Non starting 300 with EDC after long lay up

Oh come all you gurus!

My head gasket went back in May, and due to work constraints etc its taken me till now to get it all back together! The battery has been disconnected all that time.

I charged the battery just to be sure, then connected it all up and went for the start, but no joy? All dash lights come on as they should, glow plugs activate and then the light extinguishes but when I then turn the key I get nothing other than the "check engine" light coming on?

My thought process is that the ECU has forgotten that it is in a car, therefore needs telling, I did this before after replacing the engine a couple of years back as again the battery was disconnected for a few months, the sequence involved unlock car, key to position 1, gearbox to 1st gear, ignition off and lock car, re open etc etc etc, but for the life of me I cannot remember what the sequence was?

I've searched on here but no joy so far, can anyone help?

don't know about that, but you could start it manually to see if it's immob/ecu related.

ign on, get some wire. 12v to fuel solenoid and then bridge the starter poles with a screwdriver (big one and the ign controlled smaller one) to spin the starter.

be careful/out of gear/etc.

trax said:

don't know about that, but you could start it manually to see if it's immob/ecu related.

ign on, get some wire. 12v to fuel solenoid and then bridge the starter poles with a screwdriver (big one and the ign controlled smaller one) to spin the starter.

be careful/out of gear/etc.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that, i've looked into the bypass idea but as this is an EDC version the electric side of the pump is enclosed within a black box so looks to me like you can't do this on the auto EDC versions?

crazymac said:

Thanks for that, i've looked into the bypass idea but as this is an EDC version the electric side of the pump is enclosed within a black box so looks to me like you can't do this on the auto EDC versions?

Click to expand...

i think you can with some faffing, opening it up. iirc it's the white wire going into it, but you'd have to check that

Ok cheers for that, I'll look again

OK time for an update!

I never did go with the bypass idea as I wanted to take it back to basics first, suck, squeeze, bang, blow!

I started with disconnecting the feed from the lift pump to filter and pumped fuel through to there, then disconnected at the filter and pumped to there, then disconnected at injector pump and ensured fuel was there, then disconnected at the return to tank from injector pump and ensured fuel was there.

So now I knew I had fuel to the pump, just not to the injectors due to the fuel cut off.

I then went to the starting system, direct to the starter solenoid and shorted across the connections, sparks and an engaging starter solenoid, in the process of doing this I identified that I had a dodgy connection on the starter (the little spade connector)

Aha, finally getting somewhere, had a wiggle on that and cranked the engine to great joy! I then bled the fuel through to the injectors through cranking the engine which identified 2 issues.

1. I have a knackered water pump !

2. I have a non seating injector, the one nearest the bulkhead, so will pull that out tomorrow and see what it is, its probably down to the washer at the bottom (either 1 too many or one too few!)

After all that I will have a functioning Disco that I need to sort for MOT in the new year!