Citroen C4 VTS 180 in bargain-basement blind bidding frenzy!
Discussion
Well, it's one year to the day (in fact, to the minute when 2:08pm rolls around) since I collected my C4, and took this picture:
4820 miles later, at an average of 28.7mpg @ 22mph, how's the C4 getting on?
Erm, it's just getting on, I'm afraid! Nothing exciting to report. I managed to find another bonnet (3rd time lucky) and this one is pretty mint, and fits nicely. I still haven't fixed the puffy exhaust, or polished it. Or serviced it....or repaired the existing problems.
I do plan to, however. It's earned some TLC at the very least. I get the odd duff message coming up saying it's low on coolant, or something, but all things considered it's had a good year. If it carries on in the same vein, it'll have another one too!
Here's a picture of it from the top of a castle:
So, I spent £88 on tyres, £70(ish) on a condenser, £25 (I think) on carpet mats, £70 (so far) on bonnets, £12 on a headlamp washer pump, and that's about it. I've spent about £250-£300 on bits I have kicking around (new brakes all round, headlamp swivel sensor thingy, servicing bits etc.) and I've got some more hours to put in trying to sort out the broken intake system (somehow, it's still running despite lots of vacuum leaks), and the exhaust centre section, which isn't leaking, but sounds like it is. Badly.
My summary hasn't really changed. It's a crap hot hatch, but a very likable car!
4820 miles later, at an average of 28.7mpg @ 22mph, how's the C4 getting on?
Erm, it's just getting on, I'm afraid! Nothing exciting to report. I managed to find another bonnet (3rd time lucky) and this one is pretty mint, and fits nicely. I still haven't fixed the puffy exhaust, or polished it. Or serviced it....or repaired the existing problems.
I do plan to, however. It's earned some TLC at the very least. I get the odd duff message coming up saying it's low on coolant, or something, but all things considered it's had a good year. If it carries on in the same vein, it'll have another one too!
Here's a picture of it from the top of a castle:
So, I spent £88 on tyres, £70(ish) on a condenser, £25 (I think) on carpet mats, £70 (so far) on bonnets, £12 on a headlamp washer pump, and that's about it. I've spent about £250-£300 on bits I have kicking around (new brakes all round, headlamp swivel sensor thingy, servicing bits etc.) and I've got some more hours to put in trying to sort out the broken intake system (somehow, it's still running despite lots of vacuum leaks), and the exhaust centre section, which isn't leaking, but sounds like it is. Badly.
My summary hasn't really changed. It's a crap hot hatch, but a very likable car!
Got to be time for a bi-annual update on the C-poor, surely? More of the same "Errr...well, I've still got it, and it's still going pretty much as it was" etc. etc.?
In a way, yes. But, I've also managed to find some time for the old thing along the way, and have sorted some of the existing issues that were loitering under the bonnet like a gang of stoned teenagers outside a Co-op; They weren't causing any trouble per se, but you'd feel life was better if they weren't there.
And so it was with the C4 VTS. I've been making plenty of grumbling over the last....well - however many days I've owned it - about the puffy exhaust. "Buy a new one you tight get!" I hear you cry (not really - I can't imagine anyone cares in the slightest!) But there are reasons I've not bought a new one (aka a cheaper aftermarket replacement of some sort which doesn't fit very well). For starters, it certainly wouldn't have a cool-shape funky tailpipe like the original, and any discinctive exhaust note the manufacturer engineered into the car at the design stage (sush! They did, alright?!) may be lost; That's if it's even still there, as 2006 was quite a long time ago...
So, in all this time, I've continually been welding up the backbox in an attempt to get it gas-tight, as per all the pictures of various fractures in the casing being covered in weld. It's the original part, and thus is stainless, so it's actually not in bad shape. What's more, some of the guys on the C4 page on Faceache reckon they're like hens' teeth, and not to bin it under ANY circumstances!
This advice would likely also apply to the centre section, if it were genuine as well. Alas, it is not, but that just means that in the event I start chopping it up, I can do so guilt-free. And that's just as well, because the centre section is at fault here. It's cracking and fracturing about as quickly as it can be welded, and on the odd-occasions it does seal up, it still rasps and puffs and farts as the baffles inside sound like they've gone. It's dead in the water, and it needs scuttling.
The alternatives aren't very inspiring. All I can locate at this juncture are more cheap s
te replacements, and knowing what a fight I had on S.....I can't remember what he is now; S10GTA? S100HP? Snoonegivesast? But the fight I had to get it all to sit nicely on his car was tough work, and to compound this, my existing centre section has proper mandrel bends, rather than the cheaper compressed types. Being that the C4 (in fact, any car with this engine) is already struggling on power, I don't want to compound issues further.
I do like a challenge though, and I'm bang into my exhausts. Not posh, TIG-welded works of art! No, I like cutting and shutting them, and solving a problem while saving a penny, or two.
Some years ago, I bought an MS ZS 180 (the V6 innit bruv). It was £250's worth of grunty, angry, bumpy, Brummy tat. I quite liked it, and had I an infinite space and all the funds in the world, I'd buy one and restore it. New bushes, paintwork...the works.
But, I don't have that now, and I certainly didn't have it then, so my MG had to make do with various [insertDrEvilspeechmark]Modifications[/DrEvilspeechmark]. One of these was my quest to make the exhaust sound slightly fruitier, but still OE....ish. So from the outside it would look standard, and from inside it would sound standard at tickover, and the like, but on heavy throttle it might sound a bit *characterful*. The induction noise was nice, it just needed the rasp to go with it.
To that end, I removed the centre silencer. I literally cut it out, welded some straight pipe in there, and promptly made it sound cack. Fine on tickover, but too baffly and tinny for the backbox to handle. Nevermind, it was £250.
That was ages ago. Imagine my surprise when I kicked the old silencer under the workbench a couple of weeks back! And then imagine it when I measured the I.D of the pipework, and found the C4 VTS 180 and the MG ZS 180 both use the same diameter exhaust system! It must be the '180'...
This was a result. It was a nice quality silencer (the original MG one), and was a bit smaller than the original fluff blox. I wanted to avoid the possibility of rattles and rasps, so I needed a silencer in here, rather than a straight pipe again (centre box delete innit bruv), and the C4 was already on the raspy side as standard. This silencer could give me the best of all worlds! No fluffs; no leaks; slight amplification of exhaust note.
The original centre section, removed from the car. Straight pipe beside it. Fair to say it wouldn't have been a direct replacement!:
Plenty of fractures appearing in the case. I could weld these up, and they'd just appear further out. Pointless excercise:
So, out came Mr Grinder (the tool, not the app) and I set about taking my plan from concept stage (i.e., in my head) to completion.
I knew I'd put my wig somewhere!
"The fk's he doing?!" You might all ask. Well, the easiest way to retain alignment, as far as I could see (apart from jigging it), was to dissect the silencer to the bare bones, and then rebuild it bit by bit. I took it all the way down to a perforated inner pipe, and then started building it back up by replacing the ends of that with some 60mm pipe I had, which made up the difference to get the shorter silencer in there:
The void:
The void filled with a cheapo aftermarket Citroen C4 exhaust that happened to have decent bends in it and now has a silencer from a MG ZS 180 that was built five years before the C4 welded into it....
