Hi guys, This job is a bit of a nightmare being my wifes car. She rang me Thursday morning to say the car wouldnt start, there was plenty of battery just not firing, this occured briefly last Saturday but started after a few goes.
We drove to York, 50 miles, parked up for about six hours and then got back to the car which stsrted first compression which was what it normally did. We then drove home ok and no more bother till Thursday morning.
I brought my laptop home Thursday night and checked out the engine management, there were no codes present and the data looked good showing RPM signal and other varying data from the sensors. it was dark now so decided to wait till Saturday and see what info I could find.
Saturday morning I checked for fuel at the filter, a brief spurt when key on then full flow when cranked, seemed ok. After taking off a few bits I managed to plumb a gauge into the test port on the back of the tandem pump, the data I found specified 3.5 bar at 1500 rpm so we cranked the engine and the pressure rose quite slowly I thought to about 2 bar, it then seemed to stabilize at this point but no firing so I clamped off the return pipe as it was cranking and this brought it up to +3 bar, at this point it started to get fuel and after a few second fired up. Whith the clamp off and engine running the gauge then showed over 3 bar and engine running normally. It seemed to me that the tandem pump had somehow drained of fuel so I fitted a non-return valve in its supply pipe. I ran it around for a while and it seems ok but morning may tell me differently.
Has anyone had a similar problem to this and has anyone got any detailed info on exactly what goes on in the primary fuel supply of these vehicles, there must be a pressure regulater built into the tandem pump I think, anyway thanks in advance for any thoughts on this.
Colin.