SAXO 1.1 Stalling - after flat battery ?

KevMayer · Post by **KevMayer** » 27 Dec 2005, 18:32

The battery went flat on my daughter's Saxo 1.1. Fitted a new battery today and now the car keeps stalling.

As soon as its started from cold it dies straight away. If you keep some revs on and drive it until it warms up it gets a little better and stalls about 50 per cent of the time. When it manages to keep going, say when we pull up at a junction and it doesnt stall, the revs drop to around 500 and then slowly increase to around 800 and it ticks over.

It was serviced 6 months ago. I've checked the air filter and thats like new.

I've put new fuel in the tank because it was low and had been sitting without being used in all this recent cold weather so condensation may have built up in the fuel.

I suspected damp in the electrics but the problem hasn't cleared now we've started to use it and its nicely warmed up.

The battery failed as soon as we had the first cold night of this winter. I used a starter pack to get it going and we've used the car this way on and off. But, lately, when we 'starter pack it' we got different things happening. One time the speedo and rev counter didn't work. Another time the revs shot up to 4000 without touching the pedals and we had to turn it off. And now it just keeps stalling. All these things happened when the duff battery was fitted. I hoped they'd go away when the new battery went on. But not so lucky.

Thanks for any help.

Oh, Happy new year to all forum users.

Cheers, Kev

AndersDK · Post by **AndersDK** » 27 Dec 2005, 18:43

How long was the car left completely dead ?

I'd say it should be allowed to stay completely dead for half an hour to be sure the ECU memory clears its stack of error messages. During use with the duff battery the ECU may have stored all kinds of random errors because of low voltage from the duff battery.

Note : Be sure you have the radio code before you remove the battery for longish.

pugxpert · Post by **pugxpert** » 27 Dec 2005, 18:45

i know of 2 problems that it may be which i know about on 106 basically the same car,could be a misfire from cold/damp there are modofied plug leads for this or your idle control motor is not working,if you hold throttle open from under bonnet (the linkage touches against motor when at idle) you should see plunger move out then allow engine to return to idle as it sorts its idle out you should see plunger move in and out and control idle if this does not move check throttle cable is not too tight and maybe change motor.

KevMayer · Post by **KevMayer** » 27 Dec 2005, 21:28

Thanks for your replies.

Anders, the car was never completely dead. The central locking still worked each time I tried it. I have the radio code, so I'll do what you suggest and leave the battery disconnected for a few hours. In fact, I'll do it as soon as I've finished typing this and leave it off overnight.

Thanks pugxpert, I'll try the dead routine first and if that doesn't work I'll do the checks you mention.

I'll let you know what happens.

cheers,

Kev

KevMayer · Post by **KevMayer** » 28 Dec 2005, 16:59

The battery was disconnected overnight but when reconnected this morning the stall problem was still there.

I contacted my local Citroen specialist and he said you need to use a computer to reset fault codes.

I took the Saxo to his garage. His mechanic reset the fault codes and found some report of an ongoing misfire on cylinders 1,2 and 3.

He asked me to leave the car with him which I did.

Now the Citroen man says he thinks the Stepper motor is faulty. Or, maybe an outside chance of the ECU being faulty.

He's going to fit a new stepper motor and see if that cures it. That would agree with our friend pugxpert.

An ECU would be big bucks to replace (expensive).

cheers,

Kev