Hi. I drive a 2008 Panda active 1108 petrol. It's into it's 4th year extended warranty.

My engine management light has been intermittently flashing at me, quite rarely for about 3 months now. I think it had been incidentally since I'd had a full service done, at Halfords ... *Lightning strikes*
It'd typically flash about twice on every 3rd journey I'd make. I was trying to notice patterns in when it flashed at me, most often it'd occur going over speed bumps but also on some innocuous flats.

I've taken it into the main dealers about this 3 times now. Each time the dealers diagnose no fault and testify testing it S*dsLaw it ran perfectly OK. Before the most recent visit, the engine cut out and it broke down, twice. The 2nd time with it failing to restart for ~20seconds and thereafter the EML being up permanently. I called my main dealers &they said call out my breakdown people, which I did - They gave a 'temp fix' suggesting a sensor fault, gave me the code to give. Ofcourse this action wiped the code data on my ECU &dealers have given the all-clear response once again.Saying the errorcode given is not useful. Oh&the EML has randomly flashed a couple of times again since.

So now I'm concerned that if it continues to flash, my dealer can do nothing, &if it breaks down my breakdown guys won't attend for the same fault twice for free. I'm assured it would be safe to drive to the garage so hopefully that'll work out. Oh and my dealers has helpfully told me they'll close this job on Wednesday, so I can expect further charges thereafter.

One of my major problems here is that my handbook tells me that this intermittent fault indication should register with the CPU and be fixable with the main dealers. But it's aparently not registering a fault. This is misinformation from the handbook at best and suspected warranty costs evasion at worst from my main dealers, or some kinda tampering from Halfords as a possibility. All at risk to the health of me and others, if it breaks down avoidably in an unfortunate location.

I don't know if there's a scanner I could buy to help prove this fault? Or if there's any other actions I should be suggested to take? I've had very little piece of mind out of all this and am not sure what I should be doing next.

Thanks.

Welcome. Your MIL (Malfunction Indicator Lamp) (not EML) could be coming up for a variety of different reasons - not all are directly engine related.

Each time when the MIL has flashed but the car not cut out, has it behaved differently at all?

Codes should be stored on the ECU (CPU??) but if it was cleared it won't then still be held. What was the fault code you were origionally given

Hi.
Thank you for the insight. It is much appreciated.

Yes, I'd notice the power to the engine being affected. On 1 particular early occasion whilst going downhill the power was sapped for just a moment, as if the vehicle had just been put into ~1st gear. Worrying indeed. but on some other occasions I've not noticed particular power loss, just a strange possible power void of sorts. Each time for a second and it's perhaps blinked at me ~15 times in total, so my conclusions aren't exactly firm.

Fool be me. My records show that this issue definitely pre-dates Halfords' involvement, so them and their spark plugs are off the hook... Prior to that the only folks to touch this vehicle [since selling it to me] were the main dealers.

P0335 is the error code given to me, the 1 that would allegedly help us solve all of this, although my dealers say they can't use this...

The word was the fault was something in or around the crank shaft, with the possibility of a slipping sensor. &the mechanic sounded convincing given that he made the permanent light disappear.
Although my main dealers have rebuffed this alluding to permanently stationary parts and sensors in that viscinity. They seemed to think it could be a coil originally and nothing seems to have had them waver from this, but they've not yet felt conclusive enough to do anything about it.

PandaG58 said:

P0335 is the error code.

Click to expand...

I mean a simple google search seems to suggest that replacing the positioning sensor might have solved this, when the indicator was permanent.

e.g.:
see the youtube video "Replacing A Crankshaft Position Sensor Code P0335"

I'm unsure if the intermittent indicator is definitely causal with that condition when the indicator was permanent. I'd assume they're linked given the timings of it all.

But then if the solution was this simple then surely my garage would have worked this out ??

Crank shaft possition sensor sounds like it could. E a strong contender. Failure of this will cause the car not to run. I'd check the wiring and plug condition as its more an intermittent fault, where as normally failure of the unit means goodnight Vienna constantly.