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Shuddering/Loss of Power

63K views 67 replies 27 participants last post by  peterpoultney1951 
#1 ·
Evening,

I am a long time lurker after buying a Flair 110 Petrol in November 2015, and been very appreciative of the helpful tips from this friendly community. I have been thoroughly enjoying my Cactus since then without any problems at all (apart from needing to replace the wipers!).

However tonight I was accelerating fairly hard from a 40mph zone to 70mph and the car wasn't having it: it shuddered a few times and there was a distinct loss of power. My wife was in the car and said that had started happening to her fairly recently but occurred quite regularly. It feels like the turbo is struggling to add any boost or that the engine is being throttled in some way; its difficult to describe. The car otherwise functions completely normally.

I found a post here that seems similar (http://www.cactusforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1103) but there seemed to be no resolution, and most folk were referring to their diesel car. Has anyone else experienced this in the petrol 110, or have any theories as to whats going on? It was just serviced about a month ago with an oil and oil filter change, could it be something to do with that given that the oil cools the turbo?

Thanks again for all the helpful info!
 
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#28 ·
curriemaster said:
They weren't too specific about what they had done to it (drained and replaced the fuel seemed to be the reason - although that makes little sense to me), so hopefully I will find out more on Monday and report back.
From what I understand, modern petrol contains a certain amount of ethanol (deliberately added) - apparently in the UK the amount is currently limited to 10%.
Also, I understand that ethanol readily absorbs water from the atmosphere, more so than petroleum .
So it is possible that those occasions of misfiring are associated with the water content in the fuel currently in the tank.

So maybe this was the idea behind the garage draining and replacing your fuel...
 
#29 ·
Hi all,

The garage gave me the car back after replacing the fuel, thanks Davew for the suggestion as to why that was a solution. Unfortunately the car is still shuddering as the wife reported it the day after pickup. I just dropped it off at the garage again today and they are keeping it for a week with the technician using it to commute from home to work to try and learn how to replicate the fault most effectively. Im hoping that it will be solved this time, but there is no clear

As an aside I got a new C3 with airbumps and Android Auto as a courtesy car in the meantime, seems pretty nice.

I'll let you know if/when I get more info.
 
#30 ·
I picked up my car again today with no work done to it.

They cant get the shuddering fault to repeat during test drives and therefore have no recommendations for diagnosis and therefore can't proceed with repair under warranty. I phoned Citroen customer care and the initial phone conversation seemed very helpful, they phoned back yesterday just with the advice "if it happens again give us a call". Of course, it will certainly happen again as nothing was done to the car to remedy the fault. This is very frustrating.

My plan now is to try some self-diagnosis: I have bought a bluetooth ODB2 dongle that I will use in conjunction with the Torque app on my phone to try and capture the engine state during a fault. It seems like there is a pretty large amount of data that can be read out during driving, including RPM, air pressures and temperatures, coolant pressures and temperatures, turbo pressure (maybe - seems like that might be only for VW group cars), etc. It looks like you can also record the data using Torque so I guess Ill have to spend a day getting that all together and then going out on a ripping drive to make it happen.

Dongle arrives tomorrow so perhaps even this weekend I could have something to show Citroen. Wish me luck...
 
#31 ·
Sounds very frustrating Curriemaster. I haven't done anything about mine yet as I never notice it on my commute however I will be contacting Citroen to see what they can do as it is certainly an issue when I want to pull onto a motorway. I'll let you know if I get any different/more useful responses!
 
#32 ·
I have been experiencing what sounds like the same problem intermittently for the last 2-3 months (maybe longer) I reported it to my local Citroen who booked it in to check it out, but said it might be worth filling up with a high octane fuel to 'clear through' any possible contaminate before then going back to regular unleaded. I tried this and it seemed to cure the problem. I cancelled the inspection, but then a few days later the issue arose again. I've just had my 2 year service and asked the dealer to have a look and see if they could source the problem.

Believe it or not they seem to have solved it. And I'm not saying that this is the cause of all the cases reported here, but thought it might help someone. I have an insurance black box tracker and had fitted myself as instructed. It has to be connected to the battery and then to an earth point on the car. The cables were very short and so I connected the earth to what I thought was a suitable point. Turns out I'd connected the earth to the top of the turbo ECU and the Citroen dealer thinks that was possible causing the problem. They have re routed the tracker to a proper earth point and so far in the space of a week it hasn't misfired once, where the week before the service it must have done it a dozen times.

