Xantia II -The interior door open light blinks

[lancia58]

Hi

When I open any door in my Xantia the interior light blinks as well as the door open sign at the instrument cluster. I can hear a relay that is vibrating. This vibration lasts a while after the door is closed. The car is a left hand car. Can anyone point where this relay is, if it is a relay ?

Thanks
Zohar

[Mandrake]

There is no relay involved with the interior lights - the lights are fed directly from the CPH (central locking/alarm/immobiliser unit) mounted up behind the glovebox, and judging by the fact that it can dim the lights slowly it will be switching the lights with transistors not relays.

There are also no relays in the power supply feed to the CPH - it's powered permanently with only fuses between it and the battery. If you hear a relay buzzing it will be an unrelated relay, perhaps in the instrument cluster.

My guess is you have a bad earth somewhere - when the CPH turns the lights on the current drain will cause the earth voltage to rise thus robbing the supply voltage of some other circuit, again, probably in the instrument cluster as it may share a common earth point with the CPH.

According to the wiring diagrams I have the earthing point for the CPH is down near the drivers feet near the footwell air vent on the centre console. I can post the wiring diagram for the interior lighting if you like ?

[lancia58]

Hi
My car is left hand is the CPH location is the same for left hand and right hand cars ? The door open sign at the instrument cluster, the interior light blinking is exactly correlated with the relay ( or other device ) clicking I hear. Anyway I’ll appreciate if you can post the wiring diagram for the interior lighting.

Thanks
Zohar

[Mandrake]

Here are the wiring diagrams for LHD - I had to guess your RPO number - I used 8500.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/782 ... %20LHD.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/782 ... %20LHD.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/782 ... %20LHD.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

To answer your questions - yes on LHD the CPH (8630) is still behind the glove box, but on the right hand side of the car instead of the left - if you remove the glove box its in the top left corner of the cavity the glove box fits in.

According to the installation wiring diagram above the earthing point (MC40) for the CPH on a LHD car is in a different location - its under the carpet (?) below the front right (passenger) door towards the hinge end.

[lancia58]

When I had this problem it was relatively cold ( 2 Celsius ) for couple of days. After running the engine for several minutes the problem disappears, but then at the morning (overnight ) it happened again and disappeared after running the engine for several minutes. Now that the weather is back to normal ( 10 Celsius at night time ) even at morning time it disappears. But now at the morning I have a rough start, it takes 5 to 7 seconds till the engine starts. Before I observed the problem with the open door light the engine will start after two to three starter turns. I guess the problems are somehow related. Any ideas ?

Thanks
Zohar

[Mandrake]

Are you sure your battery is not failing ? Failing batteries struggle the most in cold temperatures.

Try to get a reading of the battery voltage after the car has sat over night before starting, a second reading during engine cranking, and a third after the engine has been idling a couple of minutes. Let us know those three figures and that should give us some information to go on, otherwise we can only guess.

[lancia58]

Hi

I went to the garage and he checked the battery under load and it is OK. This morning the engine starts after one turn of the starter. I checked the battery voltage at the morning before starting it was 12.5 V and charging voltage was 14.5V, both readings are OK. Just to verify I connected the multimeter ground to the battery negative terminal and then to the car's body and readings were same.

As you said I suspect that there is a bad contact somewhere that as the temperature falls it worsen. I'll try to track it down , hope I had luck with this.

Thanks
Zohar

[Dimitris Piniaris]

My Xantia 2 has a wierd issue during cold and high humidity months... the driver door lock (the only one) hardly even opens and if it does no signal to the rest magnetic locks is send including the gas cover thingy, plus the iterior lights and the open door idicator flicker alongside with a non stop clicking sound coming from something like a switch or relay, giving a hard time to electricians we have here... any thoughts? seeing this is still open from 2013...

[CitroJim]

My Xantia 2 has a wierd issue during cold and high humidity months... the driver door lock (the only one) hardly even opens and if it does no signal to the rest magnetic locks is send including the gas cover thingy, plus the iterior lights and the open door idicator flicker alongside with a non stop clicking sound coming from something like a switch or relay, giving a hard time to electricians we have here... any thoughts? seeing this is still open from 2013...

I would suspect you have suffered a water leak via the windscreen scuttle at some time and the sound insulation under the front footwell carpets are saturated with water...

The insulation foam can hold many. many litres of water without you being aware...

This causes damp to get into some large electrical connectors under the carpets and allows corrosion to develop...

Worth lifting your carpets up and checking...

[Dimitris Piniaris]

Thanks for the suggestions, thankfully the carpets were dry , but after some searching i found a small boxed console thing behind the codrivers glove box , bow searching for a new one or at least a good condition one... that thing was in charge of the central locking , cabin lights and the open door indicator. will update if a replacement will solve the issue

[wheeler]

The box in the picture is the CPH unit they are coded & locked to one car, if you use a second hand one the car will not start. If you want to use second hand you would need a matching set of engine ECU, CPH & key transponder chip.

[lancia58]

Hi,

Please look at the following thread:

viewtopic.php?t=50336

The make the replacement CPH to work you need to have a soldering skills and remove the chip that stores the code from the original CPH to the replacement one, I did it and it works. If you can send a picture of the CPH PCB ( component side ) I'll try to recall the chip and point out in the picture. It is a small chip ( as long as I remember ) 8 pins.

Hope this helps

[wheeler]

This is the chip you need to swap.

[lancia58]

Yes this is the one