...A friend of mine has a Citroen ZX 1.9D which is taking 2-3 minutes of trying to start on these cold mornings :eek:

Any ideas what could be wrong? Its not done many miles...

Cheers,

Glow plugs sound like a good place to start.They heat up the injectors to defrost the drops of diesal that are left in them.Quite common on vans,presumably the same on cars!

The best place for advice on this problem is at www.andyspares.co.uk

They have discussion forum that has the best help and advice for the owners of a Citroen in the UK. Just click on the Forum button on the menu at the top of the homepage and follow the link to the Citroen advice section.

As regards his problem it can be one a few things, glow plugs obviously, an air leak in the fuel line, the battery is beginning to give up the ghost etc etc. Point your mate to the forum above and he will get his answer from someone.

Yeah, most likely the glow/heater plugs.

They're easy to test. There are 4 of them with one wire joining them, take this wire off, should be a 7 or 8 mil nut. Connect a test light to the positive battery terminal then put the light onto the threaded part of the plug, it should light up, if not the plugs fecked:eek:

I think they're about a tenner each.

Actually, before you do that, just make sure they go live for about 30 seconds when you switch ignition on:)

Echo all other comments.

I had a ZD TD that used to eat Glow plugs - specially the hard-to-get-at-without-tearing-open-yer-knuckles one behind the fuel pump [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Polar...
we have a 406 diesel as well..... what we found out to our cost one year ... is that diesel freezes.... I would hazard a guess at that might be the problem ... that the fuel is frozen in the line.

In France you can buy special winterised Diesel, which prevents that problem, here it's not a problem given we rarely get such extreme temperatures... but in light of the cold these last few days, could well be what is causing it.

P

Diesel turns to wax in extreme cold.:) I'm lead to believe all retailers now add an antiwaxing agent, so waxing "shouldn't" be an issue.... one to bear in mind if you don't find owt else though:)

nah - everywhere switches to "winter diesel" in the UK

a tip to get it to start easier

turn ignition on, wait for glowplug light to go out, turn ignition off again.

Repeat that about 3 times and it should start. But glow plugs will need replacing.

Paul

mik
do they? I didn't know that....sorry if I gave out the wrong info... it's just that I had trouble starting our 406 yesterday and just assumed this could be the problem given that it happened when we were in France a couple of years ago.... but I didn't know they were using winterised diesel in the UK... live and learn as they say.

be carefull about turning the ignition on and off more than once to activate the glow plugs,they use quite a bit of power and could drain the battery,especially in this weather,it happened to me a while ago

Nowhere near as much power as it takes to crank a diesel engine

Yeah I agree with that. the engine won't require as much cranking after you have warmed the glow plugs as I described. Believe me it works :D