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Anything about BXs
wannab-x
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Post by wannab-x »

Whoops, didn't mean to post that twice...
wannab-x
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Post by wannab-x »

Any thoughts? :)
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DavidRutherford
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Post by DavidRutherford »

citronut wrote:if you notify DVLA as you are supposed to it would then be put onto the reg document.
Indeed, but it would still be listed as a 19TZS, but with a diesel engine fitted. The insurance companies would still know from the registration that it left the factory as a 19TZS auto, and now has a different engine in it. It wouldn't matter if you made the car identical to a 19TZD, it would still be a 19TZS modified with a diesel engine.

Plus you've got the issues of getting a gearstick and linkages, associated trim, diesel speedo head, the wiring for the glowplugs etc, bigger battery, re-routed fuel lines, the list goes on and on. You may as well just use the Diesel car that all these bits came from.

Anyway.. Getting back to the car in question. It's beginning to sound more and more like the head gasket hasn't actually failed, but something else is making the oil and water mix at high pressure. I think it would be a very worthwhile investment having a compression test done, and maybe a "combustion gas in the coolant" test done as they are both very cheap, quick and easy to do... In fact if you've already spent a wodje of cash at a particular garage, I'd expect them to do it for you for free. No more than 10 minutes of their time (plus their belief that if fault is found they will get the work)
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wannab-x
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Post by wannab-x »

Mr Rutherford, you're a very knowledgable & reassuring gentleman. I wasn't aware that there was any other way that the oil & water in the engine could mix - that's why I thought that emulsion = head gasket.

As long as I'm up in time tomorrow, and the car starts & drives okay, I'll be over at the garage first thing to get them to have a look. Hopefully if they can get something sorted out for reasonable cost I'll be home at lunch to collect the Smart for a re-test as it failed the MOT today on the main beam headlight on one side which keeps going, and at some point I might be able to have a sit down & a nice cup of tea.

Will advise of progress tomorrow. Thanks again.
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Post by admiral51 »

i know very little and even less about BXs but have spoken to my local low cost car doctor and he says to check for the oil cooler being faulty
i know i said this in a previous post but he said hes had a few cars with showing HG failure oil in water/ water in oil that have been caused by the oil cooler failing and allowing the 2 to mix

colin
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Post by CitroXim »

I know these engines pretty well as it's not much different from my 205GTi engine.

The normal symptoms of a failed head gasket is pressurisation of the coolant, rapid coolant loss and lots and lots of emulsion in the coolant header tank. Very rarely do they contaminate the oil unless the blow is a real biggie or you have a cracked liner. Normally they go between cylinders 2 and 3 and a compression test will reveal much. Another way is to have your local MOT man stick his emissions test probe into the coolant header tank and see if exhaust gas can be detected in there.

Yet another give-away is more or less normal running temperature that quickly rises very high when you give the motor a bit of hard work to do.

If you're not pressurising the coolant and not loosing massive amounts of it, I'd doubt the gasket being the root cause.

XU5s suffer badly from mayonaise in the breathers and if they're blocked, all sorts of symptoms can arise, bad running being one of them and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that enough mayonnaise can run down the big oil filler pipe and into the sump and contaminate the oil.

As already said, don't dismiss the oil cooler as being the problem. They do fail. It is a moot point if they're needed on the XU5; the 1.6 205 GTi manages quite nicely without one and still takes an age for the oil to reach normal running temperature.

Luckily, a head-job on an XU5 is really quite straightforward and £100 is not an unreasonable sum to pay for the parts required.
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DavidRutherford
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Post by DavidRutherford »

Psssst..... this is an XU9 engine.... The XU5 waffle only came about from my wondering if an XU5 head will fit an XU9 engine.

But I echo your sentiments about head gasket failure. I've yet to see an XU of any variant have any contamination of either the oil or the coolant during head gasket failure. It's usually just the kettle effect in the coolant.

Fingers crossed it's just condensation. Entirely plausable given the amount of mayonnaise I've found in the oil of a VW Beetle engine before now (think about it for a second!)

While I remember.. if it is the oil cooler, I've about 38 of them here so if you need one, do say so.
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wannab-x
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Post by wannab-x »

Right then. I took the car over to PTS on Wednesday, driving carefully & keeping an eye on the temp gauge (although nothing unusual happened). Pete & his guys dropped out the mayo & cleaned all accessible pipes, then enlarged the engine breather hole (from 0.5mm diameter to 2mil), put it all back together & refilled with oil. All for free, which is pretty good.