The result? Meh. It didn't last long enough before it started leaking from somewhere else to be able to gauge exactly what difference (if any) it had made.
I also changed the oil around this time. I hadn't remembered that until I saw the drain pot underneath the engine there ^^
Sometime later (when the exhaust blow had well and truly returned), I decided to rebadge my car. I know debadging is all the craze with these young kids, but I'm not as young as them anymore, and I felt that although I still had chevrons on the boot, I needed more. So, I hit the bay of evil:
And, with the aid of Google image search...BOOM!!:
Weight gained: 0.04kg
BHP gained: 0.00bhp
Kudos gained: -4.8pts
I'm not putting the 'Citroen' bit on there, though. I think that's too fussy for what is quite a small tailgate. The chevs and the C4 bit - that'll do pig. That'll do.
I also put some effort into the front end, too. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I've fitted bonnet #3. A fella over the road took a black 5dr C4 in part ex (aka - he gave someone £100 for a perfectly good car). I took a shine to the bonnet. I offered him £30, and my bonnet (which looked kinda alright, but didn't shut properly on my car) and he ripped my hand off. In the event, the bonnet I took from my car and fitted to his didn't look half as bad on that car as mine. I suspect that car hasn't been involved in a front ender, and that mine - at some point in its life - has. That said, I can't see any evidence of that, other than some questionable panel gaps (now fixed with replacement bonnet), and a smashed undertray.
Aside from the bonnet, I noticed I had some strips under the grille/badge, just at the top of the bumper. They were black in places, but mostly white, which I assumed was due to the black coating being worn away.
You can just make them out here, on the first pic I ever took of the thing:
It appears as one single stripe there, but there's another just under it on the bumper itself.
Well....it turns out that these were stick-on trims! I can't be sure, but I think they may have once been chrome-stick on trim stuff.
I found a fair bit on the lower grille, too. Whatever was on here, it must have looked awful!
With all trace of the stripes removed, the front end now looks like this:
Next, I managed to fix the glovebox that kept falling open (normally when my youngest kicked it accidentally with muddy football boots on). Apparently, on the C4 it is common for the handle (which doubles up as the latch) to snap. Mine hadn't actually done this, but it wasn't springing back into place, and a sharp bump could quite easily open it.
I soon became bored of this, and having found some replacement handles on eBay for about 3p, I noticed a stainless steel option.
Job done:
The next occured over the Xmas break. I had, in my possesion, a new headlamp level sensor; A new rear O/S brake caliper (to replace the one that has seized); Two new handbrake cables (because the handbrake has broken, I suspect because of the strain of trying to pull on a seized caliper); Two new rear brake discs w/wheel bearings inside (because French); A set of rear brake pads; A set of Powerflex rear axle bushes.
And....one day to do it all in. I would either piss it, or fail.
I failed.
A caliper was the main culprit, or more specifically, the caliper carrier on the nearside, which was only being removed to renew the brake disc. There are two bolts holding each to the rear suspension. One of them, for love nor money, would not un-seize! Torx head well and truely rounded off, it was being a total Arse'nal.
I did manage to remove it, but I forget exactly how I did it. I know it was an 'all or nothing' scenario:
So, I managed to remove all the old discs and pads (which were well past their useful life!) and prepared to fit the new discs, which as mentioned, came with wheel bearings already fitted inside (good - the old ones weren't exactly silent!)
As a bonus, they're also zinc-coated. This seems to be a thing now!
The handbrake issue turned out to be the seized caliper, as the cables were both very much intact, and free-moving. They'll snap next week though,
By this point, I'd pretty much exhausted all hope of getting the leaky exhaust sorted (again). I decided to concentrate my efforts on everything else, and hope to sort the exhaust another time. I knew it wasn't my MG silencer at fault, and from what I could tell, it wasn't the backbox either. It was likely one of the welds to the backbox, obscured by the rear axle. I decided I'd live with it another week or 38.
But, I had noticed an occasional heavy 'THUMP!' when the rear end traversed sharp bumps in the road. Being that the rear axle is almost now a carbon copy of the torsion beam setup used in mk4 VW Golf (shed a tear for the loss of independant trailing arms and torsion bar springs), I figured the cause was likely to be the same - the two big axle bushes attaching it to the car.
Having dropped the front of the axle down enough to assess the bushes, initially they looked alright.
However, when they're fitted to the car, they're forced into ungainly angles, and the state of the rubber then becomes apparent:
A fair bit of movement in them, so they need to go, regardless of whether they're the issue or not. I'm fairly confident at this point, but I also know that fate is a bh, and the big thumping noise will be because it's two cars welded together, or rust, or something.
This job is a bit of a bh on a mk4 Golf. The last one I did, I had to drop the entire axle so that I could heat it up/cut it/hammer it/grind it/cut it again/chisel it/swear at it....the works.
I prepared for more of the same here, although the C4 already got off to a better start than the VW's usually do, as none of the bolts sheered, including the ones holding the cradle to the body.
And that's when, instead of punishing me, fate knelt down in front of me, and did things you normally only get on birthdays!
Yes. The outer casing of the bush, is PLASTIC! No rust. No hammers. No grief. All I needed was a heat gun, a screw driver, and some force! Melt the plastic a bit, jam a screwdriver in it, lever it, and bosh!
So, because it's a very similar design to the Golf, I do what I do to Golfs - fitted some Powerflex bushes:
Y'know, cos it's a hot hatch, innit bruv?!
In all seriousness, I'm a Powerflex fanboi. I fitted them out to the Saxo (another readers blog thing), and had also fitted them to previous conquests such as the AX GT, and Saab 9-3 I had, not to mention tonnes of TVRs. But, they're great! They fit without any sweat or tears, there's not normally any detreminent to NVH (in fact, on the Saxo, it's benefitted from IMPROVED refinement!)
The C4 was no different. The new bushes pushed in without drama, and with the stainless crush tube lubed and inserted, I put the axle back into place.
With the exhaust a non-starter, I turned my attention to the final job of the day - the headlamp levelling sensor. Until now, the Xenon headlamps have functioned fine, broadly speaking. That is, to say, they illuminate the road.
However, the VTS is the only C4 which is supposed to have self-steering headlights! Think back to the days of the DS, as they used to peer round corners at night. Well, I can't, because I wasn't born until 1983, but if you can....man, you old!
And this isn't some cut-price crap imitation of steering headlamps that every brand and its dog are using. You know, the ones where you steering and ONE of the fog lights switches on. I mean, that's embarrassing, frankly. It's like the manufacturer is saying "We get the idea, and the principle, but we can't be arsed to do it properly, because you'll buy the car anyway, won't you? You peasant!" Well, that's I think each time I see one, anyway!
But the C4 VTS is cut apart from lesser models, such as....well, all of them [insertsmugfacehere]. It has Xenons that move with the steering! They actually move! In a £900 car!
