Citroen C3 woes

[treehack]

Tuesday I drove home 50 miles from work with no problems, half hour later got in the car and it wouldn't turn over. Had all my ignition but nothing when turning the key. The AA can out and diagnosed a dead battery.
So today I fit a new battery and the same thing, have dash lights but no cranking, car keeps going into 'economy mode ' after a few mins as well. I have noticed that with the ignition on I can't hear the fuel pump..
Any ideas gratefully received

[Test driver]

Buy a non French car.

[treehack]

Helpful

[SebastienClement]

Have you had the car running since fitting the new battery? If so, you might want to look towards the alternator not working properly. Sometimes it's possible that they begin to fail, and the output doesn't drop enough to trigger a battery light, but with lights / aircon on, it ends up running the battery down.

If not, might be worth looking towards something else draining the battery? Or even a starter motor fault?

Oh, and check the earth connections! Bit of a clean and some grease might help.

[Wacky Racer]

Test driver said:

Buy a non French car.

If you have nothing sensible to add to the thread you would be better off not posting and wasting bandwidth....

[treehack]

SebastienClement said:

Have you had the car running since fitting the new battery? If so, you might want to look towards the alternator not working properly. Sometimes it's possible that they begin to fail, and the output doesn't drop enough to trigger a battery light, but with lights / aircon on, it ends up running the battery down.

If not, might be worth looking towards something else draining the battery? Or even a starter motor fault?

Oh, and check the earth connections! Bit of a clean and some grease might help.

Not had it running since new battery, the lack of fuel pump is leading me to think immobiser/ecu.

[cossy400]

Not sure on the lay outs etc but is the key coded??

My lorry wouldn't start but had the lights on etc and it was found to be the key battery?

[Baz Tench]

If there is no noise from the fuel pump, it used to down to the fuel pump relay, which was meant to cut the power to the pump in the event of an accident.

They used to randomly fail though.

[George7]

A mate who has a C3 had a similar sounding problem. Turned out to be the coilpack.

[treehack]

Arrrggghhhh, looks like it might need a trip to a dealer for a go on the diognostic computer.
Wife's car cost us £691 last week so need this like a hole in the head.

[kiethton]

brother has a C4 and had the same issues....

It was an ECU that packed up, the one that controls the security systems etc. that failed and fried other things - don't know what.

4 figure bill at our local trusted garage later and it was good as it was before (would say new but it's still st)

ETA -1.6 hdi 90 bhp

Edited by kiethton on Sunday 12th January 19:00

[treehack]

Forgot to mention its a 1.6 HDI engine if this makes a difference.