Citroen Saxo (1997 - 2003) - 00 1.5 Strange Instrument behaviour

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Sat 13 Dec 2008 16:25
00 1.5 Strange Instrument behaviour - Robin Reliant
SWMBO's Saxo diesel has developed a strange glitch with some of the instruments lately. The clock has started to gain two hours a week and the temperature gauge now emulates a windscreen wiper, sweeping up and down from top to bottom all the time the ignition is on. The only thing down to the car recently was when I fitted new glow plugs and I can't see a connection with that.

Anyone got any ideas?
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Sun 14 Dec 2008 17:13
00 1.5 Strange Instrument behaviour - 659FBE
My partner's 106D had instrument problems early in its (long) life. The fuel gauge would generally fail to make "full" but would sometimes rise as the car was driven - econmical behaviour.

On being summoned to investigate, I isolated the fault to the instrument head and removed it to find that the flexi printed board is full of zero Ohm links. These form track cross-overs and are crimped to the (unplated) track with little metal tabs.

These do not and cannot form gas tight joints and consequently oxidise and form poor connections. I isolated the offending portion of track by soldering a jumper wire from the print adjacent to the loom connector to the electronics daughter board for the fuel gauge. This bridged about half a dozen of these rotten links.

That was about 8 years ago - no trouble since. VDO, go to the bottom of the class for appalling detailing.

659.
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