Be interested to know if this could be the cause for anyone else?
 
#33 ·
erbert said:
.... They have re routed the tracker to a proper earth point and so far in the space of a week it hasn't misfired once, where the week before the service it must have done it a dozen times.
A relevant possibility for vehicles troubled by misfiring but without blackbox trackers etc - imperfect grounding/ earthing of sensors such as oxygen sensor and anti-knock sensor could give false alarms to the ECU with consequential effect on engine running.

Will be interesting to hear the longer term outcome.
 
#35 ·
Same problem here in the UK on a dual carriageway on the way home from work in my petrol 110. Called out the AA (apparently fully covered as the car is under a year old). He ran the diagnostics which said the issue was with the fuel delivery. He followed me as the car limped on the way home. The turbo is not working and there is no real power and not safe to drive. We have only had the car 2 weeks so very disappointed.
 
#36 ·
Just got my Cactus back and it was a faulty high pressure fuel pump that caused the shuddering/loss of power. They seemed to be very confident that it was the cause. New one fitted and all working fine now. It might be me but the engine seems much quieter when idling now and the turbo seems to give me the extra boost rather than 'jolting' on. Fingers crossed it lasts a bit longer this time.
 
#37 ·
Danno said:
Just got my Cactus back and it was a faulty high pressure fuel pump that caused the shuddering/loss of power. They seemed to be very confident that it was the cause. New one fitted and all working fine now. It might be me but the engine seems much quieter when idling now and the turbo seems to give me the extra boost rather than 'jolting' on. Fingers crossed it lasts a bit longer this time.
Thanks for this information - please let us know if there's any recurrence of the issue.
 
#38 ·
Hello all,

I havent had a chance yet to try and record the fault yet with my OBD dongle, but I do have an update. I had my car in for an MOT yesterday and the engine management light came on while they were conducting the check. They carried out a fault code interrogation and found a number of fault codes present (I was told there weren't any at the dealership):
  • Inter system can: one of the parameteres present in a data stream sent by the abs/esp ecu is invalid
  • Vehicle speed info fault
  • Fault in communication with abs/esp ecu
  • A number of instances of engine starts and/or restarts

Apparently they tried to clear these codes but they still returned. Im trying to get in touch with the dealership now but not having much luck: there are 4 days left on my warranty so its turning in to a bit of a bum clencher!
 
#39 ·
curriemaster said:
Hello all,

I havent had a chance yet to try and record the fault yet with my OBD dongle, but I do have an update. I had my car in for an MOT yesterday and the engine management light came on while they were conducting the check. They carried out a fault code interrogation and found a number of fault codes present (I was told there weren't any at the dealership):
  • Inter system can: one of the parameteres present in a data stream sent by the abs/esp ecu is invalid
  • Vehicle speed info fault
  • Fault in communication with abs/esp ecu
  • A number of instances of engine starts and/or restarts

Apparently they tried to clear these codes but they still returned. Im trying to get in touch with the dealership now but not having much luck: there are 4 days left on my warranty so its turning in to a bit of a bum clencher!
Hmm time running out a bit...

My understanding of the principles of abs/esp is that some manufacturers use the sensor information to reduce engine power when wheel spin occurs - so an error signal from the sensor could be the cause of your particular issue (in addition to many other possible causes...)
 
#40 ·
Hello all,

Well the shuddering event happened again, twice in the same journey. It hasnt happened for a couple of months and I was cautiously optimistic that maybe changing the spark plugs and updating the ECU had actually solved the issue. I havent been driving it on many long journeys though, so perhaps it never got a chance to fault.

The additional worry is that the car seems less "peppy" than it used to: the turbo boost seems to kick in at higher RPMs and not with the same vigour. Still no warning lights or anything coming on.

As you know my warranty expired in November before there were any resolutions, so now I feel as if I have been left out to dry a little bit. Im feeling pretty disappointed about the whole situation and to be honest at this stage I just want to get rid of the car and never buy a Citroen again. I am considering taking the car to a local garage that specialises in performance tuning to try and give them the problem in exchange for a few hundred quid, but I also think that could be throwing money at a lost cause.

I suspect that there will never be a resolution for this, which might be very frustrating for the forum goer that reads through this thread to end up with no answers! If I find out anything new, somehow, I will make sure to post it back here.

All the best.
 
