Hi,

The car ran out of fuel, and as the title says, now it won't start.

It is a Felicia 1.9, V reg

We have put two cans of diesel in it because I was told 1 often isn't enough.

The fuel line from the filter to the engine has fuel in it, a brave next-door neighbour even gave it a suck to make sure.

We have also tried jump starting it in case the starting attempts have flattened the battery.

Still no joy.

We have been looking for a primer or squeeze bulb on the fuel line for priming the fuel pump but can't find one.

Help.

Airlock?

not too sure but maybe on those you need to bleed the injectors or even prime the pump?

almost certainly an airlock of some description in our opinion, but we haven't got a haynes for this vehicle, any clues on how to prime the fuel pump, or bleed the injectors?

hi, crack the injector pipe nuts while its being turned over, until fuel comes out,, or try towing it to bump start it,,, as a last resort fill the air box with easy start

crack the injector pipe nuts (slightly) and crank till you have fuel flowing, then tighten and once you can get it firing crack and tighten each one again one at a time just to make sure that you have all of the air out.

from memory i think there is also a bleed nipple on the pump itself .

personally, i would not use easystart on a modern diesel!

you need to fill the fuel filter with fuel first, do this by removing (carefully) the plastic Tee piece on it and dribbling fuel into it until its full and refit the tee piece, then crack off one injector pipe at a time and crank it till fuel is coming out and it should go then but they can be right buggers if they have run dry.

you can also suck the air out thru the little bleed nipple on the inlet pipe if you have anything to suck with.

sometimes the really stubborn ones will not go without a tow down the road tho just be careful to use a high gear and not over rev it

And make sure that your glow plugs are actually working... I made the mistake of assuming they were OK on my Mum's car and it led to all sorts of unnecessary shenanigans!

And make sure that your glow plugs are actually working... I made the mistake of assuming they were OK on my Mum's car and it led to all sorts of unnecessary shenanigans!

How would one check that one's glow plugs were working?

If you've got the injectors out it's easy, you will see a glow. If not, then make sure the resistance of each one is within spec (disconnect the live feed before doing this for obvious reasons!). Without glow plugs, these will not start, trust me on that!!!

as you may have guessed all our other cars have been petrol, so thanks for everyone's help.

Ok

So far we have:

taken the t-piece off the fuel filter and topped the filter up and replaced the t-piece

then cracked the 17mm nuts on what we reasonably assume to be the injectors. These nuts are next to the feed from the coil so we are pretty sure we have the right ones. We haven't undone them completely just cracked them open.

Then one of us has got in the car and turned the ignition to position 2, waited for the coil light to go out, and then pumped the accelerator. Whilst the other watched the engine bay. Air was seen to come out of these cracked nuts and then stop, but at no point could fuel have been described as flowing freely.

We then attempted to start the vehicle using a jump start.

We have gone through this process twice, once with all injector nuts cracked at once and once cracking in sequence (left to right) waiting until air-bubbles stop before moving on to the next. On the second run through there was space for more fuel in the filter.

We haven't checked glow plugs yet as I only just read the latest advice, but the car was in full working order, seconds before it ran out of fuel, day before yesterday.

The fact that you are all saying "until fuel flows freely" suggests to me that we are doing something wrong. Any idea what it is?

Edited 16 May, 201214 yr by diche

a bloke came down the road whilst we were working on the car and suggested cracking 1 and 4 and then turning it over, so we have tried this as well. The problem with cracking nuts and turning it over at the same time is we would need 3 people, one for he car with a working battery, one for the skoda and one to crack the nuts. Should we keep persevering or is there something else we should be doing. Worried the battery on the donor vehicle is at risk.

I'd be fairly certain you've got air in various lines.

Suggest you put a charger on the felicia battery overnight and then prime everything with fuel again and give it another go.

Probably worth making sure you've got about 10L of fuel in the rear.

Did you put a new fuel filter in after it ran out, or just put in new fuel?

If you have not replaced the filter, then do so and again fill it with derv.

When you run out, all the crud in the bottom of the tank will make it's way into the fuel filter and can seriously reduce the flow rate.

Bleeding these can be a PITA, but you need to be methodical - as has already been said, manually fill the fuel filter (I'd fit a new one as you would have to bleed it anyway, and they're not that expensive), and then you need to be sure fuel is reaching the pump.

I have a diesel Focus, and it's a B***H to bleed - reason being that the pump doesn't allow fuel to flow freely, so you can't just put a suction pump on the outlet and then suck fuel through. So what i did was to prime the pump itself (by pumping clean diesel from a container) into the pump, until it came out of the outlet. I also noticed it came out of the (cracked off) pipes that would lead to the injectors if the engine was turning over.

THEN I made sure the fuel filter was primed with fuel, and I sucked fuel up from the tank to the inlet of the pump (I'd disconnected the fuel inlet pipe in the previous stage) - to make sure that fuel would be sucked in, NOT air when I got the thing bled. With fuel coming out of that pipe, I clamped it off momentarily (so the fuel wouldn't run back down to the tank) and then re-attached the pipe to the diesel pump.

I then tightened the pipes where they come out of the diesel pump, and cracked them off on the injectors. Turned the engine over, and within a few turns, fuel was coming out of the injector unions. TIghtened up, away we went.

HOWEVER, note that you won't get a LOT of fuel running out of the unions when you loosen them off - diesels don't use a lot of fuel, so it'll be a bit of a dribble, not a geyser of diesel.

A little rubber bulb "diesel transfer pump" is invaluable in this sort of situation - without it, you'll be messing about for ages. £4 well spent. Even better with a bit of transparent tube, then you can see what's actually happening in the pipes...

Admitted defeat, and was glad I did

Ended up calling a mobile mechanic as we really didn't feel we were getting anywhere.

He found that the diesel pump had logged a fault code and completely shut down, so whatever we did we weren't going to get it started until the code had been cleared.

£35 well spent.

Thank you to everyone for their assistance and support.

P.S. He used easystart.

oh well at least it goes now and maybe a lesson learnt on how far it will go on the orange fuel light!!

easystart is a last resort for me but I find any aerosol will usually get the stubborn ones going as long as it does not have an airflow meter.

good news all round then .