Marc's C3 Aircross SUV, Rants Raves & Everything Else

[GiveMeABreak]

I thought it about time to start a new blog on the 'Chili Hornet'.

Here's a few small pics before she boarded a transporter in Kent and made the 320 mile trip to arrive on 30th December.

We have these options:

• Techno Pack: HiFi System with equaliser, amplifier and subwoofer in the boot, Head Up Display, Colour Dash Binnacle Matrix, and Wireless Charging*.
• Grip Control: This is the advanced traction control system. We have Standard mode, Snow / Ice Mode, All Terrain Mode (Mud, Damp Grass etc.), Sand Mode and Off. It also includes Hill Assist Decent control.
• Park Assist Pack: So front & rear parking sensors, semi autonomous Parallel and Bay Parking and exit, Top Rear Vision & Blind Spot Monitoring.

I've tried out the Hill Decent System and boy is it effective. It really does edge you down a slope (in forward or reverse) so will be really great for our 1:10 hills round here in the winter. Add the Grip control too and that should be pretty effective at getting us up the hills in the snow and ice.

As for the parking - I'm still not quite ready to 'hand over' control yet - so for now I'll leave that for occasions where I've cricked my neck or worse!

I already bought a few 'bits' in readiness.

I wanted some decent sill protectors, and didn't fancy the stickers or the plastic looking things, so splashed out on some nice shiny stainless steel ones. Even better they are made in the UK , so was very happy about that. They were packed really well and protected and arrived in a solid cardboard tube.

These are the fronts

Rears

These are custom made for the Aircross and are a perfect fit. The rears are quite small, but the rear sills only have a small flat section before it widens and curves up, so that's probably the reason why. Anyway, they went on really well and will protect the sill paint for many years I hope.

I should say the mats are pretty tacky - they're just an old 'new' set I had lying around to protect the Aircross ones underneath - which I suppose it pretty daft really - protecting the car mats . That's my OCD kicking in. I'm now thinking of getting some new custom mats with red trim to match the interior.

[mickthemaverick]

Looks nice Marc and the sills should be fine. You may have a supplier for mats already but if not I used these guys a couple of years ago for C5 tailored mats and when they arrived I was so impressed I ordered them for the MX3 and the Celerio as well. The MX3 mats they were not allowed to embroider with "MX3" due to copyright but they were happy to do them with "MiX3" which looks fine and of course is personalised for me
https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/carmatsonlin ... 2749.l2754

[GiveMeABreak]

Thanks Mick - I will have a squiz.

So far on the research side, I've looked at these three UK suppliers:

Carmats4u

Car & Van Mats

Car Mats UK

They all seem to offer a basic mat and then jack up the price according to options, including weight of the carpet.

I would like something like these - red heel pad and red stitching and outer trim to match the interior 'Urban red' trim highlighting:

I will have to start looking at owner reviews next to see if they are any good!

[mickthemaverick]

This is my rather dusty MiX3 Mat, I went for the black heel pad but I could have named my own colour,.:

Own work

[GiveMeABreak]

Thanks for putting that up Mick - I will check the link as soon as I can - just had to put an additive replacement guide up for another member.

[mickthemaverick]

Marc, Sorry to say I put the wrong link up!! That one for carmatsonlineuk was the place I returned some to because they were too thin, the place I got them from was:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Citroen-C3-A ... 1284894919

[GiveMeABreak]

Ok, clocked that. They look very similar to some of the others - I'll have a squiz tomorrow.

[RichardW]

I've got grip control on my 3008 - not had much reason to use it - almost no snow last winter, and no going out this winter! However, on one day where it was a bit slippy it did seem to work - it just kept going whereas I would have expected to struggle without.

[GiveMeABreak]

Yes looking forward to testing that out Richard.

Seems good enough for the Italian Alps:



A good test is at time index 08:18 in the video where he tests starting off without the snow mode on where is swerves and struggles a bit, and then at 08:32 where he switches it on. I like the reversing up the ice covered hill at 09:52 - there's no way my C5 could of done that.

Crikey those Italians can't half waffle!

[GiveMeABreak]

The next thing I've done is to get a Screen Protector for the Connected Nav touchscreen.

Before I bought the one below, initially ignoring it because of the model, I bought a cheap one from some vendor for a 9.7" tablet - that was a waste of time as it was far larger and was larger than the described diagonal size to also cover the other area of a tablet! So watch out for those.

There are very few of these about and I wanted a tempered glass one. So I did a bit of research and compared part numbers with the latest standard C3 and the touchscreens have the same part number. As it happens there are plenty of these about for latest C3, so I took a punt on one of these:

These are made in Germany and was here within a week.

Bought from Amazon. This one is a little reflective it may seem from the pictures, however driving out and about today whilst going for a mountain walk we actually had some sun, and it didn't affect the display at all. There is a Matte version too, so that should be even less reflective.

This offers 9H hardness and is very flexible to put on.

Don't use any alcohol or solvent to clean the screen first - I just used some reading glasses cleaner that doesn't contain any of these as you don't want to take off any of the screen coating.

I also made sure there was little to no floating dust about in the car (as best you can) and used a few credit cards to gently smooth out the the air as it went on a little at a time. So I just gradually peeled the backing a little at a time as I flattened it on with the cards. Took less than a minute. I do have about a 1mm gap on the left but can live with that. I just didn't want to risk misaligning it. If I need to replace it in future with the Matte version, I'll maybe leave a little extra space on the right.

Link here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08 ... UTF8&psc=1