Auto diagnosis problems

Hi

I hope you can help me please with the following problem. I have a ten year old Citroen C3, which the garage seems unable to fix or identify the problem, which is as, follows.

While the car is running after a short while the Engine Auto-diagnosis flashes and does three beeps, the car than loses its power and slows down mostly on gradients - but occasionally on no gradient at all - and than picks up again for a while. This has happened on several occasions, each time the car has gone in for repairs and according to their final invoice the garage has done the following:

Work carried out

Carry out a diagnostic code

Check for intermittent warning light staying on constant
Lack of power
Test injectors wiring and injectors
Carry out diagnostic test
Supply and fit new spark plugs
Test and replace fuel pump
Test and replace OC sensor bank 1

Parts
DIA Diagnostic code read
7.00468.76.0 Fuel pump ap
0258006027 o2 sensor Bosch ap
408771

The car also had a diagnostic test with the Citroen garage; both they and our local garage had different results each time.

The garage no longer considers it cost effective to continue with repairs and are reluctant to do so telling me basically to go elsewhere. They charged only for the parts .

The mechanic said he thought it was something mechanical rather than a malfunction with the computer.

Surely a car of this age cannot be a right off. I bought the car as a used car six years ago for £5,000 surely it cannot now just be consigned to the scarp heap. I have no money to buy anything much better except a car of similar age which could just as well do the same thing. Many people have cars much older than this and my last car a Nissan was 17 years old.

Any ideas please will be most appreciated thank you. I contacted Citreon who after wasting my time asking for a lot of detail and waiting round for a phone call told me to take it to the Citreon garage which charge around £70 plus vat per hour which would soon run up an enormous bill, already many hours have been spend on this car.

John

Hi Solarwind.

Do you have any details of the diagnosis report from the Citroen garage?

Given that they're using proper Citroen equipment (hopefully!) the diagnosis should be the most accurate. Your other garage will most likely be using generic codes which can differ from manufacturer's codes and might not show up some Citroen specific codes. Early C3s aren't compliant with modern standards, in common with many manufacturers, Peugeot/Citroen did their own thing!

Solarwind wrote:I hope you can help me please with the following problem. I have a ten year old Citroen C3, which the garage seems unable to fix or identify the problem, which is as, follows.

Missing Lincs wrote:Do you have any details of the diagnosis report from the Citroen garage?

If you don't have what Missing Lincs asks for and you want to do some diagnosis yourself (no cost for your time) with a very cheap diagnostic tool (ebay tool for £15 or so) you may get more information than you have been given by the garage

More expensive equipment can do more, but its for a quick and cheap test that is easy to do yourself and may reveal some productive results.

When you get the codes, post them back here with as much detail about the engine as you can and hopefully some suggestions can be made on how to proceed.