paul.h

Your dealer will be able to provide another key. You will probably need the key code card that came with the handbook so it can be programmed to your car. Not sure of costs but we had one done for a Picasso in 2005 and it was about £60.

If it is just a worn key try your dealer for a new one, they should be able to order one to fit the locks without cutting it against the worn original. You might need the key code card that came with the van if there was one (one has always come with our cars). If it is the locks (door and ignition) that are worn then you could fit a complete new set, again from a dealer (or may be ebay?) - not sure of costs though.

Our C4 came with the inflation kit - we had to buy a wheel, tyre, jack, wheel brace, nut cover remover, jack tray - total about £200 before I would use the car. The CO2 levels may be a bit higher with the wheel, but at the first puncture it would be worth it. The RAC have a no call out reduction of £25 which would be lost if an inflation kit did not work, then there would be the messing around trying to get a new tyre, finding a means of lifting the car onto bricks, loss of time, etc. It also has the 1.6 hdi 110 hp engine, official servicing is 12500 miles or 2 years or 10000 miles or 1 year for arduous use - it will do about 8000 a year but I will keep to annual ones.

If you register on the service.citroen.com site (allowed as a member of a car club such as this), you can see the parts diagrams used by dealers so if you use your car's vin it will give you the correct part. There is also access to servicing but you have to pay for extras such as this. There are also Citroen manuals including the parts diagrams available off such as ebay which are the same as used by dealers and are worth having. If air ingress is the cause, it could be around the pipe connections on the filter, its lid seal, the priming pump (if there is one).

The complete part is called the air doser valve. There will be some oil in the air going through it from the turbo so there could be a leak through a seal on the actuator if there is one. The parts diagrams do not show the parts apart from the complete unit so unless your dealer or somebody else has a fix it could be expensive. On our 1.6hdi mark 1 C4 the doser valve body joint leaked badly, an attempt with sealant did not last and in the end it had to be replaced so leaks seem to be common. Also have a look on the C4owners.org site to see if there are any fixes there.

Good result, otherwise it could have been something like a faulty relay in the BSI but I am not sure if these can be replaced or maybe a switch fault.

Simple to do, for our 2003 C3: - before starting check the thickness of the discs - I had to replace ours at about 40k miles due to wearing thin, jack relevant front corner, put on an axle stand, remove wheel (if this has not been done since new it may have rusted on to the hub - holding a block of wood against the inside edge of the tyre and hitting the wood with a hammer will eventually release it and then clean up the hub/wheel contact areas with a file), undo caliper lower slide pin bolt, pivot caliper up and tie up (eg wire to coil spring), remove pads. Clean everything up, use fine emery on disc to remove glaze, scrape off ridges on disc (if not replacing), wipe disc clean with brake cleaner soaked rag/paper, push piston back into the caliper (eg G clamp, with bleed nipple open to release excess brake fluid into a container or a rag to avoid possible master cylinder seal problems), bit of copper grease on sides/back of pads and caliper but not on friction material or disc, fit pads, refit caliper, apply a smear of copper grease to the hub/wheel contact areas and refit the wheel, use the brake pedal to push the pads to the disc. If re-using old pads, rub them on some fine emery paper on a flat surface to remove the glaze from the friction material. If you brake gently for a few hundred miles the pads will bed in better than hard braking earlier.

The Haynes wiring diagram shows the boot switch simply earths a wire from the BSI. If you follow this wire back into the car (probably down the left sill under the plastic cover and up into the cabin fuse box) you could use a blue scotchlock to connect a switch to it and the other side of the switch to an earth point. On the accidental opening of the boot - if the boot switch contacts are dirty/sticking/damp, then maybe it has opened itself.

It probably means the rubber gaiter (boot) on the constant velocity (CV) joint at the near side front wheel has a loose retaining clip or at worse, it has a split in it and the boot needs replacing. If you put the steering on to full left lock so you can see the inside of the wheel you will probably be able to see it without jacking the car up. If it has a split you are likely to see grease coming out and possibly sprayed inside the wheel arch. If it is a loose clip you may see grease at one of the ends. A loose clip can be easily replaced with a long tie wrap from a car accessary store. A split boot should be replaced with a new one so dirt does not get into the joint and wear it out. A boot will be about £10 and an hour to fit at a garage so £170 seems about twice the likely cost. The official Citroen times are 1 hour for complete left drive shaft removal/refit and 30 mins to replace the boot but it would not be necessary to completely remove the driveshaft. The last time I replaced a boot I used one that stretches so the joint did not need splitting from the shaft - it is slid over a plastic cone and over the joint to the shaft, a garage may have an air operated device that stretches the boot so even quicker.

High oil level could also lead to oil seal leaks on petrol or diesel engines, happened to a relative's car every time it went for a service but stopped when he started to do his own oil changes.

