..and You Think There Expensive Here!, Have a look at this one.

CITROEN XM BREAK 1992 MOTEUR 23000KM Numéro de l'objet : 140189357982

Peter.N.

I've window shopped on eBay France before and I noticed that the cars were much more expensive.

I think it's a good thing that they are more expensive. It means that something like this XM still has value as a tool, rather than as a curiosity or banger transport. It also means they will last longer because there is more incentive to repair them, because they are still worth money and a replacement will be costly. It seems much healthier than in the UK when cars in their second decade are one big bill from the scrapyard.

I think a number of people have come to the conclusion that I have, that an XM is a well built sustainable car. When they first hit the market they were regarded as over complicated and difficult to repair, but by modern standards they are, if not simple, possible to repair on a DIY basis, that can,t be said of many modern cars, especially diesels.

My particular favourite, the 2.1 td manual estate, cant be replaced by anything they make now, for space, comfort, econmy and durability. No, they are not the most reliable of cars but they are durable, if you keep repairing them they will go on almost forever, my last one had covered nearly 300k and was still going well. Even though some are showing signs of rust now they are still much better than some modern cars and with a little preventative maintenance can to made to last a lot longer. My present one is 12 years old and is virtually rust free - check out Mercedes and Ford!

I have driven one or two newish cars, and although maybe they have the edge for refinement, they are not that much better, that I would consider changing. A friend has a Peugeot 607 diesel with its potentialy self destructing dual mass flywheel and a fuel injection system that needs a main dealer to even look at and a mortgage to repair, is not a sufficient improvement over the XM that I would be tempted to change.

The few hundred pounds that we may have to shell out to repair our XM's is a pittance compared to what modern cars are costing to repair and maintain, so I won't be changing in a hurry!

Peter.N.

What do you mean by potentially, self destructing flywheel? from my experiance, they do.

I've seen a couple of these now and when they fail, you are looking at serious money to replace. I'm told, when you fit a new clutch, you have to fit new flywheel or the warranty on the clutch is invalid.

So a new clutch in your 307-607 etc is going to cost you about the same as some of us paid for our XM's.

No thanks.

Amen to that, Peter.

Ciarán

Hi Ken and Ciaran

I have been looking at 'Honest Johns' technical forum, which is very good, I would say the technical expertise matches this forum (not on XMs of course!). Every time I look at it, there is another horror story which puts the problems we get with XMs into perspective! Read it, it's quite entertaining. It seem that all cars made since 2000 require a trip to the dealer to dianose anything.

The most recent revelation was of a popular small car, I can't remember what, with failure of the horn, he said the horn itself was OK because it sounded with the alarm, but the button did'nt work, the reply was 'take it to your dealer and get the fault codes read' likely to be a defective module. From the time I started driving in the '50s until the last XM, the horn circuit has consisted of a piece of wire with the horn on one end and the button on the other, + a 12v supply of course, how can they make it that complicated?

I can see many cars being written off within perhaps five years because of the cost of repairs, with no DIY option.

Peter.N.

This post has been edited by Peter.N. on December 26, 2007 09:58 pm

Hiya Peter,

Honest Johns, haven't been there in a while, but I used to pass the time reading it, is indeed very interesting, as you say, must have another visit

Frightening isn't it, it also doesn't bode well as more and more of the older cars leave the road every year, meaning eventually, when we hit say 2015 or so, almost all cars will be these electronic everything types, which really isn't good news for independent garages etc, but then that's what the car manufacturers want really.

Exactly! I mean I can somewhat understand this multiplexing business cutting down on the amount of wiring needed, and being meant to simplify things in some ways, however I thought that some fundamentally simple things would remain working as they always had, as you say, just what is the point of directing the most basic electrical circuit you can get, through an ECU?? Madness.

Its not just the electrics that are becoming needlessly complicated either, today I had to change a headlight bulb on the S2, it was all over in five minutes, the most fiddly bit being getting the bulb in without it touching anything, lining it up with the clip etc etc, you know how it goes. Anyway, it reminded me that last week a taxi driver friend of a friend told me it was going to cost him the guts of £100 to change a headlight bulb on his Skoda. Utterly flabbergasted, I asked why, and he said that because everything under the bonnet was so tightly packed, and covered, and arranged in these stupid little plastic tupperware style containers, that it was a good few hours dismantling work down at the indy's in order to obtain access to the rear of the lights. My sister's boyfriend had to do similar to his Mondeo a while back, though not quite as bad, he still had to remove the whole engine fusebox and associated wiring to do one of them. Crazy.

