£7500 and still climbing! Is this really worth this amount???

[deltic]

Sounds a bit challenging, good luck getting it sorted.

[richie]

Mine did that mate. It was the crankshaft sensor in the end. Very cheap and very easy to fix. Have you tried this?

[Jaba]

Mine did that mate. It was the crankshaft sensor in the end. Very cheap and very easy to fix. Have you tried this?

Thanks for your suggestion. BX is still in my garage untouched since the last AA recovery. The sensor is on the list of suspects but there is always a strong spark showing even when it refuses to restart.

[Jaba]

When I had a look at the problem again I found that there was a broken cable in the connection to the auxiliary air device - that's the thing that injects extra air into the air inlet manifold at a cold start to ensure a fast tickover speed when cold starting. The 12v connection makes the device slowly close the air aperture to avoid having a weakened mixture and high tickover after the engine has heated up. This could have been the problem.

My local garage then had a look at the car and spent an hour on it. They found the ignition module was overheating so cleaned up the mounting plate cum heatsink and swapped in a spare of mine. They did a couple of test drives and said the engine was still faltering a bit but at least not cutting out.

I then decided to remove the injectors to get them tested and cleaned and also removed the inlet manifold to reseal the manifold to the head as there is no gasket fitted on the GTi and there was a sign of a small leak.

I planned to replace the TDC sensor but this eluded me. I was able to get the retaining allen bolt out but could not budge the sensor in the gearbox housing without more dismantling so I gave up on that but did find that its 3 pin connector into the engine wiring loom had one of its retaining clips rusted away and missing allowing some movement of the connector which could just possibly give an intermittent connection or introduce electrical noise into the the timing and confusing the ECU. So I found a good clip and fitted it as a replacement to restore a good connection.

So some useful moves made so far in trying to improve running.

[Jaba]

My saga continued:
following my recent diagnostic and repair work and as I am still not driving the local garage had another look at it and did a test drive. They reported that it was still faltering a bit at 30 mph. So it is not fixed yet. But at least it is no longer cutting out completely and refusing to restart.