Hi, my 405 (1905cc XU9J2) has recently started to run very erratically and in essence cut in and out every few seconds.
But first some background, when I first bought the car it displayed this trait semi-regularly, essentially what happens is you'll be driving along and suddenly the car cuts out, then quite quickly cuts back in again. So say you give it full throttle one second it will pull hard then the next will die, as if there is no throttle response. And say if you decided to sit in neutral and hold the revs steady, it'll rev from 2000-3000rpm continuously even though you're holding the throttle steady and it should just sit at 3000rpm.
Eventually the car refused to run, now this may or may not be a related issue/factor but it was diagnosed that someone had installed an aftermarket fuel relay so that the fuel pump was running continuously. Once this relay was removed the car started up fine and ran for a few months fairly faultlessly, until doing the cutting out thing for about 10mins then magically working fine again.
So for the last 6 months or so it has performed pretty well, not doing the cutting out thing. However over the last few days/week it's done it a couple of times, usually working itself out after 5-15mins. Earlier today I was driving my Uncle's Alfa back up from Taupo so he was using my 405 and said it got pretty bad and recommended I didn't even drive the car.
Sorry for all the detail I just though it would be better to explain the whole situation.
Anyway, something I have noticed. Normally when you switch the ignition on you can hear the fuel pump run for a couple of seconds then stop. However whenever I've had these cutting out issues and difficulty starting it, I have noticed that if I leave the ignition on, the fuel pump runs continously and doesn't stop after a couple of seconds like it should (?). So it seems to be that when the car is having 'issues' like this, the fuel pump isn't stopping.
Whether this means anything I don't know. Any advice would be really appreciated as being a student I'm trying to avoid taking it to the workshop. Fuel filter blocked? Electric issue?
Cheers.
'90 405 SRi Cutting out.
Moderator: RichardW
