Poor diesel starting

Have you checked the valve clearances? These can close up with age and cause bad cold starting. Well known on the 1.5D engine used in the 106.

Dunno, depends whether the steady state temperature of the plug (at which the rate of heat dissipation from the plug equals the power input into the plug) is greater than the melting point of the plug.

Cleaning of the relay contacts resulting from cycling them on/off a couple of times. It's the only benefit I can think of for cycling the ignition on-off.

Just the same as if you'd left them on for the same period of time assuming the glowplug relay hasn't de-energised.

Think of it like this. You have a mains powered electric fire in your lounge, and you are allowed only one hour during which to use it to heat your lounge. The electric fire includes two unusual elements: a timer switch which will actually turn the fire off two hours after it has been switched on, and a little light which goes out five minutes after the fire has been switched on. Your hour starts. You switch the fire on at the wall. You can now either a) leave it alone for an hour, or b) each time during the hour that the funny little light goes out, go up to the fire and turn it off at the wall and then back on again.

Do you believe that b) will warm your lounge up more?

He'll certainly feel warmer, with all that walking backwards and forwards to the socket! LOL!

Harry (mr)

Unless citroens have a different system, there aint a thermostat on plug glow circuits, it's a timing circuit.

and the heat it gets to is goiung to depend upon,

1- initial temperature 2- conductivity and heat capacity of the metals in the room (which are quoted at STP-standard temperature and pressure. What happens to the pressure at low atmospheric temperatures? what happens to the metal? what happens to intitial temps? would it take more heat to raise a chamber to say 40 degrees of celsius when the initial temperature is 20 degrees celsius and when the chamber is initially at minus 5 degrees celsius?)

Correct, which is why there is no thermostat in my analogy either. Just timers.

I'm not talking about turning the ignition off when the light goes out, (maybe I should have mentioned that) I work on the timing of the relay, that clicky noise. My glow plug lamp goes out maybe two seconds after I switch on the ignition, not enough heat having passed then to make any difference whether the ambient temperature be zero degrees or 30 degrees.

Why typically takes about 30s.

And to refer to your earlier posting, you do that two or three times.

So you sit outside your house, for a minute to a minute and a half, just warming your glowplugs warm up.

Bollocks.

Yes it is Bollock bacause I looked after my car, adjusted the timing to somewhere near optimum, gave it a blast with the fuel propriety injector cleaning solutions and changed my fuel, air and oil filters. If it's really cold I'll sit there ad let the plugs heat all the way up, hear the click then turn the ignition off and on again, wait 3 or four seconds and turn her over once or twice before she fires.

Not bad for a twelve year old fizz bomb, you go to your corner shop and see if you can get a flying saucer that'll do that.