is it just sleeping???

[DanW]

OK, here's the story, to day coming back home from work, tank nearly (notice nearly not empty, not in the red) engine suddenly kicks back at me, simularly to when the engine cut out on me going to the leicester meet last weekend on the moror way doing excessive speed, but i put that down to heat at the time, as it was over its norming running temp and after 5mins of patience and panicing it came back to life.
This time it didn't. Now I've started to charge the battery in the garage over night, and that seemed pretty dead. I can't (or my dad) see and spark getting to the spark plug when we turn it over. So now were thining it's the ignition coil. Im going to take it of tomorow morning and take it to VW and see what they think it is.
I've also now put some fuel in to the car bits from petrol cans lying around in my garage and next door neighbours shed. So now longer it is just the petrol.
Can anyone shed the smallest bit of light on the subject?


Any help will be gratefully excepted, as I'm missing it already, towing it home was not a pleasent experience.


Dan

[pettsy]

maybe it sucked through some crap that was in the bottom of the tank?

[DanW]

yer a load of rust?
I'm taking in the ignition coil to see if it's that as im not seeing a spark from them in a risky earthing menover (or however u spell it).
-Dr. Heimlich how is the menoover coming along?
- It's more of a gesture at the moment

Any who know's who eddie izzard is would reckognise this :p

[optima21]

I doubt it being rust as there is a fine mesh filter before the lifter pump in the pertol tank, and there is another filter before the high pressure pump.

There are 3 reasons why a car wont start :-
1) the starter motor wont turn the engine over
2) there is no fuel getting to the engine
3) there is no spark to ignite the mixture.

in the days of carbs life was much easier, but in todays electronic world 2 and 3 are interrelated.

if your car is a single point injection and you take your air filter cover off (assuming its the big round one) and get someone to turn your engine over, you should be able to hear the injector clicking and see/smell the petrol being injected.

If that isnt happening and you dont see a spark either, I'd suspect its somethng to do with the management system as it would be a massive co-incidence for the fueling and ignition to have problems at the same time

[DanW]

its a multi-point. I'm going to test the ignition coil of my car on my friends boulevard at lunch time, the guy and Voltsparts said it was quite a common problem seeing as he replaces at least one of these eery 2 weeks. In fact someone phoned him this morning to come and collect one.
The dealership seemed to think it was the distributer going on the age of the car. But I don't really want to go with that because its dead exensive, something like £140-ish for it , excluding labour.

[hardhitter]

Ok, if your aren't getting a spark it could possibly be the ignition coil. If it works on your mates Mk 3 then it should be fine. They guy who told you they go all the time isn't very accurate.

But it's more likely to be the hall sender in the distributor, they go more often that the coils. Symptoms of the hall sender are pretty much how you describe, driving along and it just suddenly splutters and dies.

You can buy a hall sender and fit it to the dizzy, this is supposed to be awkward to do. I think most people just get a new dizzy from VAG, I think they are about £120 exchange.

[DanW]

ur a star m8, getting some voltages, might have to go and get a VAG-COM though. I've found an alarm system in my car, some sensors in there which wern't in the other car, and a lot of extra wiring.
The thing about today is I feel much prouder of owning my car now, seeing how tidy it is under the hood and how much rust it hasnt got in it. My m8's MK3 1L had loads of rust aroud the injection area at the top. I was shocked.
I'm thinking they lost the key fob for the imoby and just hard wired the car.


right next washer tank. theres a horn shaped object that isn't the horn.

here is the wiring coming from the horn shaped object.

[hardhitter]

Hi mate

I would leave the alarm/immobiliser alone if it was ok before. Concentrate on working out if the coil and dizzy are working first so you can get it running.
You dont need any expensive diagnostics like vag-com to fix the problem

[DanW]

i was just thinking that something might have shorted on the imob, but if u said the suddent jolt was like the dizzy then. Well Ill take a look.

Do you know how I could test the LT side of things, as I've tested the HT?

[DanW]

thanks all, the cars back up and running now, it was the dizzy, it's soo quiet. Wonder what I can do to it now? I wonder if I can go do something with that imobilizer?

[hardhitter]

See, what did I tell you

I would leave the immobiliser alone, unless you know what you are doing. Maybe an auto electrician would remove it for a small cost. You dont want to rip it out and render your car immobile.

[DanW]

Seriously I think it's been hard wired because they've lost the key or something.



The odd key there looks like something, but where would I put it?



Is this on your car?

[Krupa]

That hole in the dash looks like an infra-red motion detector for an alarm. Mine are little things which look like microphones, and they're mounted in the A pillar.

As for the odd key, I had one too. Didn't seem to relate to anything so I took it off and haven't found a use for it to this day. Mine had a Quantum alarm (standard) when I bought it.

[LogIK]

The little key looks like a vallet key, which is used to disable your alarm when it goes in for servicing etc, so it doesnt keep arming itself or it isnt accidently armed. Either that, or it looks like a steering lock/gear shift lock key.

[DanW]

it deff aint the steering lock key, cos that's another key. I found some documentation about a scorpion alarm which is vag aparently. I would love to get this alarm up and running again, apart from peice of mind it would lower my insurance yay. It's just figuring out where everything thing is now.