Ad Blue system failure on 2015 C4 Grand Picasso - 12k repair quote

FEH

New member
Tadpole
Joined
Mar 31, 2023
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Location
Melbourne
Hi Everyone,
Having an ad blue/urea system failure issue on 2015 Citroen C4 Grand Picasso. The dealership is quoting 12k for repairs - including replacing the entire ad blue system (tank and injectors). Car is out of warranty and done 130ks. Have lodged a claim with Citroen but wondered if anyone else has had this issue and what the outcome was. Citroen stuffing me around a fair bit even though European forums seems to indicate this is a known problem. Any advice?
 
Just had the tank replaced on our 308 under warranty. I had thought the retail was approx $4K so I'm surprised to hear you've been quoted $12K. Was that for the gold plate version ?

Our 308 is 2017 manufacture where this issue was supposedly resolved......talk of water based Urea solution being added to a tank where components are constructed from mild steel ?

Do you have the distance countdown timer running ? We had this kick in, in our 308, and since they couldn't replace the tank immediately we had to have the countdown timer reset to give us another 1500km's.

Cheers

Justin
 
$12K for a urea reservoir in isolation is way, way over the odds, so there must be some confusion about what was quoted for. If you added in a few other likely Picasso jobs, you could get to $12K, so what is that supposed to include? The injector and heated pipe cost a few hundred each and it doesn't take days to replace them. The NOx sensor sometimes fails and that's about a thousand. It would be unlikely that more than one component has failed at once.
 
Report from dealership -

New fuel tank , both injectors, clean up DPF, DPF regeneration and counter reset, fill urea tank and retest. $4500
If urea tank and particle filter are required, extra $7700
 
Go to a different dealer we said. They won't (potentially) try and scalp you so much we said.

You won't need a new DPF - yours has been working fine. The replacement tank, and fitting should come in at less than $4K.

But certainly persue the current course of action through Citroen for a 'fit for use' claim.

Cheers

Justin
 
Thanks everyone, other than this big issue it’s been very reliable and hugely economical on fuel - I will pursue the consumer law angle and if that gets me nowhere, I was going to take it to Essendon prestige for a second opinion anyway - thanks again
 
Any mechanic running an inspection station would be unwise to be involved.
 
A selfish twat produces cars that only do 130k before needing a $12k repair.
The only reassuring aspect is that it's not isolated to Citroen / Peugeot.

Have a look at that site and you can see they provide the same service to multiple manufacturers vehicles.

Cheers

Justin
 
An environmental historian Mark Foster concluded that “fully one-third of the total environmental damage caused by automobiles occurred before they were sold and driven” (Melosi, 2010). It was estimated that creating a car produces 29 tons of waste and 1,207 million cubic yards of polluted air. This comes from extracting the necessary materials in order to create a car which includes, iron ore, copper, lead, and much more to make the glass, steel, aluminum, and plastics.
If cars are scraped at 130k that one-third figure would be significantly higher, closer to two-thirds or more, a well-maintained car should be capable of 500k or more, without having to be scraped. I had an 86 corolla that had done 600k and was still going well after I sold it. I've seen au falcon taxis with 1.3millon kms.
I agree that clean engines are great for the environment.... but not at the expense of the environment...
 
I just had an AdBlue tank replaced on a 2015 Grand Picasso.

Cost me about $2500, which was the cost of the (new) tank plus labour. - the part is expensive, but not that expensive? This was through a French specialist mechanic. I had also contacted our (only) local Citroen dealer, and was getting a quote over $4000 for the same.

Take it somewhere else.

I don't know about the diagnosis - I'm not a mechanic. But it strikes me as unlikely that the fuel tank, both injectors, the DPF filter, the ad blue tank, and the particle filter have all failed simultaneously.

If I can get a brand new Urea tank fitted for c$2500, and your people are quoting you $7,700 for a Urea tank and a particle filter - you are being ripped off and need to go elsewhere. A particle filter is not $5,200 - unless you're fitting it to the International Space Station, perhaps.

Where are you based? I'm sure people on this forum can make recommendations. If you're in SA I can make recommendations.

EDIT: "It is a known problem" - there is a specific known problem with the AdBlue tanks in the Picassos (and in some other cars); but it is not the only possible problem.

In my humble opinion, AdBlue is in retrospect an awful solution to a problem, and these systems seem stupidly over-engineered and prone to failure. My next car will be petrol (or even better electric).

But I do love my Grand Picasso, so no hard feelings. Just expensive feelings. But not as expensive as yours, it seems...
 
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And from your quote - how much are they charging per litre for the AdBlue itself to refill the tank? That'll be a clear sign of rip-off too... the number of times I've seen an outrageous price per litre.... if they're marking that up ridiculously, you can bet the rest is fanciful nonsense too.
 
And from your quote - how much are they charging per litre for the AdBlue itself to refill the tank? That'll be a clear sign of rip-off too... the number of times I've seen an outrageous price per litre.... if they're marking that up ridiculously, you can bet the rest is fanciful nonsense too.
Yep 100% seen this exact thing on quotes crazy
 
look on ebay, you can get a new tank for around 1500 landed
find an experienced mechanic to fit it

Now i'm scared to replace our lovely comfortable, reliable c5 with a picasso; so many posts about very costly adblue issues - which, as dcm has mentioned before, adblue tank/system issues are common to all all brands, its not just the picasso's & psa cars

adblue certainly seems to be problematic
 
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