Citroen DS3 Adivce wanted

[AledJ]

Tidy. Let us know how you get on

I'll post back in a week or two and let you know how I get on :-)

Shiny! Hope you have fun and enjoy it. Knowing from the owners manual that it's normally due a service at that mileage make sure that it's had one. The MPG tapers off when the oil gets more filthy, so I'd check out if it is due!

My sisters boyfriend will do a service on it for me so that's covered, but I'll double check with the dealer when the last one was. The Citroen dealer offered me gap insurance in-case the car is written off for £399, but looking online I can get it for £89 for up to £7500 for 3 years. So if my car is written off and my insurance only offer £5000, then the gap insurance will cover the cost of replacing my car. Cant understand why the Citroen dealer charges so much :-|

[Butcher]

They charge a lot because people will pay it. At £30 a year for the third party cover I'd say that's definitely worth it though.

[TheAnimus]

Sounds like you've got it more than sorted then. Oh if yours doesn't have them already, you can buy the official Citroen fitted mats for ~£30, would recommend.

Oh yeah if going at it in the passenger seat, woman on top. And the bluetooth thing is intermittent at working with my smartphone's SMS to voice thing. Not sure if Citroen or Windows Phone to blame, I think it's Citroen because they put a firmware update on, which made it worse.

[steve threlfall]

I'll post back in a week or two and let you know how I get on :-)



My sisters boyfriend will do a service on it for me so that's covered, but I'll double check with the dealer when the last one was. The Citroen dealer offered me gap insurance in-case the car is written off for £399, but looking online I can get it for £89 for up to £7500 for 3 years. So if my car is written off and my insurance only offer £5000, then the gap insurance will cover the cost of replacing my car. Cant understand why the Citroen dealer charges so much :-|

It's just good business. Lots of people will pay it. In a similar way that insurance companies make bundles from customers renewing year on year.

Car forums made me aware of www.ala.co.uk.

[AledJ]

Sounds like you've got it more than sorted then. Oh if yours doesn't have them already, you can buy the official Citroen fitted mats for ~£30, would recommend.

Oh yeah if going at it in the passenger seat, woman on top. And the bluetooth thing is intermittent at working with my smartphone's SMS to voice thing. Not sure if Citroen or Windows Phone to blame, I think it's Citroen because they put a firmware update on, which made it worse.

Ill keep the passenger seat tip in mind lol

I cant believe this is true but did a quote for gap insurance via autotrader, and for 3 years with the car value at £9479 and cover of £5000 its only a one payment of £74 :-)

[AledJ]

So had the car yesterday and loving it!!!

I do have a few question.......... When I was monitoring the mpg i had it on the one with the pump icon (not the one where it shows the start point > car > then pump), and noticed that the mpg were going up to 118 or so. Now that cant be right can it?

To those who have the DS3 or other Citroen model with the stop start eco feature I have a question....

Yesterday the eco feature was working fine with no issues at all, but today it did not seem to work at all (and gear was in neutral and no foot on the clutch). I know in the manual it mentions something about it not working sometimes, but does nto say what this is cause by. Is it the same for others? Edit: found this http://www.mediafire.com/view/?xhr45anbdbeuou9

[kalniel]

I do have a few question.......... When I was monitoring the mpg i had it on the one with the pump icon (not the one where it shows the start point > car > then pump), and noticed that the mpg were going up to 118 or so. Now that cant be right can it?

Instantaneous MPG? If you aren't using any petrol but are still moving forward then your instantaneous MPG is effectively infinite A rolling instantaneous reading is better, but will still be very high when you're easing off throttle.

[TheAnimus]

So the MPG has a couple of ways of been shown.

You have the 'trip' counters 1&2, these allow you to measure your MPG over 2 waypoints. The other, is the 'live' one, and yes 118 will be correct, but watch as it drops out to say 15mpg accelerating hard, it will balance out! You often will see 999 mpg too.

Have a go at re-setting one of the trip counters, see how you get on.

ECO mode, there is a little switch by the right hand side that allows you to disable eco mode until you next switch off the ignition, it is possible you hit that. Also ECO mode doesn't like when its cold, it is IIRC effectively a heat storage device, that has compressed hot air inside it, to instantly restart the engine. The car won't go into eco mode if you are using a lot of electricty, say you have it on quick de-frost mode or similar.

You can observe this by when you release the clutch (gear in nuetural) it will flash green ECO in the rev counter area. If it is flashing, it's detected that you want it to go to eco, but it can't because of either too much power drawn, or too colder engine or the battery is a bit flat etc.

[AledJ]

So the MPG has a couple of ways of been shown.

You have the 'trip' counters 1&2, these allow you to measure your MPG over 2 waypoints. The other, is the 'live' one, and yes 118 will be correct, but watch as it drops out to say 15mpg accelerating hard, it will balance out! You often will see 999 mpg too.

Have a go at re-setting one of the trip counters, see how you get on.

ECO mode, there is a little switch by the right hand side that allows you to disable eco mode until you next switch off the ignition, it is possible you hit that. Also ECO mode doesn't like when its cold, it is IIRC effectively a heat storage device, that has compressed hot air inside it, to instantly restart the engine. The car won't go into eco mode if you are using a lot of electricty, say you have it on quick de-frost mode or similar.

You can observe this by when you release the clutch (gear in nuetural) it will flash green ECO in the rev counter area. If it is flashing, it's detected that you want it to go to eco, but it can't because of either too much power drawn, or too colder engine or the battery is a bit flat etc.

Thanks for clearing that up! The eco start/stop is on so must be the other points you mentioned above.

One other thing I noticed is that I left work today and it said 199 miles until I need to fill up, but then about a mile away dropped to 193 and then 189 when I got home. I live two miles from work so not sure if this is out of sync. To rest each all the reading do you have to hold the button on the right stalk in on each one?

[kalniel]

One other thing I noticed is that I left work today and it said 199 miles until I need to fill up, but then about a mile away dropped to 193 and then 189 when I got home. I live two miles from work so not sure if this is out of sync.

It can't magically know your fuel consumption of the future, so remaining range is an estimate presumably based on average fuel consumption. As your real fuel level drops the range will get more accurate.

[TheAnimus]

It will swing wildly depending on how you've been driving. Sometimes I find when I've been doing some boring driving, something that has average speed cameras at 50mph for 10 miles (use the speed limiter feature!) it will jump up massively.

Pull out onto the motorway or something whilst gunning it, it will drop considerably.

The desiel engine in this car and the eco mappings are really kind of complicated, where as most petrol engines you just keep them at a sweet spot in revs, accelerate gently (but linearly!) this engine is far more complex. It might take a while to get used to it, it took me about the 3rd fillup before I was able to get more than 700 miles a from a tank, now I get more like 600, as you do have to always be driving saintly to do that well!

[AledJ]

Well all is going well with my DS3 :-) Drives well and is very comfy, plus it does feel like its hugging the road !!


I do have a question about my mother Citroen C3 if anyone can help. She has just bought a C3 for £9k and it has 6k miles on the clock, its a diesel automatic as well. Now she says when accelerating it feels a bit sluggish, and she is basing that against a test drive in manual diesel. I suggested try it for a few days and then take it to Citroen to have it looked at. Any suggestions? Or is it the fact that as its an automatic its just one of those things. She did have an automatic BMW which have excellent automatic gearbox in.