Polo 1.0 T plate keeps cutting out/Not restarting

[PoloUser]

Hi

Got a bit of a head scratcher with our old polo 1.0, runs great when it's running but we are getting an occasional starting problem, up until yesterday we were getting only a starting problem where the car will occasionally not restart after being parked up for a few hours and will sometimes struggle to start in the morning when it's very damp/been raining heavy but it will eventually "catch". I cleaned out the distributor and put some petroleum jelly on the contacts to stop dampness in there.

Yesterday a new thing happened, it also stalled out when it was ticking over in the Tesco car park, wouldn't restart. So I towed it home, checked all the usual (plugs, spark, fuel delivery etc.) then dried out the engine by disconnecting the fuel pipe into a bottle and churning the engine over, with plugs out, to dry the inside of the cylinders. Put the plugs back in and it still never started.

Done the same again and it fired right off the key.

I've read about a similar problem at the site just answer:

http://www.justanswer.com/uk-car/32a...-spark-ok.html

And the mechanic recommended the person to change the fuel pressure regulator but this never helped, then said to change ECT sensor (whatever that is) and check/change the fuel injection relay but change ECT first.

he also mentioned fault codes, is there a way of manually checking for fault codes? If not is there any way of determining what - out of the 3 items I mentioned - what is the cause of the problem, without going to VAG garage to plug on diagnosis machine?

Thanks for any input

Andrew

[-M-]

ECT = engine coolant temperture sensor. can give poor starting when cold/hot but will normally fire up.

Does your vehicle have an ignition coil bolted to the rear of the engine bay to the distributor ? when the fault occurs you need to check if there is spark from the coil as these are quite common to failure. Also engine speed sensor failure is possible. To check fault codes you need to have a diagnostic carried out using a suitable tester.

[PoloUser]

Checked for a coil spark when it wouldn't start and it was ok.

We do have one other issue that I never mentioned, and I do not know if it is related, I tried to turn off the service interval warning with a procedure I found on the net, probably not the best idea but since I done that the natural idle seems to rise a little when the car is moving, and I mean like as soon as the car starts moving to any speed. If you are pulling up to stop and clutch down with braking then the revs will sit about 1100RPM then as soon as car stops the revs return to 800rpm or so. This has been like that for a few years and wonder if this is any way related; personally I don't think so?

All other things being equal I think maybe start with changing the coolant temp sensor.

[witblitz]

Hi, the idle issue might actually be related to your other problem at it seems to have gone into limp mode. I would suggest you get the faults read. As for the starting issue I had something similar with an old A4 Audi that I owned except that it was not weather related so I doubt it is your problem but I thought would add it as something to check anyway. With the Audi it would have a problem starting from time to time and also miss a beat here and there and even cut out from time to time but no faults. I noticed that there was a certain pattern to things but had no idea what it was other than it was almost as if there was air getting into the fuel line. One day it finally stopped on a particularly bad gravel road in the middle of nowhere so I had to spend the time to find the problem which was much easier once it was properly broken. It turned out to be a small crack in the pipe connector on the fuel pump which was opening and closing and then finally sheered off because of the bad road. We tried some bash mechanics but in the end had to replace the fuel pump.

[PoloUser]

Not done anything to the car so far as the weather been bad but there's not been any running problem recently, except for when starting it seems to struggle to start occasionally, it churns over and eventually catches. It sounds like one cylinder catches, then two, three as so on and then it goes. Once running it's fine. What did worry me was late last year it just stalled and wouldn't restart, that's when we had to tow it home, I had to remove fuel lines into a small tank to catch fuel, remove plugs and dry out the engine by churning it over for a good few turns. The first time this never worked but second time it went almost instantly. Almost like something wasn't working then suddenly started working.