Oh, that's right - they don't. That's the problem, isn't it? They're broken. Sorry, got carried away there.
The most common culprit for faulty ubertricklights, is the rear load sensor on the back axle. Pretty much any Xenon-equipped car has something similar, and there's normally a little link/rod attaching one to the axle at either end, meaning that as the suspension compresses/extends, the sensor detects it and adjusts the headlights automatically, so you don't blind people coming the other way if you give three heavy-set fellows a lift home from the pub. Unless you do blind people, because y'know - Xenons can be a pain in the arse, if you don't have them. Sorry!
My sensor was throwing an error code, so £130 later I had a new sensor to fit:
Quite simple, though drilling out rivets in that confined space was a bit of an afterthought!
The day had drawn to a close, and it was time to head home and see what, if anything, had improved.
The handbrake? Still didn't work. FFS. Cables still loose in the calipers, but free-moving and still attached to something, i.e. not snapped. Weird.
The suspension thumping? Gone. Back end tight and silent now, whatever bump I throw at it. Result.
The headlights? Looking up! No, I don't mean from a subjective point of view, I mean from an objective point of view - they're literally pointing up! I can drive down the road and see in peoples bedroom windows (which saves digging out the night vision goggles, at least). But, this results in lots of people flashing me coming the other way (pipe down at the back!). And, to add insult to everything else, they still don't bloody steer!
I've had enough. Locked up, gone home, cried.
Messaged S10....mething. Asked what he did to get the lights working, and whether he remembers them as being very noticeable, because these are not. He said they were one of the coolest parts of the car, and that I'd notice.
He then asked if they were switched on. "Course they are, don't be such a dick! I'm not stupid!"
...checks menu....
...ticks box next to 'self-steering headlamps'....
Oh, this is very, very cool!
This is a gimmick that won't grow old! Does it help? Not really. Is it fun? Hell yes!
So, at least the headlamps are looking up. Subjectively speaking, not literally. I adjusted the motors manually, as I assume that in the past, somebody had to force them up from looking down at the floor when the original sensor failed, so when I fitted a new one, they shot up in the air! Sorted now, though!
What's next, then? Choons! That's what's next!
The C4 is top of the range (I may have mentioned this), and as such, has a CD autochanger fitted in le centre armreste.
This is no good to me. The car has a firm ride, meaning CDs can jump, and all my CDs are scratched to fk anyway. It's not 1997 anymore.
Spotify is where it's at now, for me anyway. However, this poses a problem, as the C4 - brilliantly - doesn't have an aux socket. So, you're stuck in 1997, listening to Garbage, or whatever....oh that's right, I actually was listening to Garbage in it!
There are ways around this. First up, there's the media boxes like 'Yatour', which connects into the CD changer's socket in the back of the head unit. It's basically a box with a USB port, an SD card slot, and I think a micro-USB...or something. Idea is you can put all your tunes on a USB stick, and access them via the box. You can control the tracks, too, but only to skip back/forward, or play/pause. You can't browse through albums or whatever, so you've a fair bit of skipping to do if you want something specific. About £70 for one of those.
Or, you can buy a full-on head unit setup. Go aftermarket, and you get good sound quality, but it'll look like it came from Halfords (probably cos it will), and have stuff like SONY X-PLOD flashing away on the dash. I think that'll get boring, and it ruins the otherwise funky interior.
However, you could go for one of the Android units on eBay. These look pretty much OEM, but have a big colour touchscreen that replaces the standard display. You can have apps and stuff, like an Android phone. Sounds great, right? Well, no. I've got one in another car, and it's clunky, and slow, and the sound quality is pretty bad. I don't want to lose sound quality, because that's one of the C4's strong points. And these units are £300, so it's a no from me.
Then, I find another option. An AUX lead - 3.5mm jack one end, C4 autochanger connector the other! £4! I just plug my phone into it, and Spotify comes out the speakers. Brilliant!
The lead arrives. I read that you need to activate your CD changer ports through the Citroen software (which I just about have), but this is a work of nothing, as I already have an autochanger, ergo I must have an activated switch, right?
WRONG!
Here, have a crap blurry photo of the stereo coming out, before I discovered the above:
So, I have no AUX input...still. I'm bummed out. But, in the act of removing the 1997 CD thing, I discover why my handbrake doesn't work...
Well, you can't see it, but it's under there. The cables, have come out of the lever. That's it. Must have been so much slack on the lever when the old caliper was seized that the nipples on the ends kept popping out. I've since renamed my handbrake lever 'Jennifer Aniston'.
So, I now have a handbrake again, which is nice. But I have no Spotify still.
Situation is now that I have an AUX cable fitted, but that I cannot use. But I do have a handbrake, at least. I also have a hole where the autochanger went, and that is now filled with a glovebox from a lesser (by still posh enough to have a centre armrest) C4 model. No, not from a breakers. I bought it NEW. Like, from a dealer. £47.
A new day rolls around, and keen studiers of TVR exhausts will note that the below is the exhaust system from a 1992 Griffith 430. You will also note that it is dead, due to snapping in half. It's been in our scrap box for years.
"But what's it doing here, Rich?" ...none of you asked. I expect some of you are probably asking when all this will end! Well, you can ps off, nobody is forcing you to read this! If you got this far, well done. I both admire and pity you in equal measure.
Anyway, it's here, because it's that time of the year again where I try to stop the C4 exhaust from blowing, but without replacing it. As you do.
I've identified the cause of the blow. It's the flange joint at the centre section>backbox joint. Seems when I refitted the centre section last time (with the MG silencer in), I failed to spot that upon tightening the clamp, the joint began to crumble away!
The back of the backbox it fits to:
By this point, I've lost patience, and it's time to get medieval with it. The flange joint is going in the bin, and Mr M.I.G. Welder is being invited for tea.
And that's where the TVR exhaust comes in. Why? Because wouldn't you believe that the tailpipe of a TVR Griffith is the same diameter as this section of a Citroen C4 VTS exhaust? And, wouldn't you believe further, that the angle of the kink before the exit, is EXACTLY the same as the one in the C4 centre section, just before the silencer?!
So, once the grinder has relieved the flange of its duties, the backbox now looks like this:
Yup. That's a TVR tailpipe going into it. I say it's the right size, that's wrong. It's the next size up, which is what I wanted so I could sleeve fit it to the remains of the now-fairly-cut'n'shut centre section.
A 64mm clamp and some st-hot sealing paste later, and the tailpipe is sitting perfectly!
The result?
NO LEAKS!! It's gas-tight for the first time since I bought it!
I mean, it won't last, of course, but man, am I enjoying it!
The car threw a little idling duckfit when I moved it out of the workshop, but this proved positive, as the car kept blipping its' own throttle each time the revs kept dropping off every 5 secs, and that was positive because the exhaust note now sounds great! Completely OE, and just like a C4 VTS would sound, only slightly more exaggerated. It's got quite an old-school PSA hot-hatch character to it now. Very happy!
