problem which some qualified people couldnt...

Thank you very much !

Marin Filipovic - Graz, Austria

[Hell Razor5543]

What could be worth doing (to delay any future occurrences) is to unplug each connector in turn, spray some PROPER contact cleaner in (not WD40), plug in and unplug a couple of times (leaving it plugged it), and then repeat for each of the other plugs in turn. It sounds like you may have had some tarnish on a few pins, and this should help remove the tarnish.

[GiveMeABreak]

Hi friend !

Your advice was very helpful and useful. We checked the thick cable bundles throughout the car, in the fuse box, around the fuse box. We disassembled and found the cables under the steering wheel. After a few light
touches and pluggings and unpluggins the car worked as normal. It worked for a few days then it stopped again (the temperature was very high, outside as well as in the car). We did the same thing we pressed the cables
we unplugged some of the switches and plugged them back in, it fixed the problem. In the past 3 days it has been working without any problems, today we travelled 300 miles, everything worked perfect.

Thank you very much for your advice, you saved us quite a sum of money, not only that your advice solved the problem which some qualified people couldnt...

Thank you very much !

Marin Filipovic - Graz, Austria

No problem - I suspect you may still have an intermittent issue - temperature can make a difference too as the heat expands and the cold contracts, so could be a loose pin in one or moire connectors. Best of luck though!