1.6 VVT not starting/starting then stalling

[neilldrever]

Hi all,

I know there are various posts about these issues but this is just the story of what happened to mine and the eventual outcome in case it helps anyone else:

Wife is leaning to drive and so we were out having a practice which involved stalling lots, over revving, etc. as you would expect
Jumped into the car the next morning, pressed starter button and engine just turned over and over
Tried repeatedly for a while but still nothing
Had a rummage under the bonnet to check things, sensor leads all connected and intact, etc. (especially the camshaft position sensor and crankshaft position sensor as internet searches had pointed to these)
Tried starting the car again and this time it fired first time before stalling after about 5 seconds
Tried starting then revving but car still stalled after a few seconds
Got the local garage to collect the car (they're only at the top of my road and I didn't want to risk damaging the car trying to drive it)
The mechanic managed to drive it up to the workshop using high revs to stop it stalling

Diagnosis:

Got a call from the garage to say that they had plugged in the diagnostic and it had thrown up various fault codes mainly pointing at the crank sensor, cam sensor, etc. (all to do with the VVT systems)
They followed their standard procedure and cleared the fault codes before starting to replace the faulty sensors with a view to possibly having to replace the de-phaser
Before they started replacing anything they had to move the car and all of a sudden it's running perfectly!
They took it out for a good test run and absolutely no problems arose

This was two weeks ago and i've done a 150 round trip on a motorway in it as well as about another 150 miles of rural driving and not had a single problem, noise or stutter so god knows what was going on

I can only think that the abuse by my wife brought about these fault codes in some way and caused the engine to go into a self-preservation type mode when actually there was no real problem, once cleared the engine then thought it's been fixed and came out of that mode.

Any theories on what was going on would be most welcome so it can be fixed/avoided in the future

[lee00069]

Hi neil,

I have a megane cc 1.6 and i have an intermittent issue similare to yours,
My car will sometimes not idle . It starts but u have to accelerate in order to keep the car switched on.
If you let go of the accelerator it just dies. This problem happens sometimes once a week or once a month sometimes once every 6 months and it just randomly decides to sort itself out and idles and goes perfectly again. Its gotten to a stage where i can drive the car when it happens and use the accelerator and brake simultaneously so that it wont cut out.

Please let me know if you do manage to sort your car out.

Lee

[neilldrever]

I was advised by the garage that replacing the crank sensor would be a good start, £15 off eBay and easy enough to replace yourself. That's my plan so we'll have to see