RT3 in C6 rebooting and beeping

[furriegurrie]

I´m after some advise for my Citroen C6 from January 2007. It´s been parked up for almost 2 years and I decided it was time to wake it as I need to be able to move the car every now and then as it sleeps over my pit. The car has been without a battery all this time. Today I put a brand new fully charged battery in and the car started without too much trouble. In fact only thing that´s wrong is the telematics unit. It starting, I have a Citroen log on the screen and after a while the radion starts to play. A while later a beep sounds every few seconds (as if the unit has to be coded to the car) and again some time later the screen turns black and it restarts the same cycle. The telematics unit is the original one from the car and was working flawlessly before I put the car in storage. I believe it's a RT3, I have a cd player in the boot. The navigation works of a cd in the headunit. I believe it does not have a hard disk. I tried to reset it by pressing the Dark button for 10 seconds. It does then seem to restart but it does not rectify the problem.
I had diagbox on it but it said it can't communicate with the unit which might make sense because it isn't starting correctly.

Does anybody have any suggestions to what might have failed eventhough it's been left alone for this time and was working fine before?

[furriegurrie]

I hoped leaving the car overnight with the fresh and fully charged battery would rectify the issue. But unfortunately the issue remains.
Does the the unit contain a backup battery and would this cause this rebooting if it is empty?
If I source another unit from a C6 with the same specs would replacing it with this unit keep all settings? Of course I’ll need to vin code it to the car but would it require more settings to be changed?

[GiveMeABreak]

Hi

Sounds very much like the back up battery. There are 3 possibilities of unit you may have fitted - and RT3, RT4 or RT5. The RT3 has a specific type of battery backup pack, whilst the RT4 and RT5 units have the same type, but they are completely different to the RT3 pack.

Once these discharge, you will have lost settings and because the battery pack is depleted, it is going to take a while to recharge the battery pack - which it likely won't do with the engine off. Some of these packs may still be available, but you'll have to expect these issues until it is supplied with a new fully charged back-up battery pack. I can't advise as to what other settings may be lost, but this is old tech now, so may not have the later non-volatile memory chips to retain settings.

You may want to source a new battery pack whilst you can still get them, even if not running the vehicle, so at some point in the future you'll have one before they're no longer available. Of course if the vehicle is going to be left without power for extended periods, then the same thing is going to happen again. Once some of these battery packs fully discharge, they may take a while to work again.

[furriegurrie]

Thanks for your advise, I guess the unit must have retained some power in it as when the radio starts playing it does this on the normal radio station I listen to. The C6 currently has no mot and can’t be driven. Funding doesn’t allow me to have it on the road at the moment. Roadtax in The Netherlands is high for the C6. Normaly I’d have left the C6 on a trickle charger, but the battery had totally failed and did not hold a charge at all.

[GiveMeABreak]

So that's your best bet with a new car battery - get a Smart / trickle / maintaining charger on it to keep everything live.

[furriegurrie]

I have a ctek that I use for this which I rotate between my Intruder, the Pluriel and the C6. I never thought storing the C6 without battery would be going to cause issues like this. I would have bought a new battery sooner had I known.

[GiveMeABreak]

Normally it wouldn't be an issue as the backup battery would maintain specific data and allow emergency calls, but only for brief periods when the main battery power is offline. They'll discharge fairly rapidly without the mains on to recharge the power pack.

[furriegurrie]

I’ve sourced a replacement RT3. Would this be just plug and play or are there any pitfalls I need to keep an eye on? Obviously it will need vin coding but it would be good to know if there are other things to keep in mind.

[GiveMeABreak]

Yes, these RT3 units require the correct options configuring in the BSI, so before you take the old unit out, don't make the mistake of not recording all the relevant configuration options for the telematics unit / screen shots of the RT3 and display ECUs in the BSI as these will need to be compared with the replacement and set correctly.

[furriegurrie]

I’m unable to have a dialog with the rt3 with Diagbox unfortunately. I think it never reaches a state where diagbox can talk to it because before that it already reboots.
I’ll see if I can find all options in the bsi and take screenshots.
But I don’t really see why that would be needed. Or is the replacement rt3 able to make modifications to the bsi on it’s own? Can you elaborate please?

[GiveMeABreak]

Ok, have you tried inserting the firmware CD into the slot and see if this will fix the reboot - especially if the files are corrupt?

I may have the ISO for your RT3 if you can advise me of the software version you have or if you remember it (System software will be either a 5.* or a 6.*) as this makes a difference. I suspect it will be 6.* being a C6.

Let me have the VIN if you're not sure and I may be able to find this out. Please post your VIN in full without spaces - it will be automatically masked from public view after submitting your post & will only be visible to staff.

[furriegurrie]

My vin is VF7**************[VIN obfuscated, can be read by forum staff]

I have an origional 5.5D and a 6.62D software CD from Magnetti Marelli but I´m pretty sure my C6 was upgraded beyond that. I´ll have to see if I can find another CD but I might have borrowed it from a friend of mine who worked at the dealers back then. From memory it might have been 6.81 or 6.83 but I might be wrong

[GiveMeABreak]

You can't mix V5 and V6 firmware. It's to do with the CAN version of the vehicle and if the wrong firmware is applied it can brick the unit. So can't be 5.5 as that's for VAN systems. I've checked and it states you have RT3, not an RT4.

So 6.* is the version you need and I think 6.63 is the last version. Let me know if you need an ISO from which you can burn to a CD-R, finalise and use. This may 'repair' any missing files and get it to boot.

[furriegurrie]

If you could provide me with the ISO that would be great! I´ll have to dig up a CD/r and see if deamtools will indeed burn the ISO to it. But definitely worth a shot! As I´m pretty sure I´ve upgraded to a version higher than the 6.62D I don´t want to insert that cd avoid complicating the issue.

I guess one other possible route to try would be to swap the backup battery with the one from the spare rt3 I´ve purchased once it has arrived here.
But that might possibly leave the `new´ unit in the same state as my original as it wouldn´t have a backup battery....

[GiveMeABreak]

Ok, will have to wait a bit as I'm off out now, so check back later.