Technical 1.9 JTD Will not start…

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Technical 1.9 JTD Will not start…

BeerJam

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Jan 13, 2017
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I hope that this account of my experiences may help others with similar problems.

In ten years, and almost 100k miles of ownership I have only ever experienced a complete failure to start on two occasions. In each case I had fuel in the tank and a fully charged battery in excellent condition and the engine turned over very briskly on the starter, but failed to fire up and run;

First time:
The car would start from cold and run normally but if I stopped and then tried to restart while the engine was still warm it would refuse to start again until it had cooled down. Eventually the engine cut out while driving and would not restart again - ever - until I replaced the Crankshaft Sensor. Unfortunately I do not remember if the engine management light stayed on or not.

Second time (about 5 years later):
The engine had been starting and running without any issues since I had replaced the Crankshaft Sensor. Then one morning, first thing with the engine cold, it totally refused to start. The engine management light came on and stayed on.

Because this failure came without warning I was doubtful whether it was the Crankshaft Sensor again. So I bought a £10 bluetooth OBD2 adapter from eBay and installed scanning software on my Android phone.
After plugging in the adapter and launching the software I checked for stored trouble codes. The scanning software reported ‘no stored trouble codes’ but the engine management light was still on. I used the software to reset the ECU trouble codes and tried to start the engine. After 2 - 3 seconds of cranking the engine management light came on again and stayed on. The engine did not start.
I then disconnected the Camshaft Sensor, because the connector is easy to get to and this sensor works in conjunction with the Crankshaft Sensor. I reset the ECU and tried cranking the engine again. This time the engine management light stayed off but the engine did not start. I reconnected the Camshaft Sensor, crawled under the car and disconnected the Crankshaft Sensor (not a pleasant job!). When I tried starting the engine again the engine management light came on again after a few seconds and stayed on.

My thinking was that; if disconnecting the Camshaft Sensor changed the situation then that sensor must be doing something. However, disconnecting the Crankshaft Sensor didn’t change the situation then maybe that sensor was dead anyway. My logic might be flawed but it was the best I had!

So I bought a new Crankshaft Sensor and fitted it. The engine started up as soon as I turned the key - hooray!!!!

The moral of my story - NEVER underestimate the power of your Crankshaft Sensor !

Cheers, Mark
 
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