Hi,
my old but keeps going R reg Astra 1.4. 135,000 miles.
Last year it got a serious problem of randomly losing the engine for a few seconds. Just instantly off, then instantly on again. It got so bad I called the AA out after a frightening drive to work one morning. Eventually we managed to catch the fault in action and as I cranked the engine in the few seconds of fault available, the AA man reported no spark.
At his sugggestion I replaced the ignition module, bought from my local Andrew Page, don't know the exact make. I fitted it and the car was great for a while. A couple of months later it did it again, just suddenly dying for maybe 3 or 4 seconds, then carrying on as if nothing had happened. This only happened a few times, then mysteriously stopped.
No amount of twiddling with connections, pulling wires, tapping or banging things could ever re-create this fault. Very early on I had sprayed switch cleaner on all the multipin connections from distributor to module etc, still no cure, sprayed everything again, no different.
At the moment I have had probably a good 8 months of trouble free motoring, but I suspect at some point in time this is going to happen again. Probably mid winter, in the rain, on the way to an important job.
When I had the AA man looking at it, he wasn't able to read any fault code data. He said something about it may be due to the dashboard ECU warning light not working - I have never seen this light up, so either the bulb is blown or it just doesn't light. Don't know how this may or may not be related to the fault.
Any insights appreciated.
Cheers,
Gareth.