But what about the noise at the other end? Ages ago, I thought about induction kits. The intake pipe from the airbox to the throttle body was wrecked, and full of rips. New ones were expensive, and back ordered - possibly no longer serviced. The idling duckfit above was probably down to this.
Duct tape had held it together for a while, but I knew it needed sorting properly. And, the engine sounded cack! It revs well past 7000rpm, and has very short gearing, yet it sounds strained and thrashy. Now that the exhaust has its' 'fizz' again, the engine needed to step up.
I knew I was going the route of an induction kit (cone filter on a pipe), but the only option appeared to be K&N's 'Typhoon' kit, at a cool £340!
Seriously. For that! ^^^
"fk that!" Was my response.
I found an old K&N cone filter kicking about, which saved me £20 or so. Gave it a quick clean, reckon it'll do a job.
Then, I hit the bay again. There are many suppliers on eBay (or a handful, using different names and all with the same shyte service). However, one stood out...FMIC, based in Poland. The prices were good; The parts looks good, and they offered angles and lengths other suppliers were not. So, I placed an order. £64 now spent.
The bits arrived:
Then I started gutting the C4 of all the plastic air boxes. THREE of them! Three big airboxes! And all the brackets, and hoses, and stuff. Surprisingly heavy!
And not just air boxes. Oh no, the C4 VTS also has an air PUMP! No idea what that's for, guessing EGR or something emissions related. I've heard people ditch them, but I figured it's there for a reason, and Citroen - who are in the business of making cars - know more about air pumps than I do, so I opted to retain it and plumb it in...somehow. The big round bit at the top is a servo/reservoir, and the electric pump is mounted below.
I'd cleared a fair bit of room, but it still wasn't enough. With the intake pipework (itself 90mm diameter - larger than a TVR Griffith's!) not fitting exactly as I'd planned (I did guesstimate it all when ordering it, in fairness), I had to make as much room as possible. All brackets were removed, and I had to remove the NSF wheel to fit to the cone to the end of the pipe, which now sits behind the N/S fog light.
I managed to hook the vacuum pipes back up, too. The upper one uses an AN-fitting to the intake pipe, pretty much where the existing one sat. The air pump blows through a small bore pipe, into a brake pipe union screwed into a rivnut. I'll sort something prettier out in the future, but for now it works.
I also fitted the battery cover I bought a long time ago, as it was missing:
Quite pleased by the end of this! It all managed to fit, and for about £65. I need new front arch liners, valance and undertray, and more importantly now, too, as the air filter is pretty much at bumper height, and in the firing line of the NSF wheel, and the puddles it wades!
On the whole, however, very worthwhile! The engine now runs very smoothly, and feels more urgent, too. I'm going to dyno it soon, because I'm far from one of the 'K&N filter = 7bhp m8' crowd, but with all the boxes it had, and the labyrinth of pipework the air actually had to travel through to get to the bloody inlet manifold, it's quite possible I have gained back some ponies. It could just be an illusion, though, because of the noise.
Oh yes...the noise! It sounds NUTS! I couldn't have begun to imagine how much the character of this engine would change, but man alive, it's loud! At low/mid revs, it sounds like a Lancia Fulvia V4 (I'm not making that up). At high revs, and especially near the red line - it almost sounds like an EP3 Civic Type-R (albeit one in standard trim).
A video will have to be made, because nobody will believe me!
Lastly (been on and off this since this morning), I got the AUX working. Turns out CD changer port and AUX ports are different commands, despite being the same physical plug.
Activating the AUX port...in French (thank god for translator apps)
Boom, great success!:
So that's where it is now. Phew, I knew that would take a while to write!
Overall I'm enjoying the car now at the moment than I have done since I got it. That air filter has made it MUCH more fun to drive. Does it handle well now? Not really. Still pretty dead-feeling, and the front and rear axles don't really feel in tune with each other. It's nothing like the old PSA stuff, like the 306; Saxo; AX; Xsara etc., where it was all fluid responses to your inputs (unless you lifted off suddenly!) It's lost the PSA magic, but now with the noise (both intake and outlet) it's clawed back a bit of the character, especially with the short gear ratios.
Someone asked what it was like the other day, and I said think of it as a practical coupe that's fun to own, rather than drive, and you're there. It's not really a hot hatch, it's a coupe that you can fit more stuff in. They should have called it the C4 Coupe, or something.
Oh.
In a way, yes. But, I've also managed to find some time for the old thing along the way, and have sorted some of the existing issues that were loitering under the bonnet like a gang of stoned teenagers outside a Co-op; They weren't causing any trouble per se, but you'd feel life was better if they weren't there.
And so it was with the C4 VTS. I've been making plenty of grumbling over the last....well - however many days I've owned it - about the puffy exhaust. "Buy a new one you tight get!" I hear you cry (not really - I can't imagine anyone cares in the slightest!) But there are reasons I've not bought a new one (aka a cheaper aftermarket replacement of some sort which doesn't fit very well). For starters, it certainly wouldn't have a cool-shape funky tailpipe like the original, and any discinctive exhaust note the manufacturer engineered into the car at the design stage (sush! They did, alright?!) may be lost; That's if it's even still there, as 2006 was quite a long time ago...
So, in all this time, I've continually been welding up the backbox in an attempt to get it gas-tight, as per all the pictures of various fractures in the casing being covered in weld. It's the original part, and thus is stainless, so it's actually not in bad shape. What's more, some of the guys on the C4 page on Faceache reckon they're like hens' teeth, and not to bin it under ANY circumstances!
This advice would likely also apply to the centre section, if it were genuine as well. Alas, it is not, but that just means that in the event I start chopping it up, I can do so guilt-free. And that's just as well, because the centre section is at fault here. It's cracking and fracturing about as quickly as it can be welded, and on the odd-occasions it does seal up, it still rasps and puffs and farts as the baffles inside sound like they've gone. It's dead in the water, and it needs scuttling.
The alternatives aren't very inspiring. All I can locate at this juncture are more cheap s
te replacements, and knowing what a fight I had on S.....I can't remember what he is now; S10GTA? S100HP? Snoonegivesast? But the fight I had to get it all to sit nicely on his car was tough work, and to compound this, my existing centre section has proper mandrel bends, rather than the cheaper compressed types. Being that the C4 (in fact, any car with this engine) is already struggling on power, I don't want to compound issues further.I do like a challenge though, and I'm bang into my exhausts. Not posh, TIG-welded works of art! No, I like cutting and shutting them, and solving a problem while saving a penny, or two.
Some years ago, I bought an MS ZS 180 (the V6 innit bruv). It was £250's worth of grunty, angry, bumpy, Brummy tat. I quite liked it, and had I an infinite space and all the funds in the world, I'd buy one and restore it. New bushes, paintwork...the works.
But, I don't have that now, and I certainly didn't have it then, so my MG had to make do with various [insertDrEvilspeechmark]Modifications[/DrEvilspeechmark]. One of these was my quest to make the exhaust sound slightly fruitier, but still OE....ish. So from the outside it would look standard, and from inside it would sound standard at tickover, and the like, but on heavy throttle it might sound a bit *characterful*. The induction noise was nice, it just needed the rasp to go with it.
