Hello all, I've got a 2.0 HDI 136 (Siemens VDO fuel system with piezo electric fuel injectors) in a Citroen C4. Given that there are probably lots more 307 and 407s with these engines I thought I'd post here, and its turned in to a bit of a ramble, sorry... This car's been back and forth from the dealer more times then I can care to mention for the following running problems: 1) High fuel consumption 2) Vibration at idle. 3) Occasional rocking (back and forth) during warm up. 4) Intermittent shudder and vibration between 1800-2200 RPM when on load. 5) Loss of power 6) knocking and banging during light to mid engine load. Citroen has authorised replacement of the EGR valve and the mass air flow meters, both made no difference to the running of the car. What's completely flummoxed them is the lack of ECU fault light, so they gave me the car back with the ECU parameters set to tight tolerances so it would flag a sensor fault if everything wasn't absolutely perfect. Of course, that didn't work, no ECU light. I book the car in again, and they find something wrong! Conversation goes something like this: Cit> We've been comparing the ECU settings between 2 vehicles and we've noticed that your car didn't have the alternator type correctly programmed. We've fixed that, and the car seems to idle better now, although we don't understand why this config setting should effect engine running, it might be purely coincidental. Take the car and try it for a few days. Me> Err, why on earth does the ECU need to know the *type* of alternator fastened to the engine block? (It was at this point I was about to find out just now complex modern engines have become) Cit> Arr, well, the ECU in this engine can choose to shutdown charging of the battery if it determines it's the most appropriate way to save fuel. Also, if you step on the gas, it can temporary shutdown battery charging and things like the A/C compressor to deliver more torque to the wheels, for emergency overtaking and such. Me> Blimey. But that didn't fix it and it still drives around occasionally like an agricultural vehicle. The next time I was in the dealership I pushed the point to explain the knocking under light engine load (which is a classic sign of faulty injector spray pattern) and it was probably a good job I did because Citroen wanted to replace the air flow meter again. Instead the dealership had a real-time combustion monitoring system shipped up and tested the car, they found: Injector 1) "Completely shafted" (their words, not mine). Injector 2) ok Injector 3) ok Injector 4) Intermittently fails, better when top of cylinder head is up to temperature. So one faulty injector I'd consider bad luck, but two sounds more like a batch problem to me. Either that, or there is something else that's caused them to fail? My question is, am I just unlucky or are there other HDI 136 owners with any of the above problems? If it wasn't for point 4 above (Shudder and vibration between 1800-2200) the car is very drivable, just drinks more fuel than the 180HP petrol version. I know this engine is in the new Focus and Mondeo, and there are some similar reported problems but there are lots of different versions of the 2.0 units in those cars that make it hard to compare, some are probably not the PSA units. Anyone got any ideas if this is common or what's causing the injectors to fail? (It's only done 5000 miles) My current theory is that whoever made the engine dropped the box of injectors on the floor before fitting them... Thanks, Chris
