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[jimbo_lad]

Hi everyone.

This is my first post, although I've been watching this site for nearly a year. Really interesting and useful.

The reason I'm posting this is because my 3.2 facelift (2001 vintage) has recently developed a warm starting problem that seems to be the same as the one reported in earlier threads.

- If the car is driven for more than about 5 miles then stopped for 10-30 mins it won't start. It turns over OK and sitting for at least an hour it will then start OK.  This happened 3 times to my wife - once in Sainsburys car park and twice at home - but this meant I had to walk home from the station!

So I searched this site and found various threads - which pointed to this fault being consistent with a crank sensor failure.  So I took the car to the local main dealers yesterday (Frosts in Haywards Heath) told  them I suspected crank sensor and asked them to check it out. Also asked them to move on, once the fault was fixed, and do an annual service and change the cambelt since these were also due.

They decided to do things in a different order with the cambelt first. This meant they didn't get round to the starting fault until this morning when the engine was cold. They carried out diagnostic report which showed all OK and completed the service and handed the car back to my wife (for £675) and insisted they could find nothing wrong. So she set off for Sainsburys and .....you've guessed it, I had a very unhappy wife on the end on the mobile.

- Should the system store a fault code if it is the crank sensor?
- If so, should I believe the main dealer when they say they've read the codes and there are no faults?
- Is there anything else that could give these symptoms?

The plan at the moment is to go back to the main dealer in the morning. Any advice would be gratefully received.


Jim

[Kevin Wood]

Sounds similar to my crank sensor symptoms although other things can cause poor hot starting.

The crank sensor stores a code in the ECU and reading the codes should have been the first thing they did. If the crank sensor is on its' way out there'll be a code 0335 IIRC.

Does their invoice show that they checked for diagnostic codes?

Depending on where you live, get someone to have a look at the codes. Crank sensor is a straightforward DIY job to change.

Oh, and welcome to the forum

Kevin

[Matchless]

Crank sensor is most likely but a leaky injector is another. If it does it again then press throttle all way to floor and hold while cranking....if it springs into life then one or more injectors have become incontinent, leaking fuel into the manifold while the engine is stopped, its still warm so the fuel vaporises and fills the manifold and plennum with a rich mixture that wont ignite.

[TheBoy]

Crank sensor is a possibility, but so are other things. CTS worth checking as well, as it suggestion above with leaky injectors

[jimbo_lad]

Well the problem is now sorted - it was the crank sensor as predicted.

But the main dealer had trouble tracing the problem. They say they had to warm it up 4 times before it failed to start (they obviously don't have the touch of the wife!). Once it failed they plugged in the Tech and error code 0335 came up. So they changed the crank sensor and all seems to be fine.  

We had a "discussion" about the labour charge and I pointed out they didn't look at the warm starting problem when I brought the car in hot - did other work first and waited till it was cold. We settled on one hour's labour (£80) + part (£48) + diagnostic charge (£36), with Vat this comes to £190.  I know I could have done it for less - but I just don't have the time - maybe I'll get back to this sort of thing when I retire. Anyway I've had the car for well over 2 yrs and I expected maintenance to be high.

Other points of interest:

• they say the fault was the sensor itself, rather than the wiring (i'm not sure how they know that)
• it seems the fault code wasn't stored. I thought it would have been and if it had, diagnosis would have been much easier.



Anyway thanks for all the comments, helped me challenge the dealer.


Jim

[Kevin Wood]

Glad it's sorted, albeit not cheap. On my car the 0335 was stored. There was no need to reproduce it but at least they got there without replacing anything else that didn't need it!

Kevin