paul.h

For both you could check all the fuses are ok. For the parking sensors also have a look in the boot (spare wheel area ?) and check the wiring is ok, earth connections ok, ecu is connected, any towbar wiring/socket is ok. But you may end up needing a dealer diagnostic check for both problems using a lexia.

Could be water or dirt in the boot switch or its contacts need cleaning.

If you have a look on the C5 subforum, there is a lot of info on removing these particle filters when they come up for replacement about 75k miles. There is also a C4 forum that has many posts which likely will be of help - C4owners.org

You might be able to. The navidrive manual says it can take audio equipment on the audio/video sockets - I guess these will be at the back since there are no details given. Also you need to use menu/configuration/sound - to activate the audio/video auxiliary input. But there are no details so if it is possible then it will not be straight forward.

You need to provide more of the VIN numbers for a check on the Citroen service documentation, a guess at the last 5 numbers is not showing a recognised car and if it did may not be your specific model. Or provide the model year/engine size/bhp or as above have a look at the exhaust down pipe. If it was a C5, RC RHRH would be a 2 litre HDI 138 bhp with particle filter and RC RHRG the same but without a particle filter - according to the French RTA manual for the mark 2 C5 from 9/2004 .

Last week I needed new rear lights in a hurry for the C3 (2003 1.4 sx petrol) and being the Christmas week I was able to get them from Eurocarparts in a day. Unfortunately I could not use the Astrum ones supplied since the lens outside edge was proud of the car body but worse, on both lights the hole at the top for the fastening nut was not wide enough to use even a thin wall socket to tighten it - on the original Citroen lights a normal thicker walled 10mm socket can be used in the hole and the thin wall one has plenty of clearance. The lights appeared ok until fitting and are labelled made in Taiwan. The assistant at Eurocarparts said he would note the poor fit on their system when I returned them for a refund. Other points, during this week there was a special web price a lot lower than the branch price when I phoned up, but since the branch did not have them in stock I could not 'click and collect' at the lower price. The branch price was also different to the normal web price - branch £40.74 each, web left £43.80 (special £29.94), right £49.80 (special £41.94). The lights did not include the bulb holders either despite the web saying the right one does. Considering ones from Citroen may be about £55 (to confirm) including bulb holders, the Eurocarparts ones are expensive if they could have been used. There are lower ebay prices but not being originals I am unsure how well any of these would fit and if doing mail order there are delivery times and then if a return is needed it gets complicated. S/H ones are also expensive when the postage/travel costs are included and until you have seen them you are not sure of their condition.

Sounds as if you really intend to get rid of the car in which case I would not spend £200-300 on it to then only hope to get at best the same amount back (on top of scrap value), plus the hassle and cost of selling. I had thought you may be keeping it if the cost of repair was not much. Fixing the diaphragm actuator (if the cup is broken) could also fix the current esp etc warnings although when mine broke these did not appear - just loss of performance but increased fuel economy to about 60 mpg. If you have auto on/off headlights then there will be a sensor behind the interior mirror stuck to the windscreen which also does the auto wipers. I can not remember how to switch off the auto light function but it is something like have the ignition on but not the engine running, put the light switch to possibly auto, push down and hold the button on the end of the light switch until a message is given - the details are in the car handbook.

There are a few people on the C5 sub forum with Lexias, I would put a post on there.

Have you checked if the diaphragm actuator at the gearbox end of the cylinder head is connected - the plastic cup breaks, about £20 for a new one and it may be possible to just remove the cup from the new and fit to the old one if the rest of the part is ok.

Merry Christmas everyone and thankyou for all the help over the year.

johnl, I would give Barclays, now Bentleys, a call and see what they say. Anthony Quinn is the Service Advisor you need to speak to, he is incredibly helpful. Their no. (if you do not already have it) is 01925 819401. It is about this time of year when the spring broke on our car, probably due to the colder weather and happened a few yards after the first start of the day. Since the spring was caught in the cup it was still possible to drive the mile to Barclays - without the cup and on other car makes I have read stories of brake hose/tyre/wheel damages from the broken spring end. If you can not get anyone else to pay it is not too difficult a job to do which I did later to replace a top strut bearing, but better weather would help. It still took a day though, official time to replace both front springs is about 2½ hours. The difficult bit was getting the lower end of the strut out of the suspension arm, I used a 2 leg puller to push it out.

Have just tried out the latest 2012 version of the back-up dvd Citroen service manuals to replace a 2011 version. I have seen these available on such as ebay for as little as £3.99. The parts are just the same as the latest on-line version on service.citroen. I have still to decide if the new version is better, but it does not include the previous section on 'incidents' - fixes needed for unusual faults that have occurred such as the C5 estate high level brake light dimly glowing. Also it does not recognise the VIN for our C5 estate, the on-line version does and the old version did so maybe some VIN numbers are missing, but our C3 and C4 are there.

Only problem with our heater controls is the slide to set the air flow from outside to internal air circulation - this would sometimes seem to stick and the slide button not move. I could reach under the dash and rotate the duct by hand (above driver's feet) and could not find anything to make it stick. The manual temperature and air distribution controls are by cables so you could look under the dash and follow them to the various flap levers and see if something is not right. Maybe there is a fault with the cable.

Just checked an old photo of the mark 1 C5 (2004) and the quick release connectors to the battery are red and green, my error must have just been on the 2003 C3 which has the black positive quick release connector and no colour on the negative bolted connector, just a black cable. Will check the mark 2 C5 later. So maybe Citroen changed the colours in 2004.