He did say that the mayo/oil was worse than he'd thought it would be, plus the oil only just tickled the end of the dipstick. Apparently my car's not got the seal it should have on the dipstick, which is probably a good thing as blocked breathers with a sealed system probably would have meant a popped oil seal somewhere.

I've done about 50 miles since then to see how we get on, will look at the oil in the daylight tomorrow & see how things are. Fingers crossed it was the breather, but Pete did mention about cracked liners.

Since then, the car wouldn't start in Park last night, although eventually started in Neutral & started okay in Park when I got home.

Old cars, eh? :roll:
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Post by DavidRutherford »

wannab-x wrote:Pete did mention about cracked liners
Ooh.. wet liners. I'd forgotted about XU engines and wet liners. Was a compression test or exhaust-gas-in-coolant test done? Either would be fairly conclusive.
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wannab-x
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Post by wannab-x »

Er, no. I was in a little of a rush, plus they were fitting me in around their existing work, so I didn't want to ask them to do anything extra, and they didn't mention these. If there are still problems, I'll ask.
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Post by docchevron »

If a liner had cracked I would expect it to pressurise VERY quickley and blow your coolant out in seconds.
Sounds like you may have had a cheap and easy escape. Here's hoping.
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wannab-x
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Post by wannab-x »

Oh, if only, doc. I'm having other, different, problems now:

Just took the car out to help shift some furniture, and the car misfired & then stalled within about 3 feet of my putting it into drive. Lots of misfiring, lots of misfiring turning into stalling whenever the engine revs dropped as I slowed to take a turn, wait at traffic lights etc. On several occasions, it then took a loooong time (more than a minute) of turning the car over on anything up to full throttle before the car started. Mostly then starting just in time for the previously green lights to change to red, so the car then stalled again. :roll: Had to give up the wardrobe moving as I was sitting with my foot on the gas to keep the car at 1500 revs, which seemed to be okay. Got the car home okay, ticking over at 1k revs, but feeling a little lumpy & misfires making the car shake.

The garage fiddled with the tickover on Wednesday, and the car was fine for the 50-odd miles between then & now, but I now have no confidence that the car will get me anywhere without doing this to me every time, and I'm starting to lose patience. Can anyone suggest anything (easy) I can do to sort things out? I thought the tickover was possibly a little low, but I think they're supposed to be just under 1000, and the car was at 2000 in the cold weather a couple of days ago.

Thanks, again, for your help!

Andrew
wannab-x
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Post by wannab-x »

Having looked at some other threads, it would seem that electrical problems and/or fuel contamination could cause the dodgy running.

Still not sure what to do, but...
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Post by ellevie »

Some of the problems you describe could well be caused by a poor or intermittent spark. This in turn could be caused by poor connectivity in the low voltage side of the ignition or in the signal path from the magnetic sensor to the amplifier. Why not test the strength of your spark by making it jump to chassis from the terminal of a spark lead. You should be able to make the spark jump at least one centimeter corresponding to a voltage of about 30,000 Volts.

You could also just try your luck and clean the low voltage connectors to the coil and to the amplifier with some WD40 or switch cleaner. Checking for good continuity from the sensor to the amplifier is a little trickier but definitely worth doing if the other measures don't work.
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Post by CitroXim »

The ignition amplifier sounds like it is unhappy. Often it starts to go when the thermal paste betwen it and the alloy plate it sits on dries out, allowing the module to overheat.

Some say the problem can be fixed by applying new paste but for the cost of them, assuming the BX has the standard one seen on many Cits and Pugs, they're best replaced.

Check too the connector from the loom to the distributor, another known problem area, certainly on 205 GTis.

Also, the seal behind the distributor tends to fail and allows the distributor to fill with oil. Lasty, on the distributor front, the vacuum capsule often punctures, leading to non-optimal igntion timing and a weak mixture at idle due to the air leak it introduces.

Air leaks generally anywhere south of the AFM, assuming your engine has the L-Jetronic injection system, will wreak havoc with slow running and certianly give the symptoms you have.
Jim

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'96 Xantia Activa in Red - My favourite toy...
'07 Pug 207 in Blue - The Deathtrap...
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