Was mortified on Friday night to find myself stuck outside Halfords with my new 110 refusing to start. I'd driven around the area visiting a client and was wasting some time in H so I could legitimately go straight to the pub when I got home rather than sit down and be trapped by emails. Came out about 5:30, jumped in, turned the key and immediately noticed that the temperature gauge was hard into the red and that the glow-plug indicator didn't light at all. Tried starting anyway but no joy - as though no fuel being delivered. Popped the bonnet and poked around. Temperature OK - as warm as I'd expect after sitting for 20 mins, plenty of coolant, spot on the line, etc, etc. Nothing obvious under the bonnet. I have to say Halfords were very helpful in lending tools to help with this because I haven't yet built my own kit!

To cut a long story short I called the AA just before 6 and they arrived at 6:25. The guy took one look at the dash and the symptoms and said 'Oh yes, I've seen this before.' and disappeared into his van to check his laptop. Came back, whipped off the drivers seat and the panel beneath, tighten a nut and started the engine!

Turns out there's an earth beneath the driver's seat that (he said) is known to work loose and when it does these are the symptoms presented. The earth is easy to spot, it's right in the middle of the floor in the box beneath the driver. He cleaned it all up tightened it and the job was done. It took longer to do the paperwork than fix the fault!

Just thought others might like to know as had I known I could have been out of there myself in minutes...

Jon

Wnt help me cos i have TDi, but very good of you to post it up! A good thought, and im sure itll help someone here!!

boydy1989 said:

Wnt help me cos i have TDi, but very good of you to post it up! A good thought, and im sure itll help someone here!!

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me fer 1 ! will be checking that in the morning
better not to break down at all
:hysterically_laughi

A thanks from me as well!

A quick update on this... Went down to Cornwall to see the outlaws at the weekend and bugger me if the same fault didn't appear! I also had a couple of momentary - and I do mean fractions of a second - glitches while driving where the engine management light came on and the engine 'coughed' before clearing and being fine.

Looks like this earth lead is in fact broken within the cable somewhere either instead or in addition to the original problem of being poorly connected. Not really sure how this could happen since the wire isn't stressed or mobile at all so this might be just a dodgy connector.

Anyway, if this does happen to you, it's obviously worth checking both the connector to the body AND the integrity of the wire itself.

cobnut said:

A quick update on this... Went down to Cornwall to see the outlaws at the weekend and bugger me if the same fault didn't appear! I also had a couple of momentary - and I do mean fractions of a second - glitches while driving where the engine management light came on and the engine 'coughed' before clearing and being fine.

Looks like this earth lead is in fact broken within the cable somewhere either instead or in addition to the original problem of being poorly connected. Not really sure how this could happen since the wire isn't stressed or mobile at all so this might be just a dodgy connector.

Anyway, if this does happen to you, it's obviously worth checking both the connector to the body AND the integrity of the wire itself.

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Give the fuses and relays under the seat a wiggle. They cause more problems than the earth strap.

Nice to know.

ratty said:

Give the fuses and relays under the seat a wiggle. They cause more problems than the earth strap.

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It doesn't do any harm at all to spray WD40 or similar over the entire block of fuses. As soon as you have done that, pull each fuse out, and stuff it right back, every single one, one after the other. . This will renew the contact each fuse makes with the terminals in the block, and the WD40 will help to make sure no more bad connections happen again. Do the same to the terminals of the relays while you are in the mood.

CharlesY