Peugeot 2008 petrol S/S reached pre-set maximum cycles and won't start

[Clive M]

Hi. Though some of your contributors might ben interested in the following situation I have recently experienced with my third Peugeot, this time a 2016 petrol 2008 1.2 Allure S/S that I bought nearly new from a Peugeot main dealer in Salisbury. For the first couple of years of my ownership, I was working and commuting 50 miles each way to work, and had my car serviced by a Peugeot dealership in Dorchester. However, since retiring in 2019, I've done far fewer miles and have started using a non-Peugeot local garage for servicing and MOTs. The car has been very reliable until recently. It's now done around 68,000 miles. In January, I had to have a new cam belt fitted, way earlier than it should have needed it. Then, two weeks ago, I was on a visit to my daughter in Bristol, and the car refused to start. It had always been a very reliable starter until then. The AA came out, ran their diagnostics tests, which were confused and contradictory, and they had to recover the car back down to the New Forest and my trusted garage (Antos in Hordle). They ran their diagnostics and realised that there was a problem with the stop/tart system, namely that it had reached its pre-set maximum cycles and would therefore no longer start and begin a new stop/start cycle. Antos tried to engage with Peugeot to see if they had a solution, but they refused to speak to Antos as he is a third-party non-Peugeot service provider Fortunately, he's a very enterprising and dogged guy and worked out that the only way forward was to do a hard system reset and then disable the stop/start system. This has worked. The car is now functioning as before in every way except that the stop/start system no longer works. I am absolutely outraged that Peugeot have set a maximum number of stop/start cycles for their cars without letting their customers/owners know. My car is now no longer as it is intended and presumably a Peugeot main dealer would want big bucks to sort the problem out and restore the stop/start system, and reset the number of cycles back down to 0. I have asked Peugeot UK for a response to the same query but have not heard back from them yet. Is mine a widespread problem, or even one that others are aware of? It would be interesting to know. Clive Milone

[GiveMeABreak]

You probably didn't realise you have to wait for new member posts to be approved before they are publicly viewable, so now that it's approved I won't respond to the message you left on our user contact form.

It's best to pop your VIN up (please post your VIN in full without spaces - it will be automatically masked from public view after submitting your post & will only be visible to staff), so we can see exactly what vehicle and engine you have. You have to understand that some of these later 1.2 engines have a 'belt in oil' system and there have been issues with the timing belts breaking up, leading to problems. So the timing belt replacement on some of these engines has been set at 60k miles in order for the older type belt to be replaced with a superseded part, which will then provide a longer distance before the next replacement.

Once I have your VIN I can confirm the recommended change times for your specific vehicle and will be able to take a look at the other issue regarding Stop Start. However I would caution you against having it disabled, as this amounts to tampering with the emissions system, in that stop start is designed to reduce emissions / air pollution by stopping the engine at standstill. It can be temporarily disabled, but this is ideally intended for vehicle testing or conditions where the engine power is required.

There are no 'cycles' as such for the system, but this just may be the terminology that is employed to determine functionality of some components like the starter / reversible alternator / energy accumulator, but what system you have and what components are actually used can only be determined once we know the system used on your vehicle.