HELP - car not starting!

[The Doctor]

Here's the story;

Driving to work on Friday, red dash battery warning light came on intermittently (battery is only 2 yrs old and a decent one).
Suspect alternator etc is at fault.
Wife borrowed car at weekend (against my advice), drove it half a mile and turned the engine off.
Guess what? Wouldn't start (flat battery) as I told her... Wife is definitely at fault.

So I jump-started it from our Galaxy and let it run for 5mins or so to whilst connected to get some charge back into the battery.
Went to drive it back home (half a mile) and it just died completely (yellow DIS battery light came on, everything shut down and that was that).
Pushed it back home with the wife steering!

Fully re-charged battery out of the car for 24hours.
Just re-fitted the battery.

Now it turns over fine but does not fire.

Why not?

Fuel pump needs re-priming?
ECU gone into some sort of protection mode and needs re-setting?
???

Help please! Need to get it to the garage 1st thing Thurs morning.

 

[<tuffty/>]

Fault codes?

<tuffty/>

 

[The Doctor]

No idea. Leave that to the garage. Just wondered if anyone had any suggestions.

 

[<tuffty/>]

No idea. Leave that to the garage. Just wondered if anyone had any suggestions.

I got one... scan for fault codes LOL

In all honesty dude it will almost certainly tell you whats going on...

ECU will still 'operate' after a flat battery... fuel pump will self prime and assuming you weren't dry of fuel before I see no issue there

If engine is turning over then there should be enough juice... if not firing then something has failed... other than a fuse for the fuel pump it could be the crank sensor...

The fact you had a MIL suggests the ECU is not happy with something and a fault code scan will show that

<tuffty/>

 

[The Doctor]

Hmm. Did think of checking fuses but all was fine when I jumped it, so suggests they'll be OK and it's something else.

Looks like it'll be disgraced on the back of a car transporter...

 

[<tuffty/>]

6 years and not got VCDS... so much fail

<tuffty/>

 

[The Doctor]

Yeah, well 6 years and not needed it!

All fuses OK. So tomorrow I'll be on the phone to get it picked up. Sad, but true.

Maybe this is the trigger for an exchange for a TT-RS...

 

[Stuart B]

you are just showing off now, can I ask how you get 31.4 MPG? have you had it remapped, or only do long motorway miles, I find it so difficult to try to average more than 26 I even reset the miles sometimes once I have started a on a long drive to fool myself into believing it is better

 

[Nilz]

Alright mate, I had an issue a while ago and it was the alternator that was reverse charging and had a faulty diode.

So it would charge when running but discharging when the car was switched off... If you can do a leak test mine was showing a big drain on the black cable on the fuse box.

Hope that helps.
Nilz

 

[Sandip]

My guess would be the alternator like Nilz says

My alternator had been causing all kind of issues, alarm going off for no reason, car not starting, dash lights flickering then 2 weeks ago the battery light started to come on everytime i was going past 6500rpm, alternator packed up totally last week, car started ok but kept stalling, checked the alternator and it had given up charging

 

[The Doctor]

I suspect the alternator is faulty, for sure. But for now it's with the garage to find the problem.

 

[The Doctor]

All sorted. Alternator replaced, as expected, plus some other "water in relay" issues that were not expected, but glad all is now sorted. Good to be back on the road again.

 

[<tuffty/>]

Yay!... etc

<tuffty/>

 

[Nilz]

Great success!!!

Glad its sorted