I jump started the C5 (mark 1 2004 2.2 hdi) several times from the C3 (2003) with no problems. It was only being used about once a month. Always done with the C3 running before connecting up to stop its battery going flat since being a 1.4 petrol it was quite small and may not have turned over the diesel. I also bought a 900 amp booster from Machine Mart but this has never had enough power to start the C5.

In the C5 I had something similar when in about a 1 hour crawling pace queue but once going again and presumably the engine/underbonnet temperature falling it was then ok. The engine fan was cutting in /out. Suspected a fuel fault (maybe temperature/ water contam) but once flushed through as the car got going it cleared and did not happen again. On petrol cars similar has occurred, usually related to fuel mixture includes: a faulty open thermostat and rain suddenly cooling the radiator, a faulty spark plug as the engine heated up, a loose needle valve in a SU carburettor allowing flooding/rich mixture, an Astra which sometimes seemed to turn into a kangaroo - never sorted this but suspected the ignition module, a faulty temperature sensor giving too rich a mixture, badly adjusted manual choke, C3 wear in the accelerator pedal electrics giving uneven acceleration from low revs. One thought, running down hill, would this let any sediment/water in the fuel tank go to the fuel pump ?

I fell for this once when trying to jump start the C5 from the C3 which also has a black +ve terminal clip. Got the cables the wrong way round and fortunately the cheap jump leads melted in seconds at a crocodile clip and no damage was done to the cars. So now on the old C5, our latest C5 and the C3 now have the + and - signs on the batteries painted over with white tippex which stands out in poor light.

To get the speedo panel out, slide a couple of credit type cards under the 2 dimples about 1 inch to undo the fixing clips and then pull it forward. From memory, replacement of the speedo motor has been discussed here by coastline taxis and the rev counter uses the same motor as the speedo so these could be swapped to prove the fault is the motor before any money is spent.

We used to get a lot of new members with problems but that seemed to stop when we had a lot of spam posts which was sorted. Only thing I have done recently on the C5 estate was replace a gaiter on a rear suspension strut that had started to weap oil, took an afternoon, a gaiter (£7.30) a new clip (£9.30) and about 700 ml of LDS fluid (£15.20 for a litre). This was my first C5 suspension job in 6 years. It went through the MOT with this which was a surprise but it failed on a front one which was more of a surprise since I thought it was the rear they were replacing, should have checked it before the MOT and wiped the oil off - labour was only £70 though but the strut £338 and 2 litres of oil £32 (dealer prices and similar to GSF so I could not have done it much cheaper). Other things done outside of servicing during the year - - The reversing sensors had started to give a false reading after parking it in the sun last August but I found by lowering the towbar 13 pin socket a bit seems to have cured it. - Replaced the high level brake light - it was filling with water and whilst trying to remove the lens to seal it, I managed to break the lens, new one £46. When the doors are locked it glows dimly until the electrics fully shutdown - official cure is to solder a resistor across its +/- inputs but is not worth the bother and the space to do this is restricted. The old one did it as well so no product improvement. - Loctite removed from rear brake calipers and suspension arm/caliper joint greased.

The car handbook will list the fuses, check if one is common to both lights. If not, still check if the boot bulb is ok since this is probably easy to remove and you could have 2 separate faults. Also check the other brake lights work and if the no. plate lights work - just to see if it is a brake light problem or possibly a broken wire between the car body and hatch door.

Does not look difficult to replace, for the 5 door: - open the hatch door, unclip the hatch glass side plastic trims, undo the 2 nuts now seen at each end of the top plastic trim, pull off this trim, undo the 4 nuts holding the spoiler on, unclip the spoiler, disconnect the light electrical connector, undo the light 2 torx bolts and the light is free to remove. A new light for a C5 estate was £46 earlier this year from a Citroen dealer so one for a C4 may be similar.

The parts diagram of the wiring loom shows these 2 connectors are for something labelled P with a vertical line through - at a guess that could be for front parking sensors or headlamp washers which appear to have a pump and level sensor. If you register on servicecitroen.com (as a member of a car club for example) you can see the parts diagrams.

Sorry I can not help but if you copy this to the C5 subforum you may get some help. The C5 forum has more followers and this problem is probably not C3 specific.

Just tried closing the C4 rear hatch with another door open and not sure if it makes a difference but will try again when it is not raining. Oddly, on our C5 estate the rear door almost closes itself needing hardly any effort to close but I think the struts that hold it open are a bit weak and might need replacing. There has been no mention of replacing pulleys on our C4 (June 2011). £29 for the 2 front wipers is the normal price at our dealer (inc vat) but if asked for in a service you would pay extra for a few minutes labour. A wash and vac is standard/included if paying for a service or other work (but not MOT). The service book is one that covers all Citroen models (so should be easy to get) and all that happens is the VIN of your car is written in it and the warranty start date and then the service stamps are done at each service. The start date is also on the service citroen system under vehicle characteristics so the book can be filled in any time. Working out what should be done at each service is not straight forward since some depend on miles or time or model or engine but for the 1.6 hdi make sure you have an oil/filter change each year or the recommended miles if sooner since they have a reputation of turbo failures. Something to watch for, the under bonnet fuse box lid is held on by flimsy catches, I found the back one had snapped almost completely off and the lid rattling now it is loose and could also let in water. Rather than buying a replacement which could go the same way I will look at alternative fastening methods if I can not get a warranty claim for a new one. May be a coincidence, but I found it a week after the service, but then why would the fuse box be accessed but then the catches are not up to the job.

If the car is put on axle stands before disconnecting the pipes, will this stop the car sinking on to the bump stops and reduce the amount of LDS fluid loss ?