So...explain This....

[lagonda 42]

So....drive down to Saintes to collect some old car magazines & have a meal. Saintes is a good 2 hour drive, so of course, an excellent opportunity for the CTi to develop a problem....at the furthest point from home, & at night, of course. The car sits low at the back, & with a bootful of magazines, even lower. Once I got back, I put it on ramps & found the pipe going into the rear silencer had broken completely away from the box, so wouldn't have been an easy roadside repair anyway.

 

Anyway...exhaust noisy on leaving Saintes centre, & much noisier as we left the outskirsts, when the pipe must have come away completely. Found that noise was bearable up to around 52mph, so that is the speed we drove home at. Decided to cut across country instead of going up to Parthenay, to save a few miles, & hoped road wouldn't be too bumpy. Needless to say there was a bumpy stretch....this would be around 30 miles from home. Realised headlights weren't so bright, & car started misfiring. Strangely, swapping from main beam to dip made it worse, & I realised it was going to be a race involving getting home without running out of enough power to keep the electrics going. Eventually had to switch down to sidelights only...fortunately a moonlit night, but roadside trees made some stretches pretty dark...misfiring getting worse all the time. Well...it eventually ground to a halt, nearly made it, only 5 odd miles from home as well...still a long way, carrying the battery (to take home & charge).

 

Thought I'd check a few things first. Alternator wiring & belt all OK, battery leads fine. Tried lights, & they lit up fairly well, surprisingly. Ignition all lit up OK, tried starter...nothing. Touched my spare starter solenoid lead on the battery, & it turned over a few times, no hope of a start though. It's surprising the amount of power the fuel pump, injectors & ignition actually take. Gave various connections a bit of a wobble...idle switch, ignition amp, AFM, both ends of distributor signal cable, coil connections and tachymetric relay.

 

By this time, around 20 minutes had passed, giving the battery (new in January) chance to recover. Engine still reasonably warm so thought we'd try bump starting the car...pretty forlorn hope, but we didn't have that far to go, & with no lights on at all, might actually have enough power to get home...or at least shorten our walk. Started easily...revd fine....off we went...no misfiring! Tried lights...all OK! So...other than the noise, we got home OK.

 

Fortunately a pile of parts I bought from a French guy over here, for the LHD lights I needed, included a reasonably good rear silencer, so fitted that yesterday, & all is fine.

 

So .... can anyone explain how the exhaust breaking can lead to the battery going flat enough to not have enough power to run the pump, injectors & ignition?! The alternator appears fine, & none of the leads/connections I played with are part of the charging circuit. I accept the French are obtuse, & somehow they've built that characteristic into their cars (this one, anyway)...but does that really explain it?

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Sounds to me like an intermittent alternator that is getting ready to fail altogether.

 

I've had this a couple of times now, my old 405 Mi16 did it, misfired and ground to a halt with no battery power, got a mate out to jump start me, it fired up A OK and off we went again. Fine until a couple of days later when it did it again on the M62. After a worrying bout of it charging/not charging/charging we got to where we were going just about, but it wouldn't restart. Managed to borrow enough tools and bought a new alternator from Halfords of all places and off I went again.

 

My old A4 estate did a similar thing until the alternator gave up altogether.

 

So in summary I'd be on the lookout for a new alternator personally.

Oh, and the exhaust thing is just a coincidence. Perhaps if you don't often use it for long journeys the motorway run just finished it off?

Edited November 12, 2011 by Tom Fenton

[Anthony 1,003]

I'd agree with Tom in that it sounds alternator related.

 

One possibility - does the battery/charge light on the dashboard come on when you switch the ignition on? If it doesn't, that can lead to the alternator not charging when you start the engine and won't begin charging until you've typically got up to 3000-4000rpm - which if your exhaust was broken and you were crawling along you might not have done, leading to the battery eventually going flat.

 

Assuming that's OK, I'll double check that the main power cable to the alternator is in good condition (as they can corrode and eventually break, normally at the alternator end) and if it is, replace the alternator as a precaution - it's shared with most other 80's Peugeot's and Citroen's with an XU engine, so should be easy to get a replacement in France.

[GLPoomobile 958]

No help to the topic, but.......you carried a battery 5 miles home! I occasionally had to carry my battery between the car and my flat in London around 200 metres, and that was bad enough (bloody flimsy handles cutting in to my hand).

[steve@cornwall 100]

I'd check the connections at the shunt box, possibly loose / corroded and contact re-made when removing the battery?

[allye 530 3 Cars]

No help to the topic, but.......you carried a battery 5 miles home! I occasionally had to carry my battery between the car and my flat in London around 200 metres, and that was bad enough (bloody flimsy handles cutting in to my hand).

 

No! I think he said he would have done that but checked other things first

[lagonda 42]

Hmmm....just coincidence then (but I bet the 205 is smirking).

 

Thanks all for replies.

