The Safrane.Info Forum!

I suspect the doors are faulty - I have one on our safrane that becomes stubborn about unlocking itself. IT will lock fine... but it won't unlock. I have a spare waiting to replace it but I've just not gor around to swapping them.

Wiring I think is pretty good... our safrane has been off the road 5 long years and most of the stuff is fine but sometimes the doors get a bit stiff.

Good to hear you've got it speaking now, yes the languages can be changed but SAFRANEV6RXE knows more about that than I do.

Citroens are great cars... but the safrane beats all french cars hands down.

Today i changed the bulbs on the dash. Didn't know if they should have been 1.2W or 2W T5 ones, but i put 1.2W's in and they look as bright as the old ones. Had to change over a dozen of them, there were lots of working ones which stopped working when i took the speedo cluster out.

Behind the speedo i found this duct that was split open. Is it the heater duct that makes the speedo plastic cover warp and causes the needle to stick? I fixed it up with good textile tape.


After i got it speaking i was relieved to hear it say with the unpleasant German male voice that the ABS system is faulty. At least the ABS controller isn't gone. And now i also got the ABS and SERVICE lights on. I took the front left wheel off and found the ABS sensor connector and measured the sensor to have around 1.5kOhm. I have to check on the other sensors too and hopefully i find the fault that way. Some Citroëns are prone to get rust under the ABS tooth ring and it snaps and of course stops working. Has this happened to anyone with a Saf?

The computer also says something like "standlicht fungiert nicht" which i guess means brake lights or park lights but both seem to be OK. Don't know if it's related to the thing that my parking brake light is blinking every time i start the car and stops after i touch the brake pedal. I wonder what could be the problem? There's a pair of lights in the front bumper with the foglights, what are those? Maybe another set of parking lights? The other license plate light is not working, but i don't think that is the cause for the message...

I took a quick look under the hood and couldn't find the oil filter anywhere. Seems like there's a hole in the bottom covers for draining the oil but i guess I'll have to take the covers off to find the filter?

Would it make the ride much worse if i put 17" wheels on the Saf? I'm a comfort-focused driver and actually hate low tires, but the Safrane really would look cool with wheels bigger than the original 15".
I think Renault's "Sirius" wheels like these would look nice under the Safrane :)

Your image doesn't show here - when i tried to view it manually the website said it had reached the maximum number of service requests (in other words, too many http requests). I personally recommend postimage.org instead.

As for the pipe, yes, it carries air to the side outlets and the window heater outlet. It's a common problem for them to split open and then heat up the inside of the dashboard.

Yes the plastic on the dashboard warps... but once it has warped it tends to stay warped... so a dashboard from a low mileage safrane is a good choice because you can take off the clear plastic front panel and swap them. Once you have a straight plastic piece on there you should fine your sticking needle stops.

I had this exact problem years ago.. I found another set of dials at the scrap yard and bought them. That unit didn't work (and half the bulbs were dead) but i noticed that the front cover was straight.. and ours was warped. I swapped them over and never had the sticking needle since... and it only used to happen when the heating was on.



Not a clue however during my extensive renovation and rust removal last year (which took over 3 months) I noticed the ABS rings on the back hubs were very rusty and gently wire brushed them to clean them up. The car hasn't been back on the road yet but so far is isn't complaining about the ABS. The only time it did was when the brake fluid was completely empty.



Dead! No seriously.. on all safranes they do nothing. No idea why, it looks a bit daft / stupid but they've never worked, have no bulb fittings or wiring. For whatever strange reason, renault gave safranes 2/3 working fog lights

As for your lighting error... no idea.. but if you have one number plate light that doesn't work you should change the bulb and see if that fixes the error message. The safrane computer is normally very good when it comes to dead bulbs.

Incidentally, if you ever have a main front or back light bulb fail, they are the same. This means if you get a dead main beam bulb, you could temporarily take out the full beam bulb and use that in its place until you can get to the service station for a new bulb.



It's at the bottom of the engine:



You will need to remove the engine undertray to access it. Also when you put the car up on stands, you will notice two very big bolts under the car near the middle. This is where most safrane drivers position their axle stands as it is a very strong point.. and if they slip, the metal all around the bolts should stop them slipping too far.



You'd need to ask one of the french - they were the ones who did the most mods and wheel swaps with their safranes. Here in the UK any modding is very rare.

I'm not sure how to contact them now but check out safrane.org: http://forum.safrane.org/index.php

Some of their members have great modifications to their cars. Unfortunately their forum is a lot slower than this one.

Does anyone have a wiring diagram of the central locking system?