Yep. The trouble is, this new breed of cars have not yet reached the age where they will see widespread failure of many components, and little is known so far about the longterm longevity of these multiplexed / ECU dominated systems. Like you say, when they do start to fail on some models, they could well end up as scrap due to the logistics of repairing them. The government should stick that in their "get your smelly dirty polluting old cars off the road and buy some nice clean plastic new ones"- pipe and smoke it. Can you imagine the environmental impact of building millions of new cars because vehicles that would have previously been around for at least 10-20 years, are now being binned after 4 or 5. Couple to this the fact that the car makers are non too willing to build their systems on standard protocols, or indeed to release information on how their devices work to the public domain, then things are looking very bleak indeed for the home mechanic, and indeed anyone who owns a car, because at this rate eventually you'll be forced to goto the dealer for things like changing a tyre or tuning the radio...

I work in computers and software, and often wonder if I could design devices or programs which could interface with some of these cars, but the manufacturers are already doing plenty to thwart people who are already attempting this kind of thing, so that doesn't look good.

You never know, in 10 or 15 years maybe things will have completely inverted, and people like us will find that our old cars are becoming much sought after, and the next best thing, due to the fact that you have a reasonable chance of fixing them without getting your wallet out and bending over!

I've driven some of these newer cars and must say I've enjoyed the performance and smoothness of the diesel engines for example, and in moments of utter stupidity I find myself thinking things like 'hey maybe if one of my engines ever dies I'll try fitting a HDI or something to it'. Then I wake up and smack myself around the face a bit!

One thing I will ask though, and I'd say you'd be be better placed to comment on this than me Peter, was there similar scepticism when the first cars with electronic fuel injection and ECUs emerged into the mainstream in the 70s and 80s? I'm sure everyone thought it was overcomplicated then when carburettors etc were working fine, though I daresay it was much less of a leap forward than these new multiplexed types are mind you.

Ciarán

This post has been edited by Ciaran on December 26, 2007 11:14 pm

Hi again Ciaran

I pleased I am not the only one that feels this way. There has been rebelion in places. A friend of mine is a mechanic at a coach company, they have had so much trouble with multiplex wiring that they now specify that their new coaches must be hard wired!

The same sort of thing has happened in my trade. I was a TV engineer for 50 years or so, I started in the valve era, when TVs were like Morris Minors, you could see and get at every component and sometimes see what had actually gone wrong with it, the change to transistors was not to bad, then came ICs which I coped with, then microprocessors, which I didn't. I am afraid that I dont understand digital at all, but it doesn't really matter as you can't repair them anyway!

What is obviously going to happen is that DIY is going to be a thing of the past and those with the necessary knowledge will be as rare as thatchers and well diggers, probably limited to the classic car enthusiasts. The XM must be one of the last made DIY viable cars. Perhaps they will be worth pots of money in the future.

What seems to have largely brought this about is that people have so much money now. When I first started driving, if you couldn't repair it you couldn't afford to run it. Relative to peoples wages cars are much cheaper now and so is fuel. It was about 5/- per gallon then, I was earning about £5.00 per week so my wages would buy 20 gallons, now at £5.00 per gallon a person on £400.00 per week, considered to be the average wage ( although I have never earnt that!)
will buy you 80 Gallons! Where's it all going to end?

Peter.N.

Just imagine if electronic fuel injection had come before the carburettor. The rep could assemble a sizeable box containing all the wiring, sensors, ECUs, injectors, sockets and so forth, the multiply drilled head casting, the machining tools for fitting the remote sensors, the cat etc. etc. needed for the system and then produce the one modest box containing the carburettor.

Look what we are offering, he might say. We've miniaturised all this scrambled mess of components into this one self sensing unit, fitted in minutes and at a much reduced buying in cost.

Why have we got it all so back to front ??

Mike.

There's always a lot of talk on this subject when I see friends who own various Lotus cars made over the last 20 years or so. Lotus stopped making the Esprit just at the point where multiplex would have been the next 'improvement' to the car. The last 4 cylinder engined cars had an ecu controlled system for the engine management that anyone could plug a laptop into and twiddle about with to their heart's content. I used to do that with my Esprit, the software was (is) freely available for nothing via the forum, altering the tickover speed or increasing the boost etc, that sort of thing. Earlier carb engined cars such as my Excel had electronic ignition fitted from new (late 70's early 80's) combined with 2 twin choke Dellorto's. Once they were set up properly they would stay in tune more or less between mots with minimal adjustment. If you are a bit handy none of this would present a problem, I know people who have fitted ecu controlled fuel injection to these engines with great success, it's possible to buy the components now from companies who have recognised that there's a growing market, a small one obviously, that doesn't want this years model but wants to improve what they've got. It's even easier nowadays I think with the internet, all the help and advice we need is pretty well at our fingertips as great forums just like this one prove. It's going to be tough in years to come to find something to replace our XMs, I find it slightly ironic that all this safety legislation and concern about the environment seems to be forcing car makers to build vehicles that are heavier and less economic than cars they were making 20 years ago (my friends Pug 407 for instance). I know you can buy a chip packet that doesn't cost anything to tax and does 50/60 to the gallon nowadays but I can't get all my tools in one of those, or load it up with 4 people, all their luggage, fill it with fuel at the garage round the corner and then drive 700 miles to the Alps before it needs some more diesel.

