Technical Its having a sulk

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Technical Its having a sulk

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May 25, 2013
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Hemel Hempstead
My mischief machine is temperamental at times.

It has an occasional habit of not starting - and then changing its mind and starting. (this can be for months at a time where it either works perfectly or just doesn't)

It sometimes shows an injector light when it does this - sometimes not.

I have replaced numerous crank sensors (sometimes this has worked for a while - sometimes not).

Sometimes if the battery is a little low on charge a quick charge will help.

Sometime a blast of Easy start has made the problem go away.

This time it HAS THE RIGHT HUMP.

Full charge / clean earths and new sensor and it still will not start.

Can anyone give me a step by step procedure to dry and fix this ??

Its driving me mental.
 
does it have a fuel filter? Whats the fuel setup on this thing.. Does it have an in tank pump with a sock? Have you looked inside the tank recently?

You say you cleaned earths, but how are they setup? Battery to frame, frame to gearbox, wheres the engine harness earth connected? Sounds like you have lots of flat batteries from your tone and really it should last ages - so just going through the electrics generally might help, trace down any draws, make sure the battery has a really good earth or several to the frame, a nice fat one from the frame to the gearbox and another frame to block - can't have to many!! lol. Engine harness should have a bunch of wires together on a ring terminal thats the engine harness earth, that should be on the engine somewhere, plenty of spare holes on the back of the block.

Check the spark plugs if you havent, confirm they are okay and state of them might give an clue of something. Sadly your never gonna find a step by step guide to an unknown issue, god that would be nice wouldnt it! lol
 
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Some great ideas there mate - I was going to take out the fuel pump and test it (it was on my list) .

The battery is smaller than standard (but less electrical stuff on the car) so they do not last as long.

I think I will try a "scattergun approach" and see what happens (especially as it has not been driven much due to lockdown)

1.Service ALL the earths again. (in case I missed any)
2.Test and service fuel pump.
3. Check over throttle body.
4. Test for spark and fuel
5.Pray
 
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I have done a but more work.

No fuel or spark

Primed fuel pump from another battery - works fine

Then tried starting using primed pump and easy start - no dice

Now looking at wiring under the bonnet.

Anyone know how to test the crank sensor to make sure it is not a DOA unit ?
 
you can check the resistance.. 650-720 ohms at room temp.

Going from memory its a 2 wire sensor, so multimeter on dc volts, one lead on battery -ve other probe the 2 wires, one should be 1.5v with ignition on.

meter on AC volts, probe on each wire and crank engine over and you should see a pulsing voltage on the meter. No pulse means no signal from it which would mean no fuel or spark..
 
ok so the wires are ground, power and signal.. so lets test them.

so with meter on dc volts, one probe on a ground and the other on connector, one of the wires should have a switched power with the ignition

meter on continuity, you should have good continuity between one wire (the earth) and ground.

meter on dc volts again, you should now know which is the signal wire by your powers of elimination, as before you should get a pulsing reading - there will be a spec for this but should be around 0.3v to about 1.0v
 
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