Citroen C4 Grand Picasso MKII 2014 Electric Parking Brake Fault.

[Elgrande Skyblue]

Hope someone can help me with this or supply and OEM part number.
The cars VIN is: VF7**************[VIN obfuscated, can be read by forum staff]

I have an intermittent electric parking brake fault where at times the parking brake brake will fail to engage, mostly when it rains or there is a high degree of mizzle, but on ither occasions it will engage when conditions are both wet and dry.

My mechanic, cleared the copious amount of faults indicated after being unable to reinact the problem. He checked the actuator motor, the wiring loom, the ECU and the calipers and the fault failed to re-appear.
The car then sailed through it's MOT and service at the end of January without any problems. The mechanic did state that the rear left parking brake actuator's housing showed signs of a crack, he sprayed it with water but no fault appeared. He then sprayed it with the appropriate electrical cleansing and damp proofing liquid and sealed the crack. The intermittent fault is now back, and I have decided to change the actuator,
Has anyone experienced such a problem before and know of which type of actuator (2 or 4 pin) as I would like to carry out the repair myself after being fobbed off by dealers and mechanics quoting high prices for the paired actuator and caliper, surely the actuator can be purchased separately.

[GiveMeABreak]

Here is the diagram showing the caliper motor:

(7) Back up Caliper Motor, part: 1608999280, £168.13 inc. VAT from Citroen

So this part (7) includes all the highlighted parts (A, B & C)

[RichardW]

This is usually down to the wiring having rubbed through on the inside of the trunking - has it all been out and checked? If the motors are not handed you could swap them side to side to see if the fault follows the motor or not.

[Elgrande Skyblue]

Thanks for your response.

As per the mechanics, the wiring has been checked and found to be in satisfactory, plus everything worked perfectly well during the three days they had the car, during which time the annual service was carried out, and it passed the MOT., they also tried everything they could think of to replicate the fault, but failed.

The fault has been with me yesterday and today, after arriving home this evening the parking brake refused to engage and after 4 attempts I chocked the wheels, then pushed the handbrake switch again and the parking brake engaged.

Wrt swapping the actuators, will try, but somehow I cannot see how swapping will help because of the intermittentcy. Alas I think this is going to be an expensive teeth pulling operation to solve this problem.

[RichardW]

There should be a fault code that points to where the fault is - if one of the rear actuators, it will give the side, in which case if you swap it, then the fault code should move sides. You would need a diag tool of some sort to check of course...! If you had the fault codes then you could see whether it was the actuator, or in fact some other fault. I would re-check the wiring - it only needs a bit of rub through on the signal wire to give an indication that confuses the computer, you might be looking for just a very small green spot on the wire.

[Elgrande Skyblue]

Many thanks, I will advise to the mechanics as I don't have an appropriate fault diagnosis tool to read the codes.