Help! Diesel Additive Coming Out When Registering Minimum!

[grimble]

Arghh!

 

Bought a beautiful C5 estate last week and has been saying 'Diesel additive minimum'.

So I did a lot of research and went to Citroen to buy 1l kit after sending back some Patfluid.

 

Just bought it home and popped out the pipe for filling the car, DPX42 started running out!

So I raised the pipe up to keep it back thinking there must be little remaining, so I decided to open the 'breather cap' to put the larger pipe on to connect it to the empty bottle.

That started spewing DPX42 as well!!

 

What's going on! arghh I got it on my arm, quickly running to the sink to wash it off. (have plastic gloves on)

 

Anyway, I put it back together and decided I needed some heads-up.

Is it full of the stuff, who knows!!

 

Can anyone help?

 

Thanks, Graham

[Johndouglas]

I wonder if the previous owner has filled the tank with fluid but not told the computer.   Unless the puter is told, it will still show the minimum level.

[grimble]

That's what I'm thinking!

 

I'm going to try again tomorrow and perhaps not remove the breather cap. See how much go's in and if it backs up then it must be full.

Going to look into purchasing one of these ECU devices from China to see if I can reset it.

 

Thanks. 

[paul.h]

Not sure about this, but I vaguely remember our previous C5 tank was white plastic that allowed the fluid level to be seen. Pity you could not contact the previous owner and find out what has been done - maybe it was sold when the cost of sorting it out was becoming a bit too much.

[grimble]

Well after you mentioning about the previous owner I decided to TXT him.

He recently replied and said 'Don't worry about the fluid, it's full' !!! and also that he'll contact me later.

Maybe he hasn't been able to have it reset, ran out of money like what you guys mentioned. Maybe there's a sensor issue?

 

Blooming hell, wish I knew that before. I've not 4.5l of Patfluid waiting for collection and 1l of DPX42 that I could probably resell.

At least I now can relax a little after stressing most of the week about!

Who knows, he might of even had the filter cleaned :-)

 

To be continued...

[DaveHerns]

I think you'll need the proper Lexia to reset the fluid level

[grimble]

Well after quite in-depth conversation with the previous owner I'm now enlightened to what is going on!

 

Seems as though he took the car to a garage with the fault which the garage then tried to put the fluid in.

They apparently could only fit in £14 worth in and then tried to reset the fault. After investigation it seems there's a fault with the sensor in the tank and they would have to replace the tank. Due to the cost of this he decided not to do so, this was earlier this year and had live with the fault signal since.

 

He apologised for not mentioning it as he was not around during the sell, only his wife and is not sending me documents from the garage who did the work for him earlier in the year.

 

So my options:

 

1) Get the tank replaced with a new sensor

2) Ignor the fault warning and live with it knowing the Eolys is full

3) Try again to reset the fault with another garage who can do it

4) or by buying a cheap device from China!

 

Any ideas?

Thanks, Graham

[Johndouglas]

They apparently could only fit in £14 worth in

 

But £14 worth would only be a very small amount.   So if the tank was almost full, surely the previous owner must have had it filled?

[grimble]

He didn't have it for long as too big for his wife, that's as much as I know! £14 is next to nothing, I guess he bought it like myself without noticing the warning and like me he had no idea what it meant!

[grimble]

Well just recieved some documents in the post about the Eolys servicing, seems like they put 1L in and failed to reset counter due to:

 

'Open Circuit Fault'

 

"New sensor required : £181.37 for tank" plus labour.

 

Also included is a sheet by Bosch with details of the equipment they used to reset?

'ESI [tronic] Version 6.3.696 (16/01/13)

This came up with "Error memory could not be deleted" on '21 Signal: additive minimum level'

 

Interesting information although does not solve anything apart from knowing that the car has some of the fluid in it!

Can anyone enlighten me to anything of the above? Would this Lexia soft do a better job?

 

Thanks, Graham

[Johndouglas]

 Would this Lexia soft do a better job?

 

Very possibly yes - Lexia would stand more chance.   Certainly a Chinky Lexia would cost you less than a new Eolys tank.

[paul.h]

I am not sure about this and it may be somewhere on this forum, but did not some of the early cars need the control unit replacing as opposed to being reset and this could be the problem and not the need for a new tank, since the level may be done by counting down the miles done by the car. One thing I am not sure on though, is the eoylis fluid still being injected as if nothing is wrong and the error message could just be lived with ?

 

If you look at the parts diagrams for the C5, mark 1, 2.2 hdi, air and fuel supply, fuel tank fuel gauge, diesel fuel and particle filter - it shows part 20 ECB which has different part nos depending on the car RPO - it may be this part that needs replacing, and then configuring (by Lexia). The picture of the tank is not clear enough to show if it has a level sensor.

 

If not done already, register on the service.citroen site as another professional, member of the Citroen Owners Club and see the parts diagrams. Also buy the Citroen manuals on dvd from such as ebay for about £5 - this gives all the procedures and parts diagrams - but looking at the ones for additive filling and configuring the ecu, it is not that clear on what needs doing and where the control unit is located. It may well be that a trip to a Citroen dealer is the solution here depending on what they want to charge.

[Bobster]

Hi,

 

I have a 2003 2.2 HDi. At about 55K miles I topped up Eolys tank; Citroen dealer said it would not need the ecu resetting. However, about 4K miles later, I got the Diesel Additive Minimum warning. My dealer tried on 2 occasions to reset the ecu but whenever they tried to save the setting the ecu went back to nearly empty. They checked with Citroen and told me that my car would need a new ecu and likely it would then call for the DPF to be replaced also; the total cost could be over £1300. 

 

However, I found on other sites that others had had this and not bothered to change the ecu, just live with the occasional warning message. So that's what I have done and some 25K miles later it is still running the same.

 

Love the car to bits and hope to keep it much longer, but will have the DPF removed and the ecu adjusted when the DPF comes up for replacement. This will dispense with the DPF and all the additive fuss. Have checked with MOT station and this will not affect the MOT; have also checked with my insurance and they confirm that this "mod" will not affect the premium.

 

Hope you enjoy yours as much as I do.

 

Best wishes,  Bob.

[paul.h]

This sounds good, so no need to do anything.

[grimble]

After considering the options I think the best thing to do at the moment, is nothing!

Perhaps after Christmas I'll look into Citroen resetting the fault although they want £75.

 

What a great Citroen, I loved my Xantia & XM but I'm so fortunate to have this C5 with less than 70k miles on the clock. Plus it's been serviced by Citroen it's whole life. Next thing to do is to save for classic! (one day maybe)

 

Thanks to everyone for their input, you guys are fab!

[PICASSOCONVERT]

........did not some of the early cars need the control unit replacing as opposed to being reset and this could be the problem............................

Paul - I seem to remeber that what you stated about the replacement of the control unit was the case with my first C5 which was a 2.2HDi estate bought new on 30 November 2001. Certainly a control unit had to be replaced when the DPF was changed.

 

David