Citroen C4 picasso

markfj

Hi

I'm going to ask on the Citroen site to, just wondered if anyone had any ideas

my sister bought a citroen c4 Picasso and was told it needed a new battery, she bought a new battery and put in.

She says that the car wont start up straight away, when ignition is turned on, but will eventually and then its ok once its going

so, it wont start up immediately, a service light comes on but apparently once that is turned off automatically it works ok, for a couple of days a "Engine Management system faulty" error would appear after the battery change but for the last few days this seems to have resolved and no longer appears.

I told her to write the seller who is apparently a dealer, as no issues were mentioned, but thought id ask on here for those that know more about cars than us, its a petrol and an Auto if that makes any difference

cheers

Strider590

Won't start as in it turns over but doesn't start?

Is she running it for short periods of time (to move it to another parking space or do a short 2min run down the road, etc) and then trying to start it later?

She could easily be flooding the engine, which has two effects:-

1) It wets the plugs and makes starting impossible until they dry off.
2) The excess fuel washes down the piston bores (bore wash), which removes the oil and causes loss of compression.

Both my GFs and my own car, if started cold and moved a short distance, will NOT later start first time for up to 12 hours.

bigjl

Citroen electrics are notoriously fickle.

A good start would definitely be posting up on a Citroen specific forum.

Since the warning has gone since the new battery the problem could have been caused by the knackered battery.

Look up resetting the ECU or BSi

Doing so often fixes glitches with modern Citroen

http://www.citroenownersclub.co.uk/bsi-reset.html

markfj

Thanks

I will try and get more info as Ive not had a chance to see the issues myself in person

From my understanding it was initially after the battery was changed that it came up with a the "engine management system" fault but that then disappeared after a day or so of the new battery in place.

It tends to happen on and off, but in the morning took her several attempts to get it going, my understanding is she turns on to power everthng, waits for service light to go off and then tried the engine itself.

I will have a post on citroen sites too, cheers