Has My C5 Had A Stroke

[chris1408]

Hi everyone, I'm looking for some help finding where to start to deal with a multitude of issues with a 2004 C5 exclusive 2.0 Hdi estate.

I bought the car privately 2 weeks ago, the seller told me there was an issue with the battery draining but it didn't seem to be too much of a problem.

I drove it home an was very impressed, the car drove perfectly and performed well with no glitches for the rest of the day. Once I had finished with it for the day I parked it up and disconnected the battery. The following morning I reconnected the battery went to start it the first thing that happened was the engine turned over fine but would not start then a warning came on that the tailgate was open.I checked it and it wasn't so I tried to start it again, engine turned over fine but wouldn't start then a warning saying engine immobilzer fault came on. I got out of the car tried to lock it but the plip did not work so I locked and then unlocked the car with the key tried to start it again and it fired up first time.Again the rest of the day it was fine so I disconnected the battery again and the following morning I reconnected it, tried to start it, tailgate open warning followed by engine immobilizer fault warning locked and unlocked with the key tried again and started fine. Happily driving to work suddenly another warning saying anti pollution fault  followed by EGR/ASR (I think) warning) followed by engine management light, followed with big red STOP on the dash. The final thing was loss of power followed by engine cutting out. It flatly refused to start again so I had it trailered home where it is a driveway ornament. I am reluctant to give up on it as it is such a lovely car. HELP. There are other minor niggles that I haven't gone into yet as this is rapidly becoming a novel rather than a post.  

[Rookie2]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

First you have to be aware that the whole of the Citro?Pug range are crityical in voltage, very ctirical.

These vehicles can throw up all sorts of diagnostic faults simply because the battery is not capable of maintaining the charge.

 

Believe me, a battery producing just 1/2 volt less than it should do will throw up a fault.

 

I recommend that you fir a quality battery then try again. Then come baclk and let us know what the result is please.

[chris1408]

Thanks Rookie2, I'm going to try charging the battery then I'll test it before I try starting it and again if I can get it to run. I assume that I will have to carry out the ECU/BSI reset.

[paul.h]

If the battery is more than about 5 years old it is due for replacement. I found on our C5 and the previous one if not used for more than 3 weeks the battery would go flat since the alarm takes a lot of power and when opening doors the bsi starts up and the suspension pump can run. If you have a towbar these also can help drain the battery unless its fuses are removed. I replaced the battery on both at about 7 years old since they no longer had enough capacity even when appearing to be fully charged at 12.7 volts - a quick indication of this is when using a charger the battery would quickly seem to be fully charged rather than taking many hours.

 

Once the battery is sorted, if the engine management light does not go off, you will need to use a code reader to get the fault code and find out what the car thinks is wrong.

 

If you disconnect/reconnect the battery too quickly this can lead to odd electrical problems since it prevents the bsi shutting down and saving settings. This is copied from the technical section common problems topic:

 

16. Odd electrical problems caused by wrong battery disconnection procedure.

If you need to disconnect the battery and not do a BSI reset procedure, I have found the following has not given me any problems on a 2004 and 2007 C5 and a 2003 C3:

- remove the ignition key from the car

- open the bonnet

- wait a few minutes for the BSI to shut down

- disconnect the battery negative terminal

 

When reconnecting

- ignition key out of the car

- reconnect the battery

- wait a few minutes

- insert the key in the ignition and wait a minute

- turn the key to the first position and wait a minute

- turn the key so the dash lights come on and wait a minute

- start the engine

- take the windows down and up to reset the anti pinch

- reset the clock (and radio on the C3).