The handbook for our C3 on shows the oil level range as max OOOOOO, min ------, and ------ without any words as a malfunction. So you likely have a fault if the oil dipstick level is between max and min. There have been some reports in recent Car Mechanics magazine of diesels not stopping, possibly due to a high oil level and the oil being sucked in to the engine as fuel - switching off the ignition stops the diesel supply but not the oil so the engine can keep running. I think the oil level sensor is the same as the oil temperature sensor so you could check its wiring connector is clean and not damaged. It is located at the side of the oil filter and is held to the engine block with a self tapping screw, possibly 10mm AF. If you register on service.citroen.com (allowed as a member fo a car club in terms and conditions) you can see the parts diagrams.

Our C5 manual is dated 10/2006 on the back cover and I could not find anything on this so maybe it is only on earlier cars. The key for our C4 has a button for opening the boot.

I think it is on the frenchcarforum.co.uk where I have seen a list of people with Lexias who are happy to help each other although I have never tried it.

Welcome to the forum. I can not help but if you post this on the C5 subforum it is more likely to be seen by C5 owners.

Welcome to the forum. In the handbook it says to raise the suspension height to max before jacking the car up. Others have also reported problems when not doing this first. Sometimes the height sensors need spraying with wd40 or similar and the suspension raised/lowered a few times if they start sticking and the suspension plays up.

It is the steering wheel module which includes the lighting and wiper stalks. Before buying one though, I would check with the dealer/parts since they are likely to be £100 to £200.

Unless all the new parts are free, it is likely to cost many thousands of pounds - engine, air meter, turbo, fuel system, electrics, maybe gearbox, possibly larger brakes, ecu, etc. It is likely to be far quicker and a lot cheaper to change the car. Unless you are doing a very high mileage to save on fuel costs, neither are going to save money.

You could try a caravan/ motorhome upholsterer. The seat cushions in our Elddis caravan are from a company in Long Eaton near Nottingham - Leisure Furnishings ltd, Unit 4, Meadow Brooks Business Park, Meadow Lane, Long Eaton, NG10 2GD. Tel 0115 946 3666.

On the occasions our C3 central locking has not worked with the key remote control I have thought it was due to radio interference from such as a mobile phone, mobile phone mast or amateur radio mast (there is one not too far from us). It has later worked though without problem. You could try to resynchronise a key by putting it in the ignition switch and turning to ignition on (position before engine starter), then within 10 seconds of the ignition + appearing, push one of the key buttons. I am not sure about this but I think the receiver from the key remote (not the immobiliser aerial which is on the ignition switch) is in the steering wheel module and it could be the fault is with this and I vaguely remember a fault cured by replacing this module in a recent post.

Similar measurement problems on the C5 forum seem to need a new sensor in the mirror but I do not know if this would help the cabin temperature control.

Welcome to the forum. I would copy your post to the C5 subforum to make sure it is not missed by the C5 owners. For your £10, with diesel at about £1.40 a litre, before you were getting about 54 mpg and now about 35 mpg. A couple of easy things to check are if the air filter is clean and if there are any air leaks in the various hoses and the air inlet pipes. I think fuel filter replacement is about every 40k miles so probably nothing to do with this. You could also check if the brakes are binding by seeing if they seem hot after a run. It could be a problem with the air mass meter but I would do the easy checks first but you could see if it is clean.

There is a post on this on the C3owners.com forum under tips for any C3, central locking, where if the radio is not wired correctly the bsi does not shut down properly and causes a battery drain that affects the locking. A test is to disconnect the radio and see if it now works. Copied here: Thanks for the tip, The problem crops up often here, an after market radio is installed without the correct wiring alterations causing draining of the battery and putting the BSI into 'deep sleep' to conserve battery power. Trouble is 'deep-sleep mode' makes the central locking unresponsive because the BSI computer is sleeping. There is a post here for people wishing to discover what wiring alterations are required to avoid the central locking problem along with the radio not remembering its stations or the radio not powering down.

Could also be a problem with the passenger airbag switch or its connector/wiring. If you have a towbar, remove its fuses but unlikely to be this - ours drains the battery over about 4 weeks if the car is not used. If you need to check for a parasitic drain, use a meter to measure current across each fuse once the bsi has shut down. When I was checking about 15 milli amps is about normal total and found the towbar was also taking about 20 milli amps.

Your service book will give the mileage for replacement and should note if it has been done - if done at a Citroen dealer it would be on their computer records. The book (dated 09/06) with our C5 gives the service schedule for the C4 2.0 hdi as top up eolys fluid at 80k miles, replace particle filter at 120k miles. So it probably has 40k miles to the next top up but is due for the filter replacement. Cost may be around £400 so other people on the C5 subforum have had the system removed - drill a hole through the core of the filter and modify the software to remove the eolys fluid - then some drain and sell the fluid. The reports are the cars still pass the MOT, maybe improved mpg and performance.

A guess but you may have to use the menu to configure the AV input, possibly something like configuration/sound/Aux input.