Cambelt problem.

Faults and Technical chat for the Citroen Aircross
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routemaster1
Posts: 397
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 7:57 pm

Post by routemaster1 »

This is concerning a 2019 C3 with the 1.2 110bhp belt in oil engine. As this is almost identical to the Aircross engines I thought this could be of interest here. I have had the car from new, and it has always been serviced on time by a main dealer. I made sure that I knew when the cam belt needed to be changed and it was 64,000 miles. As I was approaching this mileage, I got a couple of quotes from main dealers and they were quite different (I potentially saved ~£170). They had a stock of kits and I needed to book early to reserve a kit as they were then on back-order. The car was booked in today, and I was careful to not exceed the 64,000 miles.

The car had been playing up a bit and has been throwing up various 'spurious' alarms for a few weeks (low oil when it wasn't, engine management light, etc) but I had a social event on Saturday night, so I took the car on a 90 mile round trip. During this trip the car decided to throw a wobbly in a bid way, showing STOP three times, one accompanied by 'low oil pressure' The car went into limp mode and it was very difficult to find places to get off the A roads in the dark when I couldn't exceed 20mph. Each time, after stopping the engine for ~1 minute the car restarted with no warning lights, so I drove home very gently.

I took the car in this morning and told the service manager what had happened and suggested it could be a failing battery , which he said was not possible. So I told him I had a Citroen Warraty (minor issue as it didn't show on the Citroen system, and I had to forward the email confirmation). He said that the alarms needed investigating before the belt was changed.

He called me about 4 hours later with bad news and good news. Forstly there was degradation of the belt so a lot of extra work was required. The good news was that Citroen are going to cover the full cost of repair, including the cost of the belt kit saving me over £500. I have a loan car for the week, but at present I don't know when the car will be back.

So, learning from this. 1. Do not wait until the belt is near the mileage limit before changing it, particularly if you start getting spurious alarms 2. Ensure that the car has been serviced on time and mileage. You do not need to use a dealer but I think it is better if you do. 3. If you are able to maintain the Citroen warranty, I would urge you to take it out. I have paid ~£1000 for 3 years, and I would suggest that if I had to pay for this it could be significantly more than the cost of the warranty.

routemaster1
Posts: 397
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 7:57 pm

Post by routemaster1 »

Got the car back today, after originally expecting it back on Friday. Total charge £0
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Juan Sheet
Posts: 1466
Joined: Sat Dec 04, 2021 4:59 pm

Post by Juan Sheet »

I hope you get a good outcome. But any warning relating to oil pressure on these must be taken seriously. It indicates oil starvation very likely due to blockage from wet belt debris. Even the small amounts of shredding can lead to cumulative blocking over time.

There is some good news of a conversion kit awaiting approval that will replace these belts with a chain from a company, which will help eliminate this problem, but unfortunately I suspect that all these wet belt engines will suffer sooner or later from this problem, regardless of servicing due to the nature of this system which will cause shredding and belt degradation to a lesser or greater degree.
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