2007 CITROEN Xsara Picasso reviews

Citroen Xsara Picasso 1.6 Hdi 2007

I picked up my Picasso 1.6 Hdi about 14 months ago it had 14,000 miles on the clock and looked like new; this was purchased from a Citroen dealer. |I do a high mileage and my last Picasso 2.0 Hdi gave me good service for 490,000 miles. All has been going well up to the point when I put the vehicle into my local dealer for a cam belt change at 70,000 miles. It came out of the dealers workshop sounding like a bag of old nails and I was told that it needed a new camshaft linking chain and this would cost £945.00. I have lost faith in the dealership network so I took the car to an independant workshop who had a very good reputation with this model of Citroen. They changed the chain but could not start the enginge afterwards. The problem turned out to be the injectors, some of which were blocked with what appeared to be alluminium swarf this was traced back to the high pressure pump. To cut a long story short most of the fuel injection system had to be replaced the tank and lines cleaned. All this was completed for a very reasonable £3200. So think long and hard before opting for this twin cam version of this engine, the chain, which will need changing at some time, is very inaccessable due to poor design. They should revert to the single camshaft with eight valves, it could save you thousands.