Car broke down yesterday

Mizydoscape

Another update. I took it to a garage today. They checked over the plugs, tested the coil packs, and the fuel injectors. Did a compression test. All good all round. They then found the car had no oil in it! Full oil change was done at the service in June and when the RAC picked me up at the end of July the first thing he did was check the oil so I wrongly assumed it was fine and would still be fine now. Anyway they filled up the oil, and said to run it on and see how it goes, checking the oil regularly. They also didn't charge me anything which was nice of them.

Feel like this car has made me out to look like a right idiot. I do check fluid levels but hadn't last month 🙄 

Anyway there must been an underlying reason why it's going through oil like that (not leaking while parked as nothing left behind on the road). Will try and keep it going and cut my losses once we've completed on our new house.

angrycrow

You have told us it's a Citroen but not the model or engine. Given the high oil consumption I suspect this is a c3 or c3 Picasso with the "Prince" 1.4 or 1.6 Vti engine. They are well known for high oil consumption. 1littre per 1000 miles was considered normal and acceptable by Peugeot. I had this engine in a Peugeot and it used around 1l per 1000. This engine can empty the sump in 4000 miles so needs regular checks and topping up of the oil.

The reason I ask is that the Prince engine has very expensive spark plugs, upwards of £40 a set. The plug in your photo looks longer than the plugs fitted to the prince engine. This could cause them to hit the piston and bend although I would expect damage to the outer electrode. The threaded section of the plug should 26.5mm long for this prince engine. NKG part number PLZKBR7A-G i think. 

If your car is not a 1.4 vti or 1.6 vti disregard everything I have said. 

Mizydoscape

angrycrow said:

You have told us it's a Citroen but not the model or engine. Given the high oil consumption I suspect this is a c3 or c3 Picasso with the "Prince" 1.4 or 1.6 Vti engine. They are well known for high oil consumption. 1littre per 1000 miles was considered normal and acceptable by Peugeot. I had this engine in a Peugeot and it used around 1l per 1000. This engine can empty the sump in 4000 miles so needs regular checks and topping up of the oil.

The reason I ask is that the Prince engine has very expensive spark plugs, upwards of £40 a set. The plug in your photo looks longer than the plugs fitted to the prince engine. This could cause them to hit the piston and bend although I would expect damage to the outer electrode. The threaded section of the plug should 26.5mm long for this prince engine. NKG part number PLZKBR7A-G i think. 

If your car is not a 1.4 vti or 1.6 vti disregard everything I have said. 

Sorry it would have made sense for me to post the model etc! It's a Citroen C1 with the 1.2 puretech engine.

chrisw

Lack of oil would cause plenty of problems but I can't see how it would cause a misfire, especially one which is cured by simply topping the oil up. Presumably the plugs aren't fouled from burning the oil as they're new. 

I suspect you have a number of issues going on.