#41 ·
Curriemaster, I'm one of the others experiencing this same issue however it is rather intermittent. It happened in 3rd on the way home from work tonight and a good few weeks again in 3rd. I'm guessing you use high octane fuel like myself? I've tried v power and costco 99 and both have not caused the issue to go away. After a bit of reading around on the internet I'm now thinking that using 99 ron fuel may just be the cause of the intermittent misfire. From what I read the higher the ron number the less volatile the fuel mixture is and is designed for engines with a higher compression ratio. The past few timws my car had misfired, I'm thinking I've gone into 3rd too quick and put my foot down and maybe just maybe the fuel I'm using isn't igniting fast enough. Anyways I have 90 miles left in the tank and on my next fill up I'm going to use 95 ron as I'm sure in the manual it states 95-98. I'm doing a long drive to the lake district this weekend so will post in here when I'm back.
 
#42 ·
I've bought a brand new Cactus Flair automatic 2 weeks ago and I've had that shuddering too. Acceleration moderately the box will change say for 2nd to 3rd and instead of going faster it starts acting like it's running out of fuel, but within a second or two it's back to normal, it's done it coming off my drive too!!!
 
#44 ·
My engine is the 110bhp model and has done 450 miles. The issue has happened about 5 times since I've had it

Maybe significant in that it only happens immediately after changing gear, 3rd to 4th to 5th etc and once from standstill, I put it into drive ie 1st gear after reversing off my drive then it started spluttering momentarily before returning to normal...
 
#45 ·
Probably not connected in the slightest but the auto box is less smooth changing in the short time I've had it and easily gets caught out at slower speeds and becomes jerky. Also changing from say 4th to 3rd etc produces a slight nodding dog effect and that's me the driver. EAT6.
 
#46 ·
Cactusboy said:
Maybe significant in that it only happens immediately after changing gear, 3rd to 4th to 5th etc and once from standstill, I put it into drive ie 1st gear after reversing off my drive then it started spluttering momentarily before returning to normal...
I agree the apparent correlation of gear change/ power loss does seem relevant in your case...
I wonder if the effect occurs if you take control of the gear shifting , with manual paddles, which I assume you have.
 
#49 ·
Cactusboy said:
There aren't any paddles you can change manually using the gear lever

It's happening at low revs, as it's new I've not pushed it much but when I've done so there weren't any issues
In your case it might just be characteristic of the vehicle - see these short extracts of recent online reviews of 2018 Cactus with EAT6 :

What car review
"Thankfully, the automatic 'box available with the Puretech 110 engine is for the most part fairly smooth, but will occasionally jerk when
shifting into a higher gear when you're off the accelerator. It can also be very slow to change gear, although the manual mode is fairly responsive."

Autoexpress review
"Refinement is decent, too, despite the occasional shudder still being evident when you catch the gearbox unaware at low speed."

These comments seem to be similar to your experience...

However, you might be interested in reading a thread about similar issues with the older ETG gearbox and a suggested method of "resetting" its operation
https://www.cactusforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2715&p=18307
 
#50 ·
davew said:
Cactusboy said:
There aren't any paddles you can change manually using the gear lever

It's happening at low revs, as it's new I've not pushed it much but when I've done so there weren't any issues
In your case it might just be characteristic of the vehicle - see these short extracts of recent online reviews of 2018 Cactus with EAT6 :

What car review
"Thankfully, the automatic 'box available with the Puretech 110 engine is for the most part fairly smooth, but will occasionally jerk when
shifting into a higher gear when you're off the accelerator. It can also be very slow to change gear, although the manual mode is fairly responsive."

Autoexpress review
"Refinement is decent, too, despite the occasional shudder still being evident when you catch the gearbox unaware at low speed."

These comments seem to be similar to your experience...

However, you might be interested in reading a thread about similar issues with the older ETG gearbox and a suggested method of "resetting" its operation
https://www.cactusforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2715&p=18307
Thanks for the info. As it's a conventional torque converter box I'm assuming it has little in common with the automated manual.

My main issue is the occasional cutting out, yes it's irritating and totally random and could cause you to lose power at a critical moment BUT as those with "stop/start" will know when it cuts out the power steering does too!!!!
 
#51 ·
Cactusboy said:
My main issue is the occasional cutting out, yes it's irritating and totally random and could cause you to lose power at a critical moment BUT as those with "stop/start" will know when it cuts out the power steering does too!!!!
Too true we do, mine did it again this morning , without warning and against most of the `it won`t work in these conditions` circumstances..Damn thing..You have my sympathies Cactusboy
 
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