 

Tom....funnily enough, the alternator on the car isn't the original....it's got a Halfords (!) label on it. That dates it to 12/99. Assuming that is roughly when it was fitted, it's done 70,000 miles odd. Shouldn't I expect longer service than that? The exhaust....well, my driving is a weird mix of local & international; also, local here often involves 100 mile round trip, furthermore speed on country roads is often 70-90mph...far less chance of speed traps there than on the motorways or N roads. Annoyingly only recently returned from the UK, could so easily have bought a new rear box & alternator, but of course, typical of the little b*gger to play up not long after I get back here. You might not realise, but there are no GSF type places here, & car parts are daft money. Cheaper for example to ship tyres from UK than to buy local. Peugeot...it's French isn't it? So parts obviously cheaper here than UK? NO! As stated, the French are obtuse. Nice, but obtuse.

 

Anthony...no. But just been out to check...& the battery light flashes. Try ignition again....nothing. Try again, & it lights up. So...does that specifically mean the alternator is failing...if so, where?, quite handy with electrics & have test gear. Could it possibly be a fault with the ignition switch? A couple of months ago, the engine cut out completely a couple of times, but restarted whilst still in gear when I joggled the ignition switch, but been OK since. Will check that main wire. Your comment regarding no charge until 3000-4000rpm sounds pretty apposite. 52mph fortunately wasn't exactly crawling, but would be fairly low revs in 5th gear.

 

GLPoo...no, we didn't carry the battery....it was the thought of having to carry it that made me think bump starting might be worth a try, hence massive relief when it actually worked!

 

Steve....didn't remove battery, bump start was successful, will check shunt box connections as well.

 

Annoyingly, there is no receipt for the alternator in the history file....but I see the previous owner fitted a new battery a few months before. I replaced that battery in January....and now the alternator is suspect. Don't think this is the first time I've come across this scenario....is there something with alternators that makes them prone to failure once they've had a sick battery to deal with?

Edited November 12, 2011 by lagonda

[jackherer 543]

What condition are your engine mounts in? If the engine is moving excessively that can put undue stress on the exhaust and have a similar effect on loose/corroded/damaged wiring. Admittedly a bit unlikely but you asked for a possible connection between two totally unrelated subsystems

[Anthony 1,003]

Anthony...no. But just been out to check...& the battery light flashes. Try ignition again....nothing. Try again, & it lights up. So...does that specifically mean the alternator is failing...if so, where?, quite handy with electrics & have test gear. Could it possibly be a fault with the ignition switch? A couple of months ago, the engine cut out completely a couple of times, but restarted whilst still in gear when I joggled the ignition switch, but been OK since. Will check that main wire. Your comment regarding no charge until 3000-4000rpm sounds pretty apposite. 52mph fortunately wasn't exactly crawling, but would be fairly low revs in 5th gear.

The battery light should always light up and stay lit whenever the key is in the ignition or accessory position and the engine isn't running (and go out straight away when the engine starts). If it's only working intermittently that could well explain your charging issues, because as well as acting as the no-charge light, that wire also kick-starts the alternator into charging.

 

It could be that the voltage regulator on the alternator is failing, but usually it's down to wiring and bad connections in my experience - the exciter wire for the alternator is a spade connector and thus is prone to corrosion, and the wire runs through the brown multiplug near the gearbox that again is notorious for causing problems with bad connections.

 

You can unplug the wire from the alternator and ground it to the engine block or alternator body, and the dash light should be lit up. If it does so reliably, then it's either the alternator or a bad connection on the alternator terminal itself, and if it doesn't light or is still intermittent, then you'll have to chase the wiring back to find the cause.

 

Annoyingly, there is no receipt for the alternator in the history file....but I see the previous owner fitted a new battery a few months before. I replaced that battery in January....and now the alternator is suspect. Don't think this is the first time I've come across this scenario....is there something with alternators that makes them prone to failure once they've had a sick battery to deal with?

You often hear of one failing very shortly after the other, but it's often hard to draw conclusions as to whether both were actually faulty, or as I suspect in a lot of cases, the "faulty" battery was probably fine but wasn't being charged properly.

 

Either way, a 12 year old recon alternator (which I assume is what Halfords sell) that's got 70k miles under its belt could well be faulty - OE parts easily can fail at that sort of age/mileage, and in my experience, reconditioned alternators are at best "variable" in quality and rarely seem to last as long as the original OE part. I've had them dead out of the box before, and know quite a few people that have had them fail in mere months.

[lagonda 42]

Good point Jackherer, but no, no undue engine movement. I've replaced the lower mount, & the others were replaced by the previous owner around 2000.

 

Bit surprised exhaust has fractured, guess it must have been blowing a bit for some time, but the car always sounds like the exhaust is holed, even when it isn't! I may have encouraged the fracture as I may have reversed in the dark (cabriolet rear window pretty opaque at night) into something soft when I collected the magazines, but it felt more like a tyre had touched something. Absolutely no damage or even marking to the tail pipe or silencer rear, so probably just coincidence. In any event the silencer is rusting through on the rear flange so it's time was pretty well up anyway.

[feb 47]

There are GSF type places in France, I can't remember the name but PM Andy_C as it will be on the stack of paperwork of his car from the time I was using it in France.

I bought an indicator stack, brake pads and discs and it didn't break the bank.

[lagonda 42]

Anthony...thanks for the detailed advice, really helpful. Will look at all those aspects.

 

Feb..thanks, will do.