Hi there,
I have a peculiar problem with my K Reg 216 Sli (Honda Engine). When I start the car first thing in the morning it starts no problem. When the engine has been running for a while, reaches operating temperature and I turn off the ignition for a couple of minutes it refuses to re-start. This can be remedied by waiting for 5-10 minutes and it re-starts no problem.
I have noticed that when the ignition is turned on there are a number of "clicks" in the main relay. When the non-starting problem occurs, there appears to be a final relay "click" missing. This reappears when the car decides to re-start. I also noticed on a couple of occasions last summer during the heatwave that the car would not start even though it had not been running that particular day. It appears that the problem is temperature sensitive because it will not start on hot days and the warmer the weather the longer it takes to re-start.
This problem appeared when I first bought the car (2 years ago) but only happened occasionally. It now happens every day and has become progressively worse. I took the car to a garage that advertised Rover diagnostics but they said when it was hooked up to the computer everything checked out ok. No errors in the ECU memory, Nada. Fortunately I wasn't charged for anything because they didn't fix the problem.
I eventually took it to a Rover dealer to see if they could analyse the problem. They had the car for 2 days and said exactly the same thing, no ECU errors, Nada. I gave them as much detail about the symptoms as I could and they said they would investigate further. A few hours later I was told that they had reset the engine ignition timing and that they could not replicate the problem. For this I was charged £45. I picked the car up, drove home, turned off the engine and lo and behold, problem still there. There was no problem with the timing anyway, when the engine runs it drives like a dream.
Does anybody on this group have the same problem? If so, any ideas as to what may be causing this?
Thanks.
Paul