Berlingo bonnet stay clip

 

This is a really important piece of plastic. So important, that when it breaks, it needs to be replaced - a job that is a bit of a pain. 

Under the bonnet of my parent's Berlingo, is a stay to hold it up when open. When not in use, the stay should be clipped under the bonnet.

 

If it's not, then the bit of metal will flap around the engine bay, and when a kind person goes to top up the windscreen washer fluid, only by chance does it not get wrapped up in the power steeering fluid pipe, and rip this out. 

Now, the Berlingo has been enjoying the attentions of some auto electricians, and along the way, someone broke the clip.

I ordered the part from a store on eBay, and it turned up the next day. Looking at it, all I had to do, was remove the old one, and clip the replacement in. Easy. 

Except it is clipped in place, and getting the old version out took about ten minutes with pincers, pliers and a Stanley knife. Basically, the old clip had to be destroyed where it was, until I could push it into the hole. 

Fitting the new clip took seconds. Good job done!

Berlingos and Bacon

My parents have a Citroen Berlingo. It's their second one thanks to someone parking a Golf in the back years ago. It's an odd car. Utterly unpretentious, but if you talk to an owner, they love thier little French van with windows in the side. 

One such enthusiast is James Walshe, deputy editor of Practical Classics magazine. A couple of Sundays ago, he organised "Berlingos and Bacon" at the local, but unknown to me, Gilks Garage Cafe. 

The family Berlingo was my idea in the first place, and I'll admit that I think it's a fantastic vehicle. Incredibly practical if you are the sort of person who lugs model railways or boats around. If the 3rd version enjoyed as much legroom as the second, I'd probably have had one as my company car. As it is, I still think the first facelift produced the best looking version. 

Anyway, 22 cars turned up along with their owners. And we chatted all things Berlingo. No airs or graces, just some slightly mad people talking about their vehicles. Several carried camping interiors, which is an interesting move. A bit cramped perhaps, but if you like being out in the fresh air, an excellect idea which turns out to be really trendy too. So, not for me then. 

In many ways, this was like the Heart of England group meet. Not a "proper" show, just a group of people getting together with a shared interest. Maybe in the post-Covid world, where big shows are harder to put together, this is the future for all sorts of hobby? 

Photos of the meet over on Flickr. 

Since you ask, the cake looked excellent, but it was too early, even for me. And I had somewhere else to go in the afternoon. I will be heading back for a proper look, and in the meantime, the hot chocolate was sublime.

Changing the bulb in a Berlingo High-Level brake light

The shame. Being picked up on the MOT for a faulty high-level brake light. That's what happens when you ask a non-driver to check the lights when you press the pedals...

Anyway, I dug out the Haynes manual, and it is utterly wrong, so here's what I did. 

Access is through this rubber bung in the tailgate which peels away with your fingers. 

Inside you find the bulb. 

It pulls out, in fact the thing doesn't seem that firmly seated, but I'm assuming that's how it should be since there is no locking system. 

Stick the replacement (Halfords 955 - W16W) on the end of a stick with some Blu-Tack and manouver it into the holder, then push home with your finger. 

If you don't use the stick, you'll do what I did the first time, and drop the bulb inside the door. Efforts to rescue it were fruitless and now it will live out its days somewhere in the box-section. If you have very long and skinny fingers, maybe you won't need this, but if yours are the correct proportions to fiddle this bulb into place, you are an alien and not driving French cars anyway. 

Overall, I'm really impressed with bulb changing on this car. The sidelight bulb is accesed through another rubber bung, and it's the same one as the numberplate light - Halford 501 - W5W. The latter can be accessed by wiggling a screwdriver in the hole at the side of the clear cover. 

Less good: Haynes manual. It's wrong on the brake light and suggests taking the door apart for the numberplate. YouTube proved more useful. 

Also, Halfords have replaced their book of bulbs with a computer. Sadly, this has a dredful interface which required scrolling, but you don't know this because there are no scroll bars visible. Fortunatly, I took my old bulb along and helpful assistant instantly identified it. 

Finally, I bought a couple of Universal Bulb kits on eBay. They said they were for the Berlingo, but didn't include with brake or sidelight bulbs. The returns process worked I'm pleased to say, because I didn't see the point in carrying a box of bulbs that didn't fit the car.

Citroen Berlingo wiper blade changing, a warning

People are nervous about fiddling with cars nowadays. Manufacturers know that if anything is too easy then the dealer network will be deprived of income. Thus, while cars are generally less in need of a Sunday morning tinkering and the Haynes manual isn't the essential purchase it once was, when things go wrong, it's off to the garage.

Some jobs though, should be easy. Easy enough to do at the side of the road is normal clothes if required. Headlight bulbs for example. When one goes, it would be nice to swap it over in a handy pub or supermarket carpark. Sadly, not. Modern vehicles can be a pig of a job and require weird bulbs that cost a million pounds a pop.

