paul.h

Possibilities could include brake pads seized in the calipers (were these free when replaced ?), cable not connected properly at the calipers, water in the cable which has frozen (this happened on a Saab I had - cured by greasing the cable and replacing the bellows at the cable end), cable damage. If you disconnect the cables at the calipers this will let you check if the cable is free in its sleeve.

Our 2.2 hdi, mark1 C5 is due for new front tyres, the original Michelins have now done 27k miles. On other cars I have only ever got about 15k miles on other makes so I may replace with Michelins. A few of us have fit towbars and there are some posts to search for. I used a 7-way relay for the lighting and took the 12v supply direct from the battery.

Welcome to the forum. If it is the rear brakes that squeal then this is a common problem. There is lots on this (try a search) but basically, corrosion occurs between the rear alloy calipers and the subframe which pushes the calipers out. The cure is to remove the calipers, clean up the corrosion, apply copper grease to the contact faces and re-assemble. 2 years old is about right for this to occur (my experience). You will also probably find the front and rear brake pads are siezed and need removing and the metal contact points cleaning up and applying copper grease.

I have had this when the car has been garaged when the brake discs have been wet. Also on one car where water got into the end of the handbrake cable and would freeze - in this case the handbrake stayed on until the cable warmed up (hair drier or driving slowly until the pads/brake heated up). Cured by greasing the cable and replacing the rubber bellows at the cable end.

Could you not buy one coil and replace one at a time yourself until the faulty one is found ?

iannez has given a Citroen price as £12 to £15. My local Citroen dealer is Barclays, Manchester Road, Warrington and I buy parts from them. If not in stock they are usually delivered in a couple of days. The nearest eurocarparts is in Trafford Park, Manchester.

Eurocarparts web site lists a washer pump for £7.95 +vat. From a Citroen dealer, if you take your car VIN number you will definitely get the right part.

Welcome to the forum. One thing to beware of, if you replace the instrument panel with one from another car, the mileage will go to the highest of the 2 cars.

Edited (Deleted wording). I have just read this topic in the problems section and cause was a discharged battery due to the radio not switching off.

In the Haynes manual (worth buying) it says to remove the right hand wheel and then the wheel arch plastic liner to get to the water bottle. To remove the wheel a ramp would not help, need the car jack and an axle stand to support the car whilst you work on it.

Welcome to the forum. There must be a hole somewhere letting the water out. You need to access the water bottle to check for a pipe/bottle/connection leak.

Auto?? Why do you think it's an auto? It's a manual. Reply was to Robbie who posted "How come my C5 2.0 HDI vin is RHZ"E" and I had to pay £165, it's an Auto does that make a difference?"

The auto fuel economy must be bad enough to put it in a higher tax band. The V5 document should give the CO2 emissions which then relate to the tax band.

Welcome to the forum. I have asked this before at my dealer to see if they could plug the car in and change the auto setting to a normal intermittent wipe and the answer was no (2004 2.2 hdi vtr). Sometimes I find the auto setting works ok and then others it is really annoying - probably depends on the type of rain hitting the sensor area at the top of the windscreen.

At our Citroen dealer I have bought the Citroen touch up pens which include the metallic paint and the laquer in the thumb size containers with a small brush in the cap. Cost is only about £5 for both together. You will need the paint colour code from the door pillar sticker.

Could be a faulty coolant temperature switch, probably located somewhere between the cylinder head and the radiator - if you find it, try unplugging the wiring connector to see if this stops the fan or may be better (to avoid any possible management codes) with the ignition off to unplug the connector and check the resistance across the switch with the coolant hot and also cold - when cold there should be an open circuit. Above references to air con may be that this would require the fan to run to cool the air con condenser - to rule this out turn off the air con.

Is this since it is set in auto ? Anything in the handbook ? If you alter the temperature setting does the fan speed change to quickly adjust the cabin temperature ? Our air con is not climate control so all settings are done manually but air conditioning systems normally need the cabin fan to run before they will work so may be to do with this.

If the bonnet release is the one under the bonnet to allow it to lift fully open, then this is different to all the other cars we have had. To see it, use a torch to look through the 1 inch gap after using the release inside the car and you will see a plastic lever inset into the panel. Lift this to release the bonnet (it takes a bit of practice since it pivots at the back and the part pointing forward stays horizontal as it is lifted).

Welcome to the forum. Sounds as if a fuse has failed. Check them all including the maxi fuses. On our Picasso we had a problem where the engine stopped and would not restart plus other electrical items going through the ignition switch did not work. Turned out to be one of the maxi fuses.

This seems to be the case with a breakdown warranty - you have to pay to determine if the cause is a breakdown that is covered by the insurance. This will be in the policy booklet. When the injectors failed on our C3 though, we had only done a few hundred miles since purchase, were told by the dealer we would need to pay for the diagnostics (about £70) but when time came to pay the bill we were not charged since we had not had the car long and they had enough money from the warranty company to cover their costs. From this dealer we do have 3 cars (C3, C5, Picasso) and these have been serviced by them. Injector failure did still let the engine run with a misfire (1.4 petrol) and the engine light came on.

Welcome to the forum. A common fault on the 1.4 petrol is fuel injector failure. This brought up the engine light on our car but it also did not run very well. There are a few posts on this. Cause appears to be water getting passed the wiper washers and dripping on the injectors.

Just tried etai site and as noted above, C5 not listed. The Amazon.fr site has the old and new C5 manuals listed, it is worth also getting the new one since a lot of things are still relevant and the pictures are better, being colour photos as opposed to drawings. When I bought mine, amazon could not supply the old C5 manual but I was able to get it from culture-factory.fr but their website has been down for many months. The engine may be the same as in a Peugeot 406, so you could borrow a Haynes for this from the local library.

Letting the engine idle for some time before switching off is to allow the turbo to slow down from 1000's of rpm before you stop the engine and oil pump which is feeding oil to the turbo fan bearings. If not, the oil film goes and the bearings wear out early. When they wear, the fan can go off central and cause the oil seals to wear allowing oil into the engine to be burnt, hence the white smoke as they fail - had this on a Saab 9-5 (petrol), the car was surrounded by a cloud of white smoke when it went. Early signs of turbo wear are smoke on start up. Also when a turbo fails, parts of it can end up in the air intake to aftercooler and the engine so these should also be cleaned out and the engine oil/filter changed. There may also be a need to replace the exhaust catalyst and lambda probes if the oil has contaminated these.

If you have a French dictionary, you can get a manual from www.etai.fr (etudes techniques - similar to Haynes with lots of pictures so not being fluent in French is not a problem).

I have a 2004 2.2 HDi hatch, 6 speed manual and the fuel use is similar to 72dudes. My previous car was a Saab 9-5, 2.3t, this would give about 30 mpg compared to the C5 about 44 mpg. The Saab gave about 75% of the miles of the C5 per gallon eg motorways 48-50 vs about 36. Towing the C5 gives about 30 vs 24.