To that end, I removed the centre silencer. I literally cut it out, welded some straight pipe in there, and promptly made it sound cack. Fine on tickover, but too baffly and tinny for the backbox to handle. Nevermind, it was £250.
That was ages ago. Imagine my surprise when I kicked the old silencer under the workbench a couple of weeks back! And then imagine it when I measured the I.D of the pipework, and found the C4 VTS 180 and the MG ZS 180 both use the same diameter exhaust system! It must be the '180'...
This was a result. It was a nice quality silencer (the original MG one), and was a bit smaller than the original fluff blox. I wanted to avoid the possibility of rattles and rasps, so I needed a silencer in here, rather than a straight pipe again (centre box delete innit bruv), and the C4 was already on the raspy side as standard. This silencer could give me the best of all worlds! No fluffs; no leaks; slight amplification of exhaust note.
The original centre section, removed from the car. Straight pipe beside it. Fair to say it wouldn't have been a direct replacement!:
Plenty of fractures appearing in the case. I could weld these up, and they'd just appear further out. Pointless excercise:
So, out came Mr Grinder (the tool, not the app) and I set about taking my plan from concept stage (i.e., in my head) to completion.
I knew I'd put my wig somewhere!
"The f
k's he doing?!" You might all ask. Well, the easiest way to retain alignment, as far as I could see (apart from jigging it), was to dissect the silencer to the bare bones, and then rebuild it bit by bit. I took it all the way down to a perforated inner pipe, and then started building it back up by replacing the ends of that with some 60mm pipe I had, which made up the difference to get the shorter silencer in there:The void:
The void filled with a cheapo aftermarket Citroen C4 exhaust that happened to have decent bends in it and now has a silencer from a MG ZS 180 that was built five years before the C4 welded into it....
The result? Meh. It didn't last long enough before it started leaking from somewhere else to be able to gauge exactly what difference (if any) it had made.
I also changed the oil around this time. I hadn't remembered that until I saw the drain pot underneath the engine there ^^
Sometime later (when the exhaust blow had well and truly returned), I decided to rebadge my car. I know debadging is all the craze with these young kids, but I'm not as young as them anymore, and I felt that although I still had chevrons on the boot, I needed more. So, I hit the bay of evil:
And, with the aid of Google image search...BOOM!!:
Weight gained: 0.04kg
BHP gained: 0.00bhp
Kudos gained: -4.8pts
I'm not putting the 'Citroen' bit on there, though. I think that's too fussy for what is quite a small tailgate. The chevs and the C4 bit - that'll do pig. That'll do.
I also put some effort into the front end, too. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I've fitted bonnet #3. A fella over the road took a black 5dr C4 in part ex (aka - he gave someone £100 for a perfectly good car). I took a shine to the bonnet. I offered him £30, and my bonnet (which looked kinda alright, but didn't shut properly on my car) and he ripped my hand off. In the event, the bonnet I took from my car and fitted to his didn't look half as bad on that car as mine. I suspect that car hasn't been involved in a front ender, and that mine - at some point in its life - has. That said, I can't see any evidence of that, other than some questionable panel gaps (now fixed with replacement bonnet), and a smashed undertray.
Aside from the bonnet, I noticed I had some strips under the grille/badge, just at the top of the bumper. They were black in places, but mostly white, which I assumed was due to the black coating being worn away.
You can just make them out here, on the first pic I ever took of the thing:
It appears as one single stripe there, but there's another just under it on the bumper itself.
Well....it turns out that these were stick-on trims! I can't be sure, but I think they may have once been chrome-stick on trim stuff.
I found a fair bit on the lower grille, too. Whatever was on here, it must have looked awful!
With all trace of the stripes removed, the front end now looks like this:
Next, I managed to fix the glovebox that kept falling open (normally when my youngest kicked it accidentally with muddy football boots on). Apparently, on the C4 it is common for the handle (which doubles up as the latch) to snap. Mine hadn't actually done this, but it wasn't springing back into place, and a sharp bump could quite easily open it.
I soon became bored of this, and having found some replacement handles on eBay for about 3p, I noticed a stainless steel option.
Job done:
The next occured over the Xmas break. I had, in my possesion, a new headlamp level sensor; A new rear O/S brake caliper (to replace the one that has seized); Two new handbrake cables (because the handbrake has broken, I suspect because of the strain of trying to pull on a seized caliper); Two new rear brake discs w/wheel bearings inside (because French); A set of rear brake pads; A set of Powerflex rear axle bushes.
And....one day to do it all in. I would either piss it, or fail.
I failed.
A caliper was the main culprit, or more specifically, the caliper carrier on the nearside, which was only being removed to renew the brake disc. There are two bolts holding each to the rear suspension. One of them, for love nor money, would not un-seize! Torx head well and truely rounded off, it was being a total Arse'nal.
I did manage to remove it, but I forget exactly how I did it. I know it was an 'all or nothing' scenario:
So, I managed to remove all the old discs and pads (which were well past their useful life!) and prepared to fit the new discs, which as mentioned, came with wheel bearings already fitted inside (good - the old ones weren't exactly silent!)
As a bonus, they're also zinc-coated. This seems to be a thing now!
The handbrake issue turned out to be the seized caliper, as the cables were both very much intact, and free-moving. They'll snap next week though,
By this point, I'd pretty much exhausted all hope of getting the leaky exhaust sorted (again). I decided to concentrate my efforts on everything else, and hope to sort the exhaust another time. I knew it wasn't my MG silencer at fault, and from what I could tell, it wasn't the backbox either. It was likely one of the welds to the backbox, obscured by the rear axle. I decided I'd live with it another week or 38.
But, I had noticed an occasional heavy 'THUMP!' when the rear end traversed sharp bumps in the road. Being that the rear axle is almost now a carbon copy of the torsion beam setup used in mk4 VW Golf (shed a tear for the loss of independant trailing arms and torsion bar springs), I figured the cause was likely to be the same - the two big axle bushes attaching it to the car.
Having dropped the front of the axle down enough to assess the bushes, initially they looked alright.
However, when they're fitted to the car, they're forced into ungainly angles, and the state of the rubber then becomes apparent:
A fair bit of movement in them, so they need to go, regardless of whether they're the issue or not. I'm fairly confident at this point, but I also know that fate is a b
h, and the big thumping noise will be because it's two cars welded together, or rust, or something.This job is a bit of a b
h on a mk4 Golf. The last one I did, I had to drop the entire axle so that I could heat it up/cut it/hammer it/grind it/cut it again/chisel it/swear at it....the works.I prepared for more of the same here, although the C4 already got off to a better start than the VW's usually do, as none of the bolts sheered, including the ones holding the cradle to the body.
And that's when, instead of punishing me, fate knelt down in front of me, and did things you normally only get on birthdays!
Yes. The outer casing of the bush, is PLASTIC! No rust. No hammers. No grief. All I needed was a heat gun, a screw driver, and some force! Melt the plastic a bit, jam a screwdriver in it, lever it, and bosh!
