I thought I would relate a little saga I have had with my 1.9 tdi. After a week or two of driving my newly acquired car, I found that on the first coldish morning, the starter motor refused to fire. At first I thought I hadn't turned the key far enough so tried again. Still no joy. On leaving it a few minutes it worked fine, and was OK for a few more days until the next chilly morning. I am not talking about sub-zero, just 2 or 3 degrees above.

I mentioned it to the guy I bought it from and it turned out this had been an issue in the past, and he had taken it in to have it checked over but it always fired up at the garage and they were not able to find out what was going on.

All sorts of ideas went through my mind - they do, don't they? - and I became used to idea that I might have to try a few times on cold days or leave it a few minutes and try again, and that's how things continued until this week. I had sometimes found that giving the key a bit of a wiggle helped, and this should have been a clue, but I didn't catch on.

Monday was a very frosty morning, and try as I might, I could not get the starter motor to activate. Eventually I called in RAC Home Start and he diagnosed a dodgy starter motor after checking voltage readings and the like around the starter motor. He gave me a tow-start and I drove the car straight to my pet garage to get a replacement starter motor fitted. That was yesterday afternoon, and he had it done by 6 o'clock.

This morning I got a call from him saying that although they had fitted the new part and it all worked fine yesterday, today when they came to move the car out of the way, it refused to work. So further tests eventually found that the ignition switch was playing up. Remember the "little wiggle" that sometimes worked?

Anyway, all's well that ends well (apart from the bill), and I thought I would post up the story in case it helps anybody in the future.

Peter

Edited 17 January, 201214 yr by wealdenpete

I thought I would relate a little saga I have had with my 1.9 tdi. After a week or two of driving my newly acquired car, I found that on the first coldish morning, the starter motor refused to fire. At first I thought I hadn't turned the key far enough so tried again. Still no joy. On leaving it a few minutes it worked fine, and was OK for a few more days until the next chilly morning. I am not talking about sub-zero, just 2 or 3 degrees above.

I mentioned it to the guy I bought it from and it turned out this had been an issue in the past, and he had taken it in to have it checked over but it always fired up at the garage and they were not able to find out what was going on.

All sorts of ideas went through my mind - they do, don't they? - and I became used to idea that I might have to try a few times on cold days or leave it a few minutes and try again, and that's how things continued until this week. I had sometimes found that giving the key a bit of a wiggle helped, and this should have been a clue, but I didn't catch on.

Monday was a very frosty morning, and try as I might, I could not get the starter motor to activate. Eventually I called in RAC Home Start and he diagnosed a dodgy starter motor after checking voltage readings and the like around the starter motor. He gave me a tow-start and I drove the car straight to my pet garage to get a replacement starter motor fitted. That was yesterday afternoon, and he had it done by 6 o'clock.

This morning I got a call from him saying that although they had fitted the new part and it all worked fine yesterday, today when they came to move the car out of the way, it refused to work. So further tests eventually found that the ignition switch was playing up. Remember the "little wiggle" that sometimes worked?

Anyway, all's well that ends well (apart from the bill), and I thought I would post up the story in case it helps anybody in the future.

Peter

That's great news, thanks for sharing

It is really useful to have technical feedback like this! Now enjoy your car.

I think there have been a couple of other people with dodgy ignition switches in the last month or so. I have to say as soon as I started reading this post, that is what was in my mind.