What a bloody week
Work has been manic and every evening after work I have been so brain-dead and exhausted as to be next to useless.
However, I did manage to get to the post office to re-tax the V6. I had to go to the Post Office because I can't do it on-line because, it seems, my tax and insurance expires on the same day (30 Nov) and despite having a new certificate valid to 30/11/2012 that's not seen by the on-line service. It was acceptable in the Post Office, thank goodness. Robyn (or more likely I) will have the same problem taxing her 206 as the same conditions apply. DVLA still have a bit to get right yet
I thought I'd wasted my money spending £215 on tax for the V6 today. I went out, after writing the CCC column and submitting it a day late and did the weekly checks on the cars. Went to start V6. She fired, spluttered, coughed and died. She'd not restart and it seemed to my ears that she did not sound right cranking. I was worried the timing belt had gone or slipped. Then I couldn't hear the fuel pump priming. Much fruitless checking of voltages, the immobiliser and double relays shed no light.
I got the ELIT out. It could 'talk' to the engine ECU. No faults and all actuator tests passed, including fuel pump, injectors and coil. Still not a hint of a start. I wanted to check timing and rather than pull the cam covers off, I pulled the coil pack off and popped out the front bank spark plugs. They were wet with petrol. I then noted the cam position through the oil filler and measured the depth of the pistons from the bottoms of the plug wells and compared this with my spare engine. Timing seemed OK.
I swapped coils. Still no start. I checked the coolant temperature sensor. ELIT said 11 degrees. That seemed OK. Re-ran the actuator tests. OK.
Tried another start and it was trying occasionally. I opened the accellerator wide and she fired, ran a bit and died. Repeated for longer with foot to the floor and after a good deal of churning she fired, ran, blew a massive cloud of what I reckon was unburned petrol out of the exhaust, much to the shock of some innocent passers-by
and she was away. Foot off and she was idling a treat - as if nothing had ever happened.
I let her warm up and then stopped her and swapped the coils backs. Started fine. And so she has since. I took her for a long run this evening and all is perfect again.
I think I know what the problem was. On Thursday I wanted, for reasons that will be come apparent in Rattiva's blog, to see how much air cam out of the demist vents with the fan running at full speed. I fired up the V6, did the check and switched off. In all the engine ran for about 45 seconds. I know this is not good and i should have ran her long enough to warm but I was tired and in a hurry.
I'm sure that was what caused all the problems today. Moral is, if you start up on a cold evening make sure the engine runs up to temperature. Thinking back I've had the same thing happen on an Activa way back in the past.
All I know is it wasted about three hours today and goodness only knows how much petrol. On a positive note, she has a jolly good battery
