GSD

When I spoke to our local Citroen agent this morning they said that this was a fairly regular occurrence and that they therefore kept a good stock of replacement dipsticks available at a cost of around £6. Apparently this is a known design/materials fault and that the bit of plastic that has broken off should simply sit in the bottom of the sump and not cause any problems. In the circumstances it would be interesting to know if the dip sticks on newer Citroens are all steel? GSD.

Thanks very much to you both for your advice but have you heard of this happening before? Also if I do decide to take the sump off is this a fairly easy job with no access problems? By the way it will be interesting to see how easy it is to source a new dipstick as I can't imagine that this is something that is required very often. Many thanks again, GSD.

I have a 2004 1.4LX Xsara hatchback and when I pulled the dipstick out to check the oil level I fould that the plastic guage on the end had broken off near the top! Whilst I will obviously have to try and get a new dipstick so I can measure the oil level I'm much concerned about having bit of hard plastic loose in the sump! Can anyone tell me whether this is likely to just sit there safely until the next oil and filter change or whether I need to do something about this now? Many thanks, GSD.

Thanks very much indeed for this but as I haven't got the car with me today I won't be able to test the aircon by pressing the RECIRC button until tomorrow. Unfortunately the car is out of warranty so I just wondered if any particular damage will be done if I just leave things as they are and simply tolerate the noise rather than spending money on a replacement flap? If the dash has to come out this could be pretty expensive. GSD.

My C3 has recently started to make a loud clicking noise behind the dashboard quite soon after starting off. This lasts for a few seconds and seems to happen after the aircon compressor has cut in and the temperature in the car has reached the level set on the aircon controller. After the clicking stops the aircon seems to function quite normally. I can replicate the problem by setting the aircon to 'Lo' and then raising the set temperature to close to ambient, after which the clicking will recur for a few seconds. If the ambient temperature is less than the aircon's set temperature then the clicking doesn't happen. Any advice regarding the cause of this and how to prevent it happening would be most welcome. Many thanks, GSD.

The local Citroen garage did kindly agreed to regas the C3's aircon FoC and found a leak coming from the junction between the high pressure pipe and the bottom connection to the condenser, where it's very exposed to muck etc. being thrown up from the road. They said that this might just need a new seal but that past experience had shown that the pipework at this point can corrode. The difficulty with this is that Citroen only supply the high pressure and low pressure aircon pipes and seals as one complete unit costing around £88 so it's not possible to simply replace a defective section of pipe. As a result the cost of replacing the entire aircon pipework and then regassing the system would have been around £285, including about two hours of labour. As a result our friendly local aircon specialist said that the would first try to replace the seal on its own, but having done this and then pressure tested the system it was clear that the leak was from the pipe itself rather than the seal. This meant that we then needed to purchase a complete set of aircon pipes for the C3. However rather than installing these as one unit, which would have been fairly difficult and quite time consuming, the aircon specialist decided to simply cut off the small section of new pipe and connecting bracket that we needed, did the same with the pipework already installed, and then attached the new pipework and bracket to the remainder of the existing pipework using an alloy compression joint. He then joined this to the bottom condenser bracket in the normal way, pressure tested and regassed the system which seems to be working well so far. Whilst this meant that the rest of the new pipework we bought is basically scrap it did mean that the overall cost of making the repair in this way was very much quicker and therefore much less costly, saving us around £125. Interestingly it turned out that Citroen had changed the design of the aircon brackets and seals since the car was manufactured so perhaps they have discovered a bit of a weakness with them. GSD

To bring things up-to-date I asked our friendly local aircon specialist to take a look at the C3 and he said that as only 2 bar of pressure remained in the system this was pretty clear evidence of a leak. However as a UV dye hadn't been added when the system was last regassed he wasn't able to detect where the leak was. He confirmed that it was industry standard for a UV dye to be added when a system was regassed and that we should therefore take the car back to the local Citroen garage that did the previous regas in May. This was because a regass plus dye was necessary now to enable the source of the leak to be detected which would be completely wasted when the repairs were made. As the original invoice for the regas in May does say that a dye was added and that no evidence of a leak was found it will be interesting to see what they find next week. GSD

Bad news - the C3s aircon has failed again. The compressor runs when the aircon is switched on and stops when the aircon is switched off, but there is absolutely no chill. In addition one of the pipes to/from the compressor is actually hot to the touch, and there seems to be an unusual hissing type noise coming from or behind the air vents on the dashboard. Obviously we've switched the aircon off until it can be repaired, but has anybody any idea about what the problem might be? Many thanks, GSD.

I'm pleased to say that all the C3 needed was a regas. The aircon is working fine now. Ma\ny thanks to everyone for their helpful comments. GSD

My son and daughter-in-law have recently bought a 53 reg C3 but when driving it during the recent warm weather they realised that the aircon isn't working, either in auto mode or when this is switched off. Worse than that the system seems to be trying to heat the car even when the auto temperature setting is below the outside ambient temperature. Has anyone any ideas as to what could be causing this?

The problem turned out to be a damaged/chipped oxygen sensor and a cracked exhaust manifold. Both had to be replaced at a cost of £430. Apparently the oxygen sensor simply pulled out of thread in the manifold, and because this was badly cracked it couldn't be rethreaded. The garage said that this was a very unusual failure.

Thanks very much for this but if the oxygen sensor has failed I assume that the engine would run very roughly, if at all. By the way I always buy my petrol from Sainsbury's and understand that they haven't had any of the contamination problems suffered by Tesco, Morrisons, and Asda. I've now arranged for the car to be examined by the local Citroen dealer (on the Herts/Cambs border) next Thursday and will let you know what they find. Hopefully nothing too serious!

The catalytic convertor warning light has lit up on the dashboard of my 53 reg Citroen Xsara 1.4L petrol hatchback. However as the the engine and the car seem to be running quite normally I just wondered if anybody else had had this problem and what the cause might be. Also if the cat needs to be replaced I'd be interested to know what this might cost. Many thanks.

My new C5 has a problem with its gearstick gaiter in that it repeatedly becomes unclipped from the central transmission housing. If I push it back home its feels secure even if I tug at it all round, but as soon as I start to change gear when driving it comes loose again. Has anyone else had the same problem and, if so, how did you cure it?

Thanks very much for this but as the garage says that replacing the heater matrix could take more than a day I'm a bit concerned that a lot of things will need to be disturbed which might result in other problems. As the acrid smell seems to be much less noticeable now I'm wondering whether I should simply advise my son to leave things as they are for the moment even though the work will all be covered under the warranty. The garage says that if this work wasn't covered under warranty they would probably advise him to live with the problem. However as the warranty expires in a couple of months time perhaps he should go ahead with the work anyway. Any views?