Hi

I have a 1.4 16v Y reg and today I moved the car outside the garage and shampood the upholstery and unblocked the drainage channel in the engine bay on both sides as the drivers side footwell was getting wet (it was full of leaves as expected). all well and good....

...got back in the car to start it and oh dear, turning the ignition on, all of the dashboard lights flash in unison and I can hear a whirring noise which sounds like a central locking pump which stops after 3 seconds or so. Turning the key to turn the engine over makes the immobiliser click rapidly (in right hand side of dash it appears) and engine does not turn over.key seems slightly stiff to turn at this point as well??

No idea what has caused it, only thing I can think of is that the plastic trim that we had to remove beneath the wipers was a bit of a pig to get the lip back into the slot beneath the window so had to tap at it fairly hard with fist. thinking the car may have sensed this as an attempt to break the window?....a bit stumped, not sure how to reset it and not sure why the whirring noise happens during ignition on. I have tried locking and unlocking car, checking all doors are shut properly etc.

any help appreciated! stuck at my parents and need to get back home as I have work tomorrow!!

thanks in advance

also a selection of things wont work on the car whilst ignition is on such as lights, wipers, radio. however brake lights and ac/fan will work.......all doors will unlock and central locking works but rear boot electronic switch will not work/open the boot.

Flat battery?

no its fine, battery is fairly new, started fine this morning.

check fuses on top of battery, check also connections on battery are tight ??

Edited 2 December, 201213 yr by bluecar1

Breakdown guy here now, somehow battery had drained off in a few hours even though we have never had problems before. now epc light is on and revs bouncing up and down around 800-1200rpm regularly at its own will!? Still a non runner.

The revs bouncing and the EPC light are a sure sign of a discharged battery, what's it charging at?, does the battery warning light come on?

battery is charging at 14.4v and he said alternator is fine, battery light is off. just found a couple other posts regarding bouncing revs but no conclusive answers, one suggests a brake light switch?! and the other the EGR which sounds more likely.

update: car just started running fine after 10 mins as the guy was loading it onto the truck!.......the fun countinues

I've encountered the bouncing revs and EPC light after jump starting one with a very flat battery, they're usually OK after a good battery charge. I think that you may be looking at why the battery discharged in the time.

Ah ok, so possibly a battery change might do the trick? It did have very filthy egr valve and breather pipe when I got it so cleaned then out, also cleared the egr fault code that came with it. The epc light is different but the breakdown guys fault reader also said blocked egr....a bit confused. Maybe it's because that is a generic fault code?

The car has only 4-5 times momentarily stopped whilst pulling away then restarted again fine which was weird.was thinking/hoping all of this could be solved with an egr replacement but now you mention the battery I am unsure. The doors were open for about 3-4 hours today when we cleaned it but never noticed if the interior lights stayed on and ran it semi-flat.

OK so I am back at work today, the car is at home, still with the EPC problem and the consistent bouncing revs which I assume is a safe mode of some sort? I double checked the fault code this morning and it is the common P0404 EGR control circuit range/performance

I need to get this car sorted asap as it's my gf's and she uses it as her work vehicle. If the battery was indeed to blame then would replacing it solve the problem? I cannot find a conclusive answer on the web and I am concerned that it could be a while detecting it. need to have some sort of process of elimination rather than replacing every part in turn as some people seem to do.

Last night as the guy was loading the car on the breakdown truck it started working fine again (having been on bouncing idle for 15 mins or so). We were tempted to try and drive it but 5 mins later the engine started bouncing again. It did this all by itself and nothing was being touched so I am dubious that the problem is battery related and that we somehow drained it yesterday when cleaning it out (door lights left on for hours? does anyone know if they go off automatically?)

If it is the EGR then I see some people have tried tapping it with a hammer to see it unsticks at that point. another post I saw mentioned a brake light switch problem. I am going to take a couple hours off of work to try and fix it so any problem cause elimation methods you can think of will be appreciated.

I should add that at the minute my default option is to replace the battery in my lunch break as suggested by FordFan then see where that gets me, if it still does it then I will need to know where else to start looking.

Update:

I got a new battery yesterday at lunch time and before i fitted it I thought I would try and test a few things to see if I could stop the fault. To my annoyance the car started fine and I could not bring back the fault even though it had done it only 4 hours ealrier that morning!

I went ahead and replaced the battery anyway and did a long drive in the car, the engine management light came on (although this has happened before) and it was the p0404 error, it also had a second error code which was the same but said 'pending' beside it? <any idea what difference this makes? ? I cleared both half way through the journey and they haven't come back yet

The car seems to be running as normal so hopefully the battery change has cleared the bouncing revs/EPC problem although I will not be completely shocked if it returns...but one can hope

Thanks all for your help, I will post back if the problem re-occurs.

When it's doing it's bouncing thing.... How does it drive, a bit unpredictably? Any excessive smoke out the back when it starts?? They would be signs of the coolant sensor being at fault..

When I had my 16v a few years back.. the finger was always pointed at a dirty, or faulty, throttle body.. people getting good results after a through clean.

Edited 4 December, 201213 yr by Rob.

Na, no smoke to speak of. Only drove about 30 yards before replacing the battery. I did clean the breather pipe and throttle body about two months ago but tempted to take off egr and inlet and clean it fully, it was filthy!

I'll bear the coolant sensor in mind.

glad you replaced the battery as it sounded buggered, if it held charge it wouldn't need to charge that high unless maybe evrything in the car was switched on.

have you thought about getting it plugged in for diagnosis as it could save you money in the long run :-)

the bouncing rev's could be the engine trying to charge the buggered battery too!

Edited 4 December, 201213 yr by Patriot1

Well the alternator was outputting just fine, not had on plugged professionally although I do have an obdII reader so I can clear the errors and do some diagnosis myself. Car is still fine, I'm amazed all of that was down to a battery that was on its way out.