So, because it's a very similar design to the Golf, I do what I do to Golfs - fitted some Powerflex bushes:
Y'know, cos it's a hot hatch, innit bruv?!
In all seriousness, I'm a Powerflex fanboi. I fitted them out to the Saxo (another readers blog thing), and had also fitted them to previous conquests such as the AX GT, and Saab 9-3 I had, not to mention tonnes of TVRs. But, they're great! They fit without any sweat or tears, there's not normally any detreminent to NVH (in fact, on the Saxo, it's benefitted from IMPROVED refinement!)
The C4 was no different. The new bushes pushed in without drama, and with the stainless crush tube lubed and inserted, I put the axle back into place.
With the exhaust a non-starter, I turned my attention to the final job of the day - the headlamp levelling sensor. Until now, the Xenon headlamps have functioned fine, broadly speaking. That is, to say, they illuminate the road.
However, the VTS is the only C4 which is supposed to have self-steering headlights! Think back to the days of the DS, as they used to peer round corners at night. Well, I can't, because I wasn't born until 1983, but if you can....man, you old!
And this isn't some cut-price crap imitation of steering headlamps that every brand and its dog are using. You know, the ones where you steering and ONE of the fog lights switches on. I mean, that's embarrassing, frankly. It's like the manufacturer is saying "We get the idea, and the principle, but we can't be arsed to do it properly, because you'll buy the car anyway, won't you? You peasant!" Well, that's I think each time I see one, anyway!
But the C4 VTS is cut apart from lesser models, such as....well, all of them [insertsmugfacehere]. It has Xenons that move with the steering! They actually move! In a £900 car!
Oh, that's right - they don't. That's the problem, isn't it? They're broken. Sorry, got carried away there.
The most common culprit for faulty ubertricklights, is the rear load sensor on the back axle. Pretty much any Xenon-equipped car has something similar, and there's normally a little link/rod attaching one to the axle at either end, meaning that as the suspension compresses/extends, the sensor detects it and adjusts the headlights automatically, so you don't blind people coming the other way if you give three heavy-set fellows a lift home from the pub. Unless you do blind people, because y'know - Xenons can be a pain in the arse, if you don't have them. Sorry!
My sensor was throwing an error code, so £130 later I had a new sensor to fit:
Quite simple, though drilling out rivets in that confined space was a bit of an afterthought!
The day had drawn to a close, and it was time to head home and see what, if anything, had improved.
The handbrake? Still didn't work. FFS. Cables still loose in the calipers, but free-moving and still attached to something, i.e. not snapped. Weird.
The suspension thumping? Gone. Back end tight and silent now, whatever bump I throw at it. Result.
The headlights? Looking up! No, I don't mean from a subjective point of view, I mean from an objective point of view - they're literally pointing up! I can drive down the road and see in peoples bedroom windows (which saves digging out the night vision goggles, at least). But, this results in lots of people flashing me coming the other way (pipe down at the back!). And, to add insult to everything else, they still don't bloody steer!
I've had enough. Locked up, gone home, cried.
Messaged S10....mething. Asked what he did to get the lights working, and whether he remembers them as being very noticeable, because these are not. He said they were one of the coolest parts of the car, and that I'd notice.
He then asked if they were switched on. "Course they are, don't be such a dick! I'm not stupid!"
...checks menu....
...ticks box next to 'self-steering headlamps'....
Oh, this is very, very cool!
This is a gimmick that won't grow old! Does it help? Not really. Is it fun? Hell yes!
So, at least the headlamps are looking up. Subjectively speaking, not literally. I adjusted the motors manually, as I assume that in the past, somebody had to force them up from looking down at the floor when the original sensor failed, so when I fitted a new one, they shot up in the air! Sorted now, though!
What's next, then? Choons! That's what's next!
The C4 is top of the range (I may have mentioned this), and as such, has a CD autochanger fitted in le centre armreste.
This is no good to me. The car has a firm ride, meaning CDs can jump, and all my CDs are scratched to f
k anyway. It's not 1997 anymore. Spotify is where it's at now, for me anyway. However, this poses a problem, as the C4 - brilliantly - doesn't have an aux socket. So, you're stuck in 1997, listening to Garbage, or whatever....oh that's right, I actually was listening to Garbage in it!
There are ways around this. First up, there's the media boxes like 'Yatour', which connects into the CD changer's socket in the back of the head unit. It's basically a box with a USB port, an SD card slot, and I think a micro-USB...or something. Idea is you can put all your tunes on a USB stick, and access them via the box. You can control the tracks, too, but only to skip back/forward, or play/pause. You can't browse through albums or whatever, so you've a fair bit of skipping to do if you want something specific. About £70 for one of those.
Or, you can buy a full-on head unit setup. Go aftermarket, and you get good sound quality, but it'll look like it came from Halfords (probably cos it will), and have stuff like SONY X-PLOD flashing away on the dash. I think that'll get boring, and it ruins the otherwise funky interior.
However, you could go for one of the Android units on eBay. These look pretty much OEM, but have a big colour touchscreen that replaces the standard display. You can have apps and stuff, like an Android phone. Sounds great, right? Well, no. I've got one in another car, and it's clunky, and slow, and the sound quality is pretty bad. I don't want to lose sound quality, because that's one of the C4's strong points. And these units are £300, so it's a no from me.
Then, I find another option. An AUX lead - 3.5mm jack one end, C4 autochanger connector the other! £4! I just plug my phone into it, and Spotify comes out the speakers. Brilliant!
The lead arrives. I read that you need to activate your CD changer ports through the Citroen software (which I just about have), but this is a work of nothing, as I already have an autochanger, ergo I must have an activated switch, right?
WRONG!
Here, have a crap blurry photo of the stereo coming out, before I discovered the above:
So, I have no AUX input...still. I'm bummed out. But, in the act of removing the 1997 CD thing, I discover why my handbrake doesn't work...
Well, you can't see it, but it's under there. The cables, have come out of the lever. That's it. Must have been so much slack on the lever when the old caliper was seized that the nipples on the ends kept popping out. I've since renamed my handbrake lever 'Jennifer Aniston'.
So, I now have a handbrake again, which is nice. But I have no Spotify still.
Situation is now that I have an AUX cable fitted, but that I cannot use. But I do have a handbrake, at least. I also have a hole where the autochanger went, and that is now filled with a glovebox from a lesser (by still posh enough to have a centre armrest) C4 model. No, not from a breakers. I bought it NEW. Like, from a dealer. £47.
- signs loudly*
A new day rolls around, and keen studiers of TVR exhausts will note that the below is the exhaust system from a 1992 Griffith 430. You will also note that it is dead, due to snapping in half. It's been in our scrap box for years.
"But what's it doing here, Rich?" ...none of you asked. I expect some of you are probably asking when all this will end! Well, you can p
s off, nobody is forcing you to read this! If you got this far, well done. I both admire and pity you in equal measure.Anyway, it's here, because it's that time of the year again where I try to stop the C4 exhaust from blowing, but without replacing it. As you do.
