The windscreen washers, front and rear, on my wife's Citroen C3 are not working. There's no pump noise when you pull the switch, nothing. I've had a look under the bonnet and the reservoir is down between the front bumper skirt and the wheel arch liner outside of the chassis member at the side of the engine bay i.e. strip down the front of the car even to look at it.

What is the most likely failure? Pump, switch, wiring or fuse?

test the fuse probably fused when tring to use when frozen. or impellor come adrift due to the big freeze

changed my fuse this morning.Went pop in the icy weather.Mine has a specified wash timer when you push the stick and allowed the current to build up.

If the impellor broke/fell off wouldn't you still hear the pump?

It happened before all the snow, I've only just got round to looking at it. I'll get the hand book out and look for the fuse position, if it is listed of course.

It will be the 10 amp red fuse always blows when the bottle freezes up it located in the fuse box in the engine bay


Fitted loads this past 2 weeks to peugeot and citroens

Really dumb question, don't they sell windshield washer anti freeze over there?
The norm here is -35 to -40 F antifreeze, no it doesn't get that cold, but account for wind chill at 70 mph and -20 F.
Back in the old days we used a little methol alcohol in the washer bottle, but check your paint.

Wind chill dosen't lower the temperature it just increases the rate of heat loss until the temperature of the surface gets down to the ambient temperature, ie you freeze to death faster but the temperature you freeze at is still the same.

This winter in the UK we have had temperatures in the of lower than -22c in my area it was down to -14c at dawn on a few nights.

had the same problem with my C8, took it in to citreon (company car) and they said common fault and changed the fuse for me.

Yep, the fuse has gone. Its a micro fuse so will have to go and get some.

I've got to look at my girlfriend's C3 tonight for this same fault, I was already expecting to find the fuse gone & now it looks almost certain & I know to get some micro fuses for the job now!

It must be common on the C3 because we had 3 in the garage last week with blown fuses. At least the fuses are blowing on that one as i had to change ubout 6 pumps and one washer bottle as well on other cars