General Marea 1.8 sluggish & hard to start

[John Mc]

X reg. Marea 1.8 Weekend, petrol.

Can anyone offer any suggestions, please. It came on quite suddenly 2 weeks ago.

9/10 times have to turn it 2 or 3 times to get it to start. Smell of petrol from the exhaust when it does. Doesn't seem to be catching.

When it does start it idles well and drives OK if driving slow. Foot down to pull away or overtake and nothing happens until the revs build up and then it shoots forward.

Had a full service with new plugs & filters. Garage has checked the ECU log and there were no issues. Compression check was OK on 3 a little lower on 1 of them.

A local hill which normally gives no issue in 5th at 30mph required a change to 3rd last night, and even then it wasn't happy.

Tried a reset of the ECU by removing the battery to no avail.

 

[MrMigs08]

Hey John,

On the 1.6l these symptoms can occur if:

Idle Control Actuator needs a clean (And the connector to it!)
Spark Plugs need a change
Dirty Map Sensor (Not sure what the 1.8 uses)
Spark Plug HT' not contacting properly
Coil Pack issue (Again not sure what the 1.8 uses)

Did you perform compression test wet or dry? you should do both! for maximum accuracy, although if most the cyl's are fine i can't see why one would give in!

I hope this helps

(I also cleaned the crank sensor on the 1.6 which has some small improvement as mine was covered in gunk, but it could be my mind !)

Hopefully others have better idea haha.