Likewise, windscreen wipers. They wear out, especially if a nearby building site is producing dust to turn your windscreen into sandpaper. Being a handy sort of chap, I though this wouldn't be a problem so nipped in to Halfords, looked at the book and bought a pair. I'd spotted that the car was fitted with new fangled (to me) low-profile single blade types and thought I'd got the right set.

Right up until I got back to the car where I spotted that instead of an identical pair, I needed a 16 and a 26 inch blade. Back to the shop where I queued up behind one of their technicians who had experienced the same problem when fitting a set for a customer. The new price was a few pence higher but the assistant let me off.

Anyway, now with my mis-matched set I headed back home. Then I tried to fit them.

Surprise! The centre fitting isn't the traditional hook and bar thingy that's fiddly but easy to do. No, it's a mega-easy, one-button change fitting. See above (middle wiper) not the one I'd got from following the Halfords book. Grrr.

Back at the shop, they were swopped for yet another set with the correct fitting. These were 12 quid more expensive so they didn't let me off this time.

Fitting was simple. Press the square button to release the old wipers. Don't let the metal arm slap against the windscreen or it will break. Take new wiper out of box, try it, wonder why the result is sloppy.

Take adaptor out of box and reaslise you need to use this. Clip it on the wiper then slide the lot into the metal arm. Good as new. No tools required at all. No wonder the Halfords fitting charge is only 3 quid - if I wasn't so sure of my own abilities, it would have been worth the money to sort the problem in the first place...

The big shock was the price though - £35.98 for a set of front wipers. That's going to see people using their old set until the MOT man makes them change it. You almost hanker for the days when you could buy the rubber inserts and just change that bit!

Citroen Berlingo keyfob fix

Or: Why it's handy to know a railway modeller sometimes.

The problem - Pressing the lock button on our Berlingo's keyfob didn't lock the doors. The unlock button worked OK though.

First thoughts were that the battery in the keyfob was on its way out. A quick check with Timpsons and Halfords suggested that you have to get a dealer to change this and any other course of action WILL RESULT IN DOOM. Apparently, if the battery is out for more than 30 seconds, the fob loses its memory and has to be reprogrammed.

Anyway, we trundled down to the our local dealer and had a chat with the service department. They could change the battery and went off to do this. A few minutes later they returned with the fob and explained it wasn't the battery.

 

Under the rubberyplastic buttons, the switches are surface mount buttons and one of those had become detached from the circuit board. This explained why the lock button felt soft - it wasn't pressing on anything.

 

Now we had two options. A new fob is £150 because it has to be programmed. However, the helpful guy suggested that if I was handy with a soldering iron, I could fix it myself. Well, as regular readers will know, I AM pretty handy with the solder so I reckoned it was worth a go. After all, we still had the switch which had been rattling around in the fob. They even helpfully put it in an envelope so I didn't lose it.

 

Back home, I opened the fob by twisting a 20p coin in the top, fired up my Maplin soldering station, placed a tiny bit of Copalux flux on the solder pads, popped the switch in position and heated the joints until the solder melted. This took a couple of seconds for each joint - if you try this, don't leave the iron on too long, just watch the solder melt, take the heat away and blow on the joint.

I'll admit I did take the time to look at the switch and work out which way around it was before it fell off. The shape of the solder joints give that away, but I doubt very much if it really matters.

Before putting the circuit board back in the key, I took it out and tested my efforts with the car - everything worked perfectly.

The board was placed in the fob, snapped back together and has worked fine ever since.

Not a bad repair. Even if I'd had to buy all the equipment (soldering station, flux and a tiny bit of solder) this would still be less than the official repair.

 I suspect that if the switch had been glued back into position with the contacts touching the solder pads, it would probably still work. The result wouldn't be as good as solder but if it's what you've got... Just don't get glue on the solder pads, pop a tiny amount under the switch body. Superglue applied with a pin would be best (place a drop on glue on some plastic and pick a tiny drop up with the end of a pin) but, I stress, I've not tried this it was my plan B.

But what if it had been the battery?

Well, the service guys took the battery out of the fob while I was there, left it for a few seconds and slid it back in. No tools were required and more importantly, no DOOM happened.

As far as I can tell (and I've not tried it but can't see a problem), you just slide the old battery out by pushing it gently and slide in a new one. According to the circuit board, it takes a CR2016 cell which is commonly available in the shops. Have one to hand before you fiddle with it and there is no chance you'll have the battery out for greater than 30 seconds thus bringing DOOM upon you, if you believe that sort of thing. My suspicion is that the 30 second rule applies to more complicated keyfobs than the Berlingo one but it's safer to say no to all of them and let the dealer, who should know about these things, take the risk of poking around.

Anyway, thanks very much to the service guys at Murley Citroen (Leamington Branch), who could have tried it on by telling us the fob had broken in an effort to sell a new one. Instead, they took a few minutes to explain the problem, apologise that they couldn't fix it, and then make a sensible suggestion. If I were in the market for a new car, it's the first place I'd go.

Legal note: This is an accurate description of what I did. Follow these notes at your own discretion. If it all goes wrong, it's not my fault. If you aren't confident, get a professional to take a look.