You know how they say… never a dull moment, and this is particularly true if you live and travel with an aging, complex car. The legend says, it might be accentuated if you live with a Citroen C6… Because this blog is about the adventures and happenings with this particular car(s), I need to present the trauma we had to live trough last year. I wanted to do it sooner, because it´s no secret that it happened, but with all the things we had to deal in our life this year, there was no time. At the end of the day I trully hope that this particular happening, and telling about it MIGHT help to prevent the same problem happening on any other C6. We were lucky, our damage was really minimal, but it could have been worse. Much much worse. Our mechanic said that on a scale of 1-10, we were on the incredibly lucky level of 11 that nothing major has happened.
The story unfolds the following way: it was 1 May 2024. We were cruising on the highway at legal speeds in an area where are a ton of speed limits and speed cams between Barcelona and Amposta. It was late, and we were on the last leg of our long trip from home, looking foward to arrive home and finally sleep in our own bed. I started to feel a bit tired, husband had a nap before so we decided to switch drivers. I saw a petrol station, that was perfect for the switch. We haven’t even had the plan to stop the engine, just switch the driver and continue. But when we stopped, noticed smoke/steam coming out from under the bonnet. We suspected coolant leak, so opened the bonet to see what’s there… when instantly flames broke out. Husband had the amazing calm and went for the fire extinguisher, and managed to instantely take the fire out. It was caught at the very beginning. We stopped the engine, that was still running! *and no errors anywhere to be seen… and it was a brief “now what” moment.
This is how the “now what” moment looked:
We knew that we cannot continue our journey, we have to get the car to the service for assesment of the damage and to figure out what the hell happened. And of course to FIX IT. There was only one worry in our mind: IS IT FIXABLE?
Called the insurance company, they sent a taxi, transported us and our belongings home, and sent a trailer to pick up Maudette. We had to start the engine one more time, be sure that the windows are a bit open (so it won’t break if somebody opens/closes the door), had to remove the battery because they were not willing to transport the fire damaged vehicle with the battery still connected, and had to say goodbye to our beloved crazy car for about 2 days.
The car arrived safely to the service in about 2-3 days:
We had to wait to be able to talk to the insurance, as we had some fire insurance too, but only the full burning was included. So the guys from our trustworthy local service AutoPla had the freedom to investigate and tell us the conclusion. Soon they found that the Diesel Return lines were damaged most probably DUE TO AGE!!!
This is how the burned area looked like:
What was damaged: the rail for the cables and the sound insulation pad.
and some cable insulations. Luckily we redone those last year in the summer, so the cables themselves didn’t suffered any damage.
As a conclusion the the Diesel Return Line was replaced on BOTH cars, and luckily thanks to friendly C6 folks (Thanks Michael!) the 2 damaged parts were shipped and replaced. From what I understood, the issue happened to the small circumstantial happenings that day: we were running slowly, the engine was very relaxed, so the EGR’s went in full action, the area got very hot, the diesel return line had some micro fisures, that pulverised the diesel, and all together caused everything. It’s quite possible that if we would have stopped half an hour before, nothing would have happened, also possible that if we stop half an hour later… to have the whole car burned down 🙂
It was a reliefe to see Maudette back on the road. The first trip with her was a bit terrifying, especially when we smellt some smoke at about a 100km driving… this was more disturbing that the inital fire. Luckily it was NOT from our car, it was from outside, and ever since Maudette runs. We done with her over 10.000 km since the happening… But if you want to be extra safe with your car, please have a look at the diesel return lines, they might be aged as it was on our car.
Stay safe and drive the C6 if you have it 🙂
