C5 Tales from the Electronic Side

[electrokid]

the technique is a pumping motion of the throttle, which i've tried, but it felt too weird & was annoying to do

I had eye checks at Ashford hospital prior to working with high power lasers and the stuff they put in you eyes to dilate them for the tests means you're unfit to drive afterwards so that means a taxi home. The taxi driver was on and off the throttle every 2 seconds or so - I wasn't in the mood to ask why but it felt really stressful on the car - not pleasant at all.

[MULLEY]

Perhaps he just had a really bad tick

[mds141]

Accumulator sphere problem?

[MULLEY]

Today i changed the pollen filter, what a barsteward of a job, you have to be a contorsionist to be able to get at the stupid bolts which hold the filter in place, stupid 5 sided type. Managed to finally get it out & re-fit the new one, old one was absolutely filthy, hope i don't have to change it anytime soon, not sure when they need changing? I reckon it took about 1.5hrs to do, crap design, well done citroen, i was expecting to be able to do it in approx 20mins, what a fool

Another annoying thing was that the new filter was damaged, a plastic lug had sheared off, just enough for the nut to grip it though, so all's well.

Hopefully nice clean & better flowing air into the cabin

[MULLEY]

Because the car is down on power, after reading through various FCF threads etc...a common theme is to replace the MAF. I managed to secure a shiny new one yesterday for £15 & managed to fit it in approx 30 mins, quite an easy job, just one screw was slightly akward to access. The old maf had quite a bit of debris in the mesh & the contact thingies looked like they were a bit dark, possibly covered in oil? Anyway, took the car for a quick spin to see if the performance picks up or not, & low & behold it does feel slightly better, not quite sure its got the full 110bhp, but seems a little bit more perky & certainly went quicker than the last time i tried going flat out, cars got in the way of seeing whether it could get close to its max speed, but it does feel better. Hopefully mpg may improve a little as well, unless i keep gunning it of course

[MULLEY]

Back from Mark Lightfoots over £480 later The centre exhaust section which contains the cat was blowing, i was hoping it could be welded up, however there was too much damage, so it was just as cost effective to get a brand new cat & centre section, shit design As a result of the new exhaust & the new MAF, car now feels much more sprightly than before, so a result.

The noise at the back was indeed the rear calipers leaning out & touching the wheels, bad news was that swapping them over was a no go, as the bolt which fits through them & holds the brake pads in place, the actual aluminium hole on the outer side had disintegrated on both calipers. This is dangerous, so this has meant 2 brand new rear calipers & brake pads (the old brake pads had worn unevenly).

LDS level was checked & half a litre was used to top it up.

Stereo unit was knackered, so a replacement JVC that i had lying about has been fitted, shame it looks a bit shit as it doesn't sit into the dash nicely as the original clarion unit, could have had a 2nd hand one for £25, but thought i'd save the money instead, the JVC is actually a better one in anycase. Unfortunately it means the stereo wheel controls don't work, does anyone know if you can buy an adaptor so that they'll work? But at least i can pick up radio stations & play CD's at whatever volume level i want

A new latch is required for the psgr front door due to the intermitant nature of it locking, sounded like it was going to take a while to do, so decided i'd live with it for the mo, the door can be opened from the inside, so only a minor inconvenience for me

Luckily my car has no DPF, some good news at last, i think i'll shortly get a re-map done by them as well as they seemed to know their stuff & it isn't mega expensive & comes with warranty & backup etc & is a personalised for your car re-map, rather than a one fits all jobbie which i think should be much better.

Slowly catching Phil up with expenditure on his Rover

[mat_fenwick]

The JVCs I've come across (and the one I have) all have the facility for an infra-red remote, so doubt you'll be able to plug an adaptor in the rear. But I have seen things you can plug into the vehicles's stalk that then send an infra-red signal to the head unit. No idea if there's one for your car though...

[Tinkley]

My neighbour is scrapping his 2002 C5 estate. 2.2 T/diesel which you cannot see from behind if running until the engine is turned off - then the smoke clears...

[MULLEY]

In other news, the Clubman's rotting michelins have all been changed for the following, good price & hopefully a good tyre, initial impressions are they are fine, we'll see what they are like when run in & we get some crappy weather

http://www.mytyres.co.uk/cgi-bin/rshop. ... p=R-254625

Ironically they cost £48.50 last week, now gone up, what is it with tyre prices changing so suddenly

[MULLEY]

The performance appears to be now what i was expecting, i can actually overtake much more quickly than before in the barge

[MULLEY]

I've had a re-map @ Mark Lightfoot's on the C5, it's now got approx 140bhp, not sure if it has, but it certainly seems a lot more eager than it was before, just got to remember to stop booting it all the time, i'm sure the fun will wear off at some point I'll report back on how fuel consumption changes etc...but for the time being i'm glad i've got it done, should make overtaking slow coaches easier, when i think back to how slow it was originally, the changes are quite dramatic tbh especially with a knackered MAF & leaky exhaust etc...

[electrokid]

i'm sure the fun will wear off at some point

Yeah right

[MULLEY]

Good news, on the 1st tankful of fuel, bearing in mind i only had the re-map done part way through this tankful, so the 1st 100 odd miles were in normal mode if that makes sense, i managed to do 689 miles on just over 61 litres, this equates to just over 51mpg. Now this includes a few high speed blats as well as quite a few short journey's, a couple of longish runs & booting the car a fair bit just for fun, so quite impressed tbh. We'll see what the next tankful manages, but fingers crossed i can get this much higher.

I suppose it doesn't sound all that impressive to see a 3mpg increase over my best ever before the re-map, however, over 12000 miles a year it would mean the car would have used 14.7 gallons of fuel, less over the year. That equates to one free tank of fuel at a cost of £88. This assumes that i only manage to get on average just 3 mpg extra every tank consistently, which i hope to beat easily tbh by taking it a bit easier. So in under 2 years the re-map will have paid for itself based on these calcs. Is this anal or what? haha...

[MULLEY]

Hoovered the inside of the car this evening with the dyson, its amazing how much shit was in the car, i knew it was a bit dirty, but it was still disgusting. Nice & clean now, it will need a proper wet clean at some point which should make it a lot better as its still a bit grubby in places.

I also decided to check the tyre pressures & thought i'd check the guide which was in the driver side shut. I was surprised to see that it's 2.3 bar for the fronts regardless of how loaded the car is, & 2.5 for the rears in normal & should be increased to 3.2 in the rear when loaded up. This is the 1st car that i've ever owned where the pressure ratings for the front & rear are different. Anyone else come across this?

[mds141]

I've used Autoglym Interior Shampoo to good effect, on both the XM and the BX's seats. Really does shift the muck.