I was ondering if there's an easy way to get the indicators flashing when locking with the aftermarket remote. The box has an output for flashing but is there a wire somewhere in the roof panel to attach it to?

I can't get the original remote working so i can't make the indicators flash and that way find the wire. I suppose if there is one, it'd be in the big white connector?

I ordered a set of Dialogys CD's from Portugal. I hope they have the diagrams...

Thanks for the info on the oil filter!

I checked all ABS sensors today. All others measured around 1kOhm but the left front was 1,5kOhm. I guess that's the problem or at least a good first step to try out. But the few new sensors i found cost a hell of a lot of money...

Here's the pic of the duct on postimg.org:

I don't think one exists... but i could be wrong. Thanks to SAFRANEV6RXE I do have the electrical wiring book (it's an inch thick) but I've not see any reference to the locking system - I will have another look though and get back to you if i find anything.



Your best bet would be where the old alarm siren control / flasher box is located - remove the plastic panel under the dash on the passenger side (like you did for the speech speaker on the driver side) and inside it you will see a small black box with a fuse in it (assuming this is the same as the UK). This unit controls the flashing of the hazard lights when the car is locked / unlocked. Thats the best i can tell you really - maybe follow the wiring to where it is physically connected to the hazards / indicator wiring. You should be able to run a wire or two from the ceiling switch down the pillar to that area.

You should also remember that most cars don't have an unlock button up in the roof - thats just a feature of the safrane but I the way i see it is that everything up in that panel is connected to an extension lead - and if you want to add your own stuff in then you need to do it under the dash etc.



Did you replace the batteries and then try to resync the keys to the car?

Dialogys isn't great... i bought a downloadable copy years ago off the internet... it does provide some very basic information however the pictures look like they have been xerox'd multiple times.

Yes that duct is the one that carries the air to the side window and outlet... it splits open and if it heats up the inside of the dashboard enough then your speedo front cover warps... which then puts pressure on the back of the speedo unit... which then makes the needles graze against the holes they are fitted into. Some safranes had plastic pipes but even those are known to come apart and need new glue.

If you want a top grade safrane you want to buy Jacque Chiracs old presidential safrane... it was bulletproof - and i'm not joking - it really was. It was on ebay a year or two back for 9k euros... but nobody bought it.

Your car looks really smart in the photos and you have improved on it since then,hice one.
Its interesting to see that in the UK the 2.5 got full leather interior,sunroof and rear spoiler as standard,but not in manual with that cloth trim and no ergomatic seats(Ireland did though)looks smashing,keep up the good work,that colour is fjord silver i think(although its green)A610s car is the same colour i think.

As I mentioned, my Saf's an import from Germany. I'm not even sure if the ph2 was even available in Finland.
Back then Renaults were sold by Volvo dealers and you can imagine what a Safrane would have done to Volvo sales. So it was just Clios, Meganes and Lagunas...

And if it was available, I'm sure there were no ergomatic seats. Back in yhe 90's Finnish car taxing caused most of even better cars sold to be basic models without any unneccessary extras...

hi and welcome fellow citroen enthusiast

I see that your car has almost identical problems as mine, so you could check out my thread, there are some pictures of heating ducts for example.

I sourced out spoiler from ph1 in the same colour, but it seems that mounting points are different, so I needed to improvise to fit it. Maybe even boot hatch shape is slightly different because the spoiler was a bit less curved than my hatch, so I had to "force" it a bit.

regarding the manuals, service instructions and other info, you can find lots and lots (and I really mean LOTS) of useful stuff here, if I'm correct that is webpage owned by forum member Marcin from Poland:
http://safrane.pl/ftpskp/

service light on climate control dash could be basically anything. in my case my compressor clutch is dead and there is no gas in the system. you can do self-diagnostic of instrument cluster and climate control cluster with combos of buttons, that should eliminate a few things and point you up in some direction. look it up in the manuals, although climate controls are different on ph2, but if I remember correctly you need to push the buttons with same symbols (it took me few attempts to get it right).

Luckily the broken air duct hasn't caused me any problems, i just spotted it while changing the dash bulbs :)

AC self diagnostic sounds cool, i have to check on that.

I removed the broken ABS sensor today. If it wasn't actually broken before, now it is :) it was stuck very bad and broke on the way out. Judging by that experience i guess finding an used sensor is pretty hard. More than 70€ just sounds pretty steep for an ABS sensor... I guess I'll amuse myself with asking the price from a local Renault dealer before ordering one online.

I also though of trying to fit some other 1kOhm tooth ring sensor, like a Xantia one, which i may have around.
There's no hurry to get the ABS working, my Saf's next inspection won't be until November...