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First problem with the Xsara

Neal R19

Well-Known Member
Right, so it's a French car and we all knew this would happen sooner or later...

The car starts eagerly, first turn of the key, hot or cold and has a rock steady idle, hot or cold. ~950rpm when warm.

The fault never appears within about 15-20 minutes from a cold start. During this time it drives 100% spot on. Then suddenly, the fault appears.

basically the engine drops to 3, 2, 1 or even 0 cylinders firing when I press the accelerator down. The other day on the motorway I just couldn't get up to 70 as it would just keep missing. Same in all gears. Or I can be driving along a B road at 40 and have a hard time keeping the car going.

The fault varies in severity, from being a fairly minor irritation that I can drive around, up to making the car almost undrivable as I can barely keep it moving/running.

It can happen going uphill downhill or on the flat, but possibly worse uphill, although this may just be because it's more noticeable and difficult to deal with as obviously the car wants to slow down when the power goes. I sometimes end up going to 1st gear and high revs to get up a hill that I'd normally cruise up in 3rd.

So my initial thought is that it's clearly load related which would point to the MAP sensor. But that doesn't explain why it seems to be time/temperature sensitive?

Coolant temp sensor?

Background:

I've read the coil packs on these cause a lot of issues so as a quick elimination exercise I swapped the coil pack with a mate for a few days, his car was 100% fine with my coil pack (which is a Bougicord/electrofil one) and my car still had the fault with his coil pack. So as I see it the coil pack is eliminated.

The car had a new lambda sensor just before I bought it, I don't know if the car had the same fault before. So the lambda is also a potential suspect. I fitted new Bosch Super Plus spark plugs as part of my full service when I bought it. The old NGK plugs looked fine when removed.

Also my temp gauge never seems to go over about 80 degrees, although from reading on other forums this is pretty normal as the gauges are not exactly accurate. Any opinion here? I'm going to pull the thermostat out for a test as I want to replace the coolant anyway.

Ideas?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah, a lot of the time it fires back into life with a jerk if I press the pedal right down...
 
Check the temp sensor, my megane did the same thing, after a couple of minutes running, it started jerking like it was wet or out of petrol or something and when you floor it, it went like a rocketship.
 
Dunno, I took out the coolant temp sensor and tested it, checked out fine.

fiddled around with a few other bits and bobs, cleaned a few things, washed out the breathers etc.

Problem hasn't reoccurred yet but I haven't driven it much and it was intermittent anyway...
 
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