I've identified the cause of the blow. It's the flange joint at the centre section>backbox joint. Seems when I refitted the centre section last time (with the MG silencer in), I failed to spot that upon tightening the clamp, the joint began to crumble away!
The back of the backbox it fits to:
By this point, I've lost patience, and it's time to get medieval with it. The flange joint is going in the bin, and Mr M.I.G. Welder is being invited for tea.
And that's where the TVR exhaust comes in. Why? Because wouldn't you believe that the tailpipe of a TVR Griffith is the same diameter as this section of a Citroen C4 VTS exhaust? And, wouldn't you believe further, that the angle of the kink before the exit, is EXACTLY the same as the one in the C4 centre section, just before the silencer?!
So, once the grinder has relieved the flange of its duties, the backbox now looks like this:
Yup. That's a TVR tailpipe going into it. I say it's the right size, that's wrong. It's the next size up, which is what I wanted so I could sleeve fit it to the remains of the now-fairly-cut'n'shut centre section.
A 64mm clamp and some s
t-hot sealing paste later, and the tailpipe is sitting perfectly!The result?
NO LEAKS!! It's gas-tight for the first time since I bought it!
I mean, it won't last, of course, but man, am I enjoying it!
The car threw a little idling duckfit when I moved it out of the workshop, but this proved positive, as the car kept blipping its' own throttle each time the revs kept dropping off every 5 secs, and that was positive because the exhaust note now sounds great! Completely OE, and just like a C4 VTS would sound, only slightly more exaggerated. It's got quite an old-school PSA hot-hatch character to it now. Very happy!
But what about the noise at the other end? Ages ago, I thought about induction kits. The intake pipe from the airbox to the throttle body was wrecked, and full of rips. New ones were expensive, and back ordered - possibly no longer serviced. The idling duckfit above was probably down to this.
Duct tape had held it together for a while, but I knew it needed sorting properly. And, the engine sounded cack! It revs well past 7000rpm, and has very short gearing, yet it sounds strained and thrashy. Now that the exhaust has its' 'fizz' again, the engine needed to step up.
I knew I was going the route of an induction kit (cone filter on a pipe), but the only option appeared to be K&N's 'Typhoon' kit, at a cool £340!
Seriously. For that! ^^^
"f
k that!" Was my response.I found an old K&N cone filter kicking about, which saved me £20 or so. Gave it a quick clean, reckon it'll do a job.
Then, I hit the bay again. There are many suppliers on eBay (or a handful, using different names and all with the same shyte service). However, one stood out...FMIC, based in Poland. The prices were good; The parts looks good, and they offered angles and lengths other suppliers were not. So, I placed an order. £64 now spent.
The bits arrived:
Then I started gutting the C4 of all the plastic air boxes. THREE of them! Three big airboxes! And all the brackets, and hoses, and stuff. Surprisingly heavy!
And not just air boxes. Oh no, the C4 VTS also has an air PUMP! No idea what that's for, guessing EGR or something emissions related. I've heard people ditch them, but I figured it's there for a reason, and Citroen - who are in the business of making cars - know more about air pumps than I do, so I opted to retain it and plumb it in...somehow. The big round bit at the top is a servo/reservoir, and the electric pump is mounted below.
I'd cleared a fair bit of room, but it still wasn't enough. With the intake pipework (itself 90mm diameter - larger than a TVR Griffith's!) not fitting exactly as I'd planned (I did guesstimate it all when ordering it, in fairness), I had to make as much room as possible. All brackets were removed, and I had to remove the NSF wheel to fit to the cone to the end of the pipe, which now sits behind the N/S fog light.
I managed to hook the vacuum pipes back up, too. The upper one uses an AN-fitting to the intake pipe, pretty much where the existing one sat. The air pump blows through a small bore pipe, into a brake pipe union screwed into a rivnut. I'll sort something prettier out in the future, but for now it works.
I also fitted the battery cover I bought a long time ago, as it was missing:
Quite pleased by the end of this! It all managed to fit, and for about £65. I need new front arch liners, valance and undertray, and more importantly now, too, as the air filter is pretty much at bumper height, and in the firing line of the NSF wheel, and the puddles it wades!
On the whole, however, very worthwhile! The engine now runs very smoothly, and feels more urgent, too. I'm going to dyno it soon, because I'm far from one of the 'K&N filter = 7bhp m8' crowd, but with all the boxes it had, and the labyrinth of pipework the air actually had to travel through to get to the bloody inlet manifold, it's quite possible I have gained back some ponies. It could just be an illusion, though, because of the noise.
Oh yes...the noise! It sounds NUTS! I couldn't have begun to imagine how much the character of this engine would change, but man alive, it's loud! At low/mid revs, it sounds like a Lancia Fulvia V4 (I'm not making that up). At high revs, and especially near the red line - it almost sounds like an EP3 Civic Type-R (albeit one in standard trim).
A video will have to be made, because nobody will believe me!
Lastly (been on and off this since this morning), I got the AUX working. Turns out CD changer port and AUX ports are different commands, despite being the same physical plug.
Activating the AUX port...in French (thank god for translator apps)
Boom, great success!:
So that's where it is now. Phew, I knew that would take a while to write!
Overall I'm enjoying the car now at the moment than I have done since I got it. That air filter has made it MUCH more fun to drive. Does it handle well now? Not really. Still pretty dead-feeling, and the front and rear axles don't really feel in tune with each other. It's nothing like the old PSA stuff, like the 306; Saxo; AX; Xsara etc., where it was all fluid responses to your inputs (unless you lifted off suddenly!) It's lost the PSA magic, but now with the noise (both intake and outlet) it's clawed back a bit of the character, especially with the short gear ratios.
Someone asked what it was like the other day, and I said think of it as a practical coupe that's fun to own, rather than drive, and you're there. It's not really a hot hatch, it's a coupe that you can fit more stuff in. They should have called it the C4 Coupe, or something.
Oh.
ferrisbueller said:
Excellent read. Have an odd fetish for these, I'm hoping it will pass as I couldn't be arsed with all this!
Thanks, but I must have given the wrong impression throughout as it's been very reliable! These are all niggles you'd get on any 130k mile, 14 year old car, to be fair. I drove a 2008 Audi A3 the other day, and that rattled more! (Handled better though - have they switched places?!)It's been a great tool. Most people would have just fitted another exhaust, lived without the headlamps, lived with the 1997 autochanger etc. It's only work because I keep dicking around with it.
Kitchski said:
Most people would have just fitted another exhaust, lived without the headlamps, lived with the 1997 autochanger etc. It's only work because I keep dicking around with it.
Quite right. It's the calling card of a particular type of 'enthusiast' that they will spend countless hours finding bits of used stainless steel exhausts from other cars to put on their sub-£1k shed rather than fork out £71.99 for some aluminised-crap pattern part from ECP. The fact that it took an entire Saturday to fit (and it's still not right) instead of £40 cash at the local MOT bodger and the kids are crying because you couldn't take then to soft play like you promised is neither here nor there. How do I know? 
Edited by dc2100k on Tuesday 28th January 10:36
I love these updates.
