Citroen XM Forum

Battery connections or leads, or the main earth onto the gearbox would be my first guesses. Pull them apart and give them a good clean and a little protective grease.

Try using a lead straight from the starter motor solenoid terminal, onto the battery +ve connection. Crank is a few times to get the feel of how good it is, then try a long crank and feel the main leads and connections. The one that burns you fingers is the culprit.

AHHH okay, time for some finger burning... I see!

Had a little investigation this afternoon, and found one of the negative earth leads had become loose. But this hasn't really solved the issue. I think I am going to change the connector though. None of them the old lead ones.
It is turning over well, but it takes two turns on the glow plugs and a plant of the accelerator pedal to get it to go.
So I'm thinking it might very well be glow plugs. Oh joy!!

Without properly working glowplugs, these engines are a pig to start in cold weather.

It may be that only one/two plugs are dodgy: if this is the case, then multiple operation of the plugs will help, and the engine should start up very lumpily, because it's firing up on less than all cylinders. After a few seconds of lumpiness (like a petrol engine with a non-working spark plug), things will smooth out, as the heat of compression generates enough heat to ignite the diesel.

DC resistance of both Beru and Bosch glowplugs is listed as between 0.4 and 0.6 ohm, cold.
Easily tested on the car, and hot-tested on the bench.
You can also disconnect the feed to the plugs, and check the current consumption of each one in situ....usually about 11amps apiece, IIRC.

It could be glow-plugs, but it sounds very like air in the system.

The two can be almost indistinguishable at times. Good fun.

I wanted to investigate the easy things first before replacing glow plugs, for obvious reasons. A new section of fuel pipe to replace the leak off pipe from the pump to tank, has seemed to have worked. The cold I think finished it off. It was good back when it was warmer, but it's completely useless now. It's all rigid and aged! ... It practically slid off the pump with the clip still on! It has to be at fault causing fuel to run back to the tank, therefore troubling the starting. But not anymore, it sprang into life this morning. So it has all new fuel pipes from tank to pump and back now.
Always the last thing you think of! Fingers crossed, no need to do the glow plugs now.

I also adjusted the idle settings, found it was not starting on cold setting properly. It was halfway between the two and that was from stone cold. But now it is idling much better, albeit hot could be dropped a tad.

That is good news Russ and well done for finding the problem! Regards, Matthew T.

Good news!

This car is frustrating me! Yesterday the blower fan went on strike. Useful on a very cold frosty day. Still had heat, still had the LCD display, but a wasps breath would have been stronger than what was blowing out the vents. Today, it's blowing again as if nothing happened.... So connections and fuse two will have to be checked. I'm hoping it's just damp.

Cold start has gone back to square one today too. ahhhhhh! Good job the weather is getting warmer.. Yet more tinkering is needed.