Bob

Just to add a bit of meat on the bones I was sent to Kwik Fit last week by an insurance company who were kindly financing my unfortunate writing off of two of their 3000 mile old tyres on a new XK Jag.
(Well, we all make mistakes, it's just a question of scale.)

Anyway as the manager was telling me I happily wouldn't be having to pay £540 + vat for two tyres he had a moan about new technology.
They'd had a newish Jetta in for front pads.
They removed the front wheels and the pads from the caliper. According to him at that point the caliper piston sends a signal to an ecu which promptly fired the pistons hard against the non-existing pads. Pistons fell out swiftly pursued by much brake fluid.

They got the AA to recover the car to the main dealer.
Apparently you're mean't to plug in a diagnostic unit and program the ecu off line as far as the brakes are concerned before removing pads.

And that boys and girls is one very good reason why I won't be running a C6.

Hi All

It just gets worse! For the first time in my life I am now in a position to buy a new car, if I desired to do so, I always said I wouldn't anyway because of the huge depreciation, but now it would seem the worst thing I could possibly do, or to buy one made after about 2000.

To answer your question Ciaran, all so called advances in vehicle technology over the years have been greeted with suspicion. 'Electronic ignition? These new transistor things arn't very reliable' and they wern't, at least not in the early days. The transition to 'negative earth', 'positive earth has been working fine for all these years, why change it? Even I greeted the alternator with some suspicion, much more complicated than a dynamo, and it's got electronics in it! I have just about come around to the idea that it was actually progress, only made possible of course by the advent of semiconductors.

In the early days I got the feeling the electronics were being used just to show how clever we were and were not really neccessary, but now they have completely taken over. Some of the early TVs had one transistor in them, doing a job that could have been done equally well by a valve, but it enabled the manufacturers to attach a label to the cabinet that proudly proclaimed 'TRANSISTOR'.

This 'progress has affected almost everything. I am a radio ham, in the early days you had to design and build your own equipment. Imagine the euphoria you experienced on getting your equipment working and speaking to someone the other side of the earth - or in the next street for that matter! I missed out on most of that as I wasn't licensed until the '80s but even then ham's had the upper hand in radio comunication. Now with the internet and cellphones, anyone can do it. Even the radio equipment itself has changed beyond belief, all the gear that Tony Hancock had in his 'shack' will now fit into a car radio sized case, I know I've got one, its called an Icom 706.

There is no doubt that these developments have brought benifits, but on the other hand they are causing a depletion of the past technical skills. Ther'e are virtually no TV engineers now, as they are no longer needed. people who work on the production of electronic products do so in a 'clean room' with millions of pounds worth of quipment, so we are loosing out on most of the practical skills that we once had.

Peter.N.

PS Of course I wouldn't be able to tell you all this without the development of the computer.

The future looks quite bleak, doesn't it?
Well, it does for those who can't detach themselves from the glorious past.
Things will always change, they always have. And it's our offspring that will adapt. They are totally unaware of carburettors, dynamos, valves in radio equipment, etc. They can very well cope without them. They know how to do a million things with their cell phones, car navigation systems, advanced digital TV and audio, you name it. And so be it.
I do like your reminiscing though

Erm --- no, not exactly !

One of my teenage offspring has a very significant interest in the things you mention -- has a carburettor motor, collects and works on elderly diesels and (probably down to me ) is also a technosceptic. His slightly older brother is likewise adept.
They too can do the million things with the gizmos, but for most people they can't repair them once functionality is lost. I also think with a number of things we have reached a point where we are confusing 'change' and 'progress'. Strikes me that an awful lot of change we see now is driven purely by manufacturers wanting to convince consumers to get the next must have item, rather than any significant improvement in performance. One has to look at things like HDi, for example. Maybe more efficient when its working, but if it breaks, every penny of the efficiency saving will be gone in repairs.

I am put in mind of the 'all that glitters' scenario.

Mike.

I can see both sides of this argument but when in doubt about progress I tend to think how would things be if we didn't progress? If the Victorians hadn't gone to high pressure steam there wouldn't have been a Mallard, if the transistor hadn't been developed into the IC how many valves would an Hydractive ECU needed? How long would it last? Could it even work fast enough to work properly?

Progress always comes at a price, however the price is much lower if you jump on the bandwagon later rather than sooner. Just look at the problems the first owners of the DS had. Or early XM owners come to that.

I think the problem starts for me when I have the option to join in taken away.

Happy New Year all.

Steve.

Currently running a 4x4 Townace Diesel.