Had the car nearly a month, had a major service about two weeks ago. A few days ago, i pushed the starter button, the engine turned over, but was really lumpy and didnt completely fire up. To stop the drain on the battery and the motor, i pushed the start button again to cancel it. I tried it again and it started fine. This has happened to me a few times in the last few days, both with a hot engine and a cold engine. Any ideas?

Help!!! Is getting worse. Frightened it's going to let me down very soon.

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Had it put on a diagnostic machine yesterday. No codes stored. Still not sure what it is. Anybody help!

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• Have you tried the 'big system reset' (removing battery cable and let everything discharge), obviously having the radio code, first?
• When it fails to start, is it responsive to the accelerator, or not? Blipping the throttle, does that help?
• When it idles, does it seem like it is running on the full four cylinders or not?
• Has the fuel consumption changed?
• What about the performance?
• Any increase of smoke?
• Who serviced the car?

One thing that really confuses me is that you say it happens on both a hot start and a cold start, yet if you try starting and it fails, you try again and it works. What has changed apart from the fact that than it has warmed up a bit?

Hello BOF,

My original post should have said it was ok on cold start. My mistake. The problem only occurs on warm/hot starts.

Fuel consumption is excellent 54mpg actual from my motorway commute.

The car idles fine

Performance is good

No smoke at all

Blipping the throttle has no effect in getting the engine started

The car was serviced by F1 Autocentres as it was owned by them I assume as rep mobile. Serviced every 10k. Car now has 100k.

I have not tried a big system reset, but have done some more digging on the internet and it sounds like it might just need a software update? What do you think?

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I have not tried a big system reset, but have done some more digging on the internet and it sounds like it might just need a software update? What do you think?

You ask me what I think, and I don't think that it needs a software update. There is an issue with some early '08 cars, or something, that has to do with starting, but it is largely a cold start problem and the car starts and then doesn't run correctly. So, as far as I can tell, this is completely unrelated to your problem. Although, I have to say, I could easily be wrong about this...

The 'BSR' is cheaper and easier, so I'd start there and see if anything changes (the odds probably aren't that good, but, given the cost, you would want to have tried it before you move on to anything expensive).

The car was serviced by F1 Autocentres as it was owned by them I assume as rep mobile. Serviced every 10k. Car now has 100k.

I was hoping that you were going to say Ford, because at least the can (mostly) be trusted to use the right oil, and so on. It isn't helped by the fact that I don't trust F1, but that may just be a local branch, who are a bunch of amateurs. Check that they put the MAF sensor wire back, that's something they could have done wrong. I suppose a sticking EGR is quite possible, but I don't quite see why it should give exactly these symptoms.

I take it that when you try to start, the engine turns over at a reasonable speed and it doesn't sound as if the starter is struggling to cope?

Starter motor seems to turns over fine.

I am not too bothered about the fact it has been serviced by F1 as it has been their car for 3.5 years and 100k miles. Why would thy cut corners on their own car. It has been up and down the country and serviced at several branches.

If MAF sensor was not plugged in properly it should have logged it as a fault I would have thought.

I'll give the BSR a go tonight and see how it goes. I have filled up with non-supermarket diesel today just to see if that makes any difference.

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I am not too bothered about the fact it has been serviced by F1 as it has been their car for 3.5 years and 100k miles. Why would thy cut corners on their own car. It has been up and down the country and serviced at several branches.

Because they are (or, at least, one branch was once) crap. My previous car, I once fancied an intermediate oil change and asked them for a price, etc

Q: Do all the parts that you use parts meet the manufacturers spec?

A: Oh, yes, certainly. We wouldn't consider anything else.

Q: ...and what oil...?

A: Everything gets this 15w/40 oil

Q: ...but that can't meet the Ford spec?

A: If you want a special oil, then you'll have to pay extra.

At this point, I walked off. The then current oil was the -B spec, 5w-30 oil and it would be impossible for a 15w-40 oil to meet that spec., so, if it was a 15w-40 oil, inherently, it could not meet the Ford spec. I doubt that many people went into that depth with them, so I imagine most people just got their non-compliant oil. Also, you have to wonder about this 'one size fits all' policy when very clearly it doesn't, some of the Germans, in particular, being famous for engine damage if the wrong oil is used.

I haven't seen any need to visit them since, so things may be quite different now. You'd hope so, anyway.

Was going to use them for some tyres as they are quite a bit cheaper than others

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Well, we are drifting off topic now, but:

• check online; online suppliers are usually the cheapest and usually have the greatest variety of tyres (tyre shopper, camskills, pneus-online, oponeo, black circles, etc)
• expect the wheel nuts to be done up to some excessive torque and check that you could remove them, if push came to shove
• put the tyre pressures right after fitting, whatever pressure you asked them to put in

I wouldn't tend to take advice from any tyre dealer as meaning much (apart from 'which tyres have we had hanging around in the warehouse for longest, and so we need to shift' or 'which can we make most money on'), so, when I say I wouldn't their advice on tyres to have much worth, I'm not really saying anything that I wouldn't say about most physical tyre dealers.

All that said, I'd have less of a concern with them doing something that needed little brainpower to take forward, so, if the tyres were cheap enough...

Have disconnected the battery over the weekend but so far does not seem to have made any difference.

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Nothing really comes to mind, but just to summarise

• it is a warm start problem; it (never?) happens cold
• when it happens, you can 'cancel' and re-try and that works (usually/always?)
• you've tried a reset, and that made no difference

Quite honestly, nothing jumps out of that lot at me... I can only suggest that it might be something specific to the push-button start system, but that's clutching at straws (and one of the reasons I suggested the 'big system reset', because the module that does the push-button start might have got screwed up.)

Yes definitely a warm start problem, cancelling the starter button is the only option otherwise it keeps cranking. Upon retrying the starter button it works on the next attempt or the one after.

I suppose I could try it with the key for the next week and see if that works...

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I've decided to get the software updated as my car has never been done. It's a gamble worth taking for £45+vat. Fingers crossed.

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Latest is no software update available. Seal around throttle housing replaced as was found to be damaged. Performance improved but the dreaded starting problem continues...


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I don't know if this will help but I had very similar symptoms on a 2.0tdci mk 3.

It turned out that the injectors needed recalibrating. After ford had done that the thing was completely fine until I sold it a couple of years later.

Symptoms I had were you would turn the key and it would kind if start but it would hover around the 500 rev mark. Really lumpy Nd the throttle didn't respond.

Turning it off and back on again usually solved it.

Only happened when hot. Like going to get fuel or stopping somewhere for a short period.

Hope this helps

Adrian.

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Thank you Adrian,

What sort of money did Ford charge for that?

you could recode the injectors yourself with an elm config software and an elm 327 cable.

It cost me 80 quid but that included a software update to. But considering it solved my problem I thought it was good value.

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