The air pump you mention will almost certainly be a emissions thing - a secondary air pump. This pumps air into the exhaust during startup which helps to light the cats up and gets them to operating temp a little quicker. Not critical and sometimes they can become noisy and play up at which point they can be thrown in the bin.
The air pump you mention will almost certainly be a emissions thing - a secondary air pump. This pumps air into the exhaust during startup which helps to light the cats up and gets them to operating temp a little quicker. Not critical and sometimes they can become noisy and play up at which point they can be thrown in the bin.
Kitchski said:
ferrisbueller said:
Excellent read. Have an odd fetish for these, I'm hoping it will pass as I couldn't be arsed with all this!
Thanks, but I must have given the wrong impression throughout as it's been very reliable! These are all niggles you'd get on any 130k mile, 14 year old car, to be fair. I drove a 2008 Audi A3 the other day, and that rattled more! (Handled better though - have they switched places?!)It's been a great tool. Most people would have just fitted another exhaust, lived without the headlamps, lived with the 1997 autochanger etc. It's only work because I keep dicking around with it.
ETA. The internet being what it is, this has just come up on my YouTube feed.
https://youtu.be/jP_iv1-eH3M
I think VBH was going to buy one just to zig zag over white lines.
Edited by ferrisbueller on Tuesday 28th January 11:41
dc2100k said:
Quite right. It's the calling card of a particular type of 'enthusiast' that they will spend countless hours finding bits of used stainless steel exhausts from other cars to put on their sub-£1k shed rather than fork out £71.99 for some aluminised-crap pattern part from ECP. The fact that it took an entire Saturday to fit (and it's still not right) instead of £40 cash at the local MOT bodger and the kids are crying because you couldn't take then to soft play like you promised is neither here nor there. How do I know?
shalmaneser said:
The air pump you mention will almost certainly be a emissions thing - a secondary air pump. This pumps air into the exhaust during startup which helps to light the cats up and gets them to operating temp a little quicker. Not critical and sometimes they can become noisy and play up at which point they can be thrown in the bin.
Ah, see I've seen those, and that's what I assumed, too. The only thing is that it seems to be plumbed into the crankcase breather circuit, with that small line running to the air intake. It only runs for the first 30secs or so after cold-starting, after which I never hear from it again! It may well plumb into the EGR circuit somehow, but it's not the typical one where it fires it into the exhaust manifold.ferrisbueller said:
ETA. The internet being what it is, this has just come up on my YouTube feed.
https://youtu.be/jP_iv1-eH3M
I think VBH was going to buy one just to zig zag over white lines.
Mmmm, and that's prime VBH, too. My seats don't vibrate, sadly, but I found the loom for the sensors the other day!https://youtu.be/jP_iv1-eH3M
I think VBH was going to buy one just to zig zag over white lines.
I'll rig it up if it means she'll want to ride in my car
I found this thread after a seeing a response on the Citroen C6 thread. I myself own a Citroen C4 Coupe VTS, but it's a 2.0 hdi - with 6 speed box. Great spec inc:- panoramic roof, cruise control, auto wipers, auto headlights, rear auto dimming mirror, folding mirrors, dual climate control, tyre pressure monitors...
Last year - and having been made redundant, all of a sudden, running around in a big petrol Audi didn't make much sense. A mate of mine -who owns a Citroen C6- aquired the C4 from and old chap whom he worked with at the time. This particular car was gold, and had about 138000 miles on.
It was in good condition, but there wasn't much history to speak of, however after a drive all seemed well (apart from no air con), and I purchased the car for £400.
The lack of history was a slight concern as I was going to factor a cambelt change in, anyway, a sticker under the bonnet revealed that the main dealer was Duff Morgan in Norwich, so I gave them a ring and spoke to a helpful chap, who confirmed that the car had indeed been looked after by them until 2015 - he then mailed me a print out of all work under taken. The car had a new cambelt in 2015; excellent, it doesn't have to be changed until either 2015 or 170k miles.
So first thing was to diagnose the air-con, the system was pressure tested and it uncovered a rather holy condensor. A new one was £70 from ECP. Removal of old one was easy: unbolt the rad and pull condensor out the top. The rad looked past its best as leaves and detritus gets trapped between the condensor and rad and rots them out; but the MOT was a few months away so wasnt going to address it until MOT man gave the all clear. Anyway, the new condensor fitted and regassed, she was blowing icy cold air.
MOT time revealed a really good car, so I ordered a new rad, and front brake pads and two tyres. Also serviced it with new oil, plus oil, air and fuel filter. All of this was circa £350
Then a few weeks ago, a knock appeared on the front nearside wheel, this was determined to be a top mount, so I ordered a new pair for £50. Upon fitting them, I knackered the offside track rod end, it was a tenner for a new MOOG one, plus £30 for tracking.
My C4 is a great car tbh, and can't see myself getting rid anytime soon, it owes me less than a grand, has a decent spec and is cheap to fuel and tax.
And I'm glad I found this thread as I didn't know that it had directional headlights, a quick scan of the car menu and I found the option !! Might go out for a drive when it's dark
Last year - and having been made redundant, all of a sudden, running around in a big petrol Audi didn't make much sense. A mate of mine -who owns a Citroen C6- aquired the C4 from and old chap whom he worked with at the time. This particular car was gold, and had about 138000 miles on.
It was in good condition, but there wasn't much history to speak of, however after a drive all seemed well (apart from no air con), and I purchased the car for £400.
The lack of history was a slight concern as I was going to factor a cambelt change in, anyway, a sticker under the bonnet revealed that the main dealer was Duff Morgan in Norwich, so I gave them a ring and spoke to a helpful chap, who confirmed that the car had indeed been looked after by them until 2015 - he then mailed me a print out of all work under taken. The car had a new cambelt in 2015; excellent, it doesn't have to be changed until either 2015 or 170k miles.
So first thing was to diagnose the air-con, the system was pressure tested and it uncovered a rather holy condensor. A new one was £70 from ECP. Removal of old one was easy: unbolt the rad and pull condensor out the top. The rad looked past its best as leaves and detritus gets trapped between the condensor and rad and rots them out; but the MOT was a few months away so wasnt going to address it until MOT man gave the all clear. Anyway, the new condensor fitted and regassed, she was blowing icy cold air.
MOT time revealed a really good car, so I ordered a new rad, and front brake pads and two tyres. Also serviced it with new oil, plus oil, air and fuel filter. All of this was circa £350
Then a few weeks ago, a knock appeared on the front nearside wheel, this was determined to be a top mount, so I ordered a new pair for £50. Upon fitting them, I knackered the offside track rod end, it was a tenner for a new MOOG one, plus £30 for tracking.
My C4 is a great car tbh, and can't see myself getting rid anytime soon, it owes me less than a grand, has a decent spec and is cheap to fuel and tax.
And I'm glad I found this thread as I didn't know that it had directional headlights, a quick scan of the car menu and I found the option !! Might go out for a drive when it's dark
Edited by EarlOfHazard on Saturday 8th May 20:25
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