Citroen XM Forum

Yep. This is a new one to the last 2.0 that I've seen before that basically either threw fuel all around the bulkhead
or had a serious failure of the rocker gasket dumping oil over the manifold.

The car has sat unused since Saturday afternoon and I'd just leaned in to get something off the driver's side rear
bench seat and caught a lungful of an electrical melting / burning smell. I thought this odd as outside was still
and fresh clear air but I had a look around and couldn't trace anything. As I leaned back into the car to my horror
I spotted grey smoke filtering out of the B pillar trim where the seatbelt disappears! Expecting the wiring to be
shorting out I ran around the near side popped the bonnet and dragged a battery terminal off as quickly as possible
and expected to try and see flames as I cautiously examined the trim.

The outer texturing of the top part has started to melt presunably with the heat funnelling up inside it and in
fact the whole trim has got soft and marks if touched! Fortunately there seems to be no further evidence of
the car melting or burning but I'm going to have to take some brave pills and reconnect the battery if just to
move the driver's seat forward and back to take the b pillar trim off and explore more, in fact the seat may
need to come out!

There's only the wiring feed from the centre console into the rear door jamb here and the micro switch on the
back door jamb IIRC but for heaven's sake, why on earth has this started to short out and burn!? I don't see how
a mouse could get into this area of the loom either! Anyone heard of a similar issue on their travels on various
Citroen forums??

What seems most strange is that the fuse didn't blow. Try pulling the fuse before reconnecting the battery.

Very odd, we have self healing xms, but has yours learnt how to weld? In all seiousness you were lucky to catch it.

Hi Andrew

Mk1's with seat heaters have 30A fused feeds going that route to and from the switches in the door.
All XM's have the front to rear feed cables joined in the bottom of that pillar.
The ends of the feed cables and the connectors are pushed through a large hole in the inner cill at the rear of the pillar.
Perhaps one of the connectors is burning up due to poor contact.

John

I'm surprised the fuses all check out ok and everything works. Can't for the life of me think of anything
else that would smoke and heat up the trim - the metal backed pillar trim is definitely hearing up somehow.
The car is a Si so has electric jersey cloth not leather with heaters John. Going to have a look at it now
as I'm off for the day and successfully got the 2.5TD Exclusive through a fresh MOT: quite a few advisories
although this guy is sharp and misses nothing!

Hi Andrew

I have found that quite a few XM's have universal wiring looms in the chassis.
So features not installed does not always mean no wiring present.
To get at the front to rear stuff seat, trim out plus carpet and under foam to one side.
Then pull out of pillar.
Big wad of combustible foam filling the pillar around the seat belt reel.
Do not drive it until you sort it the smoke from the burning foam is very nasty.
Not something to be breathing in a confined space.

John