Ignition, Non starting - at times

Way back on the 24th October, I described an intermittant starting problem. At times if I left No 1 plug out it would start. This made no sense.
I received some good advise. Battery was replaced, and the leads tested fine.

Quite by accident I found the wiring from the coil to the distributor at fault in the socket at the distributor.
I have since cleaned, tweaked the terminals and put a little petroleom jelly on them. So far there has not been a repeat of my problem.
Back to confident motoring
Regards Dave

Hi Dave,

Well done and thanks for coming back to confirm the true fault.

Although entirely understandable, the majority of posts on the forum talk about the problems people are having with their XM's. Once they've got the solution and the problem solved they don't usually come back...until the next problem.

Its nice to see a post with a happy ending.

Cheers

noz

Hello, First post here.

As you were talking about replacing battery, when the first hard frost hit the battery
drained and my XM 2.5 TD (1998) wouldn't start. And the battery is 3-4 years old.
So I'll replace it. Any recommendations ?

Current battery is a Mercedes/Bosh 7.96 aH which came with the car when I bought it
9 month ago.

Furthermore anybody had any experience with fixing the air condition control unit ?
It have been hammered a bit to much by the last owners kids, and is now stuck a
mode more suited for either very hot or very cold weather =

And while am at it, anybody know where to buy an instruction manual ? As the car
is original from Switzerland so is the manual. I do read german but not the kind
they use in Switzerland.

And thanx for a great board, I should have be working but I find myself reading this
board, and taking notes on all the stuff I need to do, like putting in a cruise control so
the wife can rest her feet on our next beer pilgrim trip to Belgium.


// Jesper from Denmark.

Hi Jesper

I was going to say 'try GSF' until I noticed where you are, and welcome to the club. It's difficult to compare battery makes, but a fairly good guide is to get the heaviest (in weight) you can for the price, the more lead it has the more capacity and durability it should have. It may be a little difficult to take weighing scales into all your local garages but if you feel the wieght of one or two you should be able to tell the difference. The one I got from GSF for about £60.00 was considerably heavier than the original and you could tell the difference by the speed that it turned the engine over.

Peter.N.

Thanx for the tip Peter.
I think I'll have chat with one of my two mechanics, I have one that does the motor stuff at
a local Citroen garage he's an expert on Jumper's and claims that the 2.5TD motor on the
XM is the ancestor, of the one sitting in the current Jumpers. And well he usually is
very fast at finding problems, (to be read cheap) and the fixes he does works.
So I kind of believe him =
He is going to replace much of the fuel lines as they need it badly, later this month, so
he might as well put in a new battery as well.
But I still need to try to fix my air condition control unit, a new one is 450 Euro. here
in Denmark, so that is my main concern with the XM.
My ZX needs all of the wiring that goes to all the front lights replaced, but that I can
do myself.
Everything that has anything to do with cars is expensive here in Denmark. My XM was
a bargain in danish terms, but in GB the same amount of money would have gotten
me the 5-6 cars.

// Regards Jesper