Help appreciated on this one , my sons 1997 , punto every now and again fails to start , usually after its been on a run and left to stand for a while (15 mins to 60 mins ) He trys to start and the engine cranks over fine but wont start . Some times it will start after 3 or 4 goes and sometimes after its left for a while and it will start fine .
Any ideas .

chase said:

Help appreciated on this one , my sons 1997 , punto every now and again fails to start , usually after its been on a run and left to stand for a while (15 mins to 60 mins ) He trys to start and the engine cranks over fine but wont start . Some times it will start after 3 or 4 goes and sometimes after its left for a while and it will start fine .
Any ideas .

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Has the Ecu been remapped? If it has then the warm start map may be bad.

OR if it's standard, it could be a faulty Temperature sensor. This will be telling the engine is it cold instead of hot; Same Idea as a bad hot start engine map

Otherwise, check the spark plugs are not overly worn out, I think the gap should be 0.9mm or 0.8mm depending on which engine it has.
I think the 1.1 8V is 0.9mm and the others 0.8mm? can't quite remember but i'm sure if you search for the spark plug gap you'll find a lot of posts with this info


Hope this helps

might there be a crankshaft sensor problem looming ahead

Thanks so far , i will check what i can , any ideas which temp sensor ? Is there any way to test the crank sensor ?
The ECU hasnt been remapped so i guess it rules that out .
Apparently it did this a couple of months ago while i was on holiday so my son ran around for a fortnight in my A4 On trying the car it started fine until the other day when it cranked over 4 times strongly but didnt seem to fire and on the 5th it started as normal .Dont know if that helps.