03 CDT Conny Tourer - Random cut-out and Smorgasbord of sundry issues :-{

[Les Paul]

Being the prior owner of “The Guvnah”, a P5B Coupe I used to ponder what an estate version of the P5 would look like. Then along came the 75 Tourer J I couldn’t pass this bad boy up in Moonstone Green as it’s the nearest relative to the P5 I’m ever likely to afford but it looks like ‘The Guvnah mkII’ has decided he wants to throw all the common 75 wobblers in one go!

Had the car about four years and up to now it’s run like a swiss watch. It had a dead ITP when bought and I was warned to keep it at least a ¼ full. Fair enough for £695
Last year it cut out without visible reason with a couple of clicks from the glove box area and a few flashes of the oil pressure idiot light. It then started immediately on the turn of the key and didn’t repeat the fault for another 6 months. It then started to fault on a more regular basis, again with the same clicking and flashing routine, but always fired up first crank. A new in-tank pump was obviously long overdue and at that point (never having owned a diesel before) I started googling this fault. Newly informed of the extra load imposed on the 2nd u/b pump I sourced a s/h tank unit pronto and swapped it out a few months back. Up until that point the u/b pump had been doing the fuel lifting donkey work on its lonesome…for four years! Crikey. The UBP has only occasionally sounded its protest at the unpaid overtime it’s put in with a shrill whining cavitationy noise which apparently is the sign it’s on the way out, mostly it just purrs for 30secs and shuts off as it should.
A month ago it had to be low loaded back home from the farm gate and wouldn’t start, next day it fired up immediately…aaaargh. Can’t risk running it now.
One curious feature did appear though whether this is a possible clue or not I don’t know; I keep a couple of dinghies at a local farm (big part of why I bought the car) and on three occasions when leaving it’s cut out in exactly the same place as I turn left out onto the main road, straighten up, drive twenty yards and click click click – flash flash flash?? Twice could be coincidence but three times? OK this is serious.

Decided to give it a good going over starting with the filters, air, fuel, cabin filter (ECU fine – plenums bone dry) and the PCV filter and got an oil filter ready for the garage to fit as I’ve no jack/axle stands or work space come to that. Naturally they were all filthy as was the inlet manifold and the EGR valve was effectively down to a 1” bore with the manky accretions therein. I fabbed up some blanking plates and sluiced the manifold out with white spirit followed by a mix of hot water/ half a cup of soap powder and a cupful of fish tank gravel. Worked a treat, ruined me shoes! Gave the MAF sensor a discrete blast with switch cleaner, checked all electrical connections with a squirt of contact cleaner to be sure and reinstalled everything… right here we go…Rats... nowt!


I’d cycled the pumps a few times to prime the new filter into which I’d added a big slug of Millers Inj. Cleaner as seems to be the advice and gave it a crank: it seemed like it was trying to fire with a chug at every crank revolution but after ten seconds it stopped doing that and seemed to just freewheel on the starter, no chug. Was that just the residual fuel in the rail? I pulled the delivery hose off the filter and it filled a honey jar in about 2secs so there seems to be adequate flow, whether it's supplying when in line and under load I'm not sure of. Prior to the filter swap/s it was actually running but now it's dead as disco. I did fork out on a P-Scan unit a few months beforehand but it didn’t throw up anything other than the ubiquitous glow-plug code. Applying it this afternoon tells me I’ve got a…

P3505 – the G/Ps

P1250 – Delivery pump relay - I did whip out the relay but without knowing what if anything is inside it re diodes/chips or whatever I was loathe to clap volts onto it willy nilly.

P1269 – Delivery pump control sys. - I suppose if the relay is tatered there wouldn’t be any pump control sys.

And something called
P1e00 – CAN comms to ASC (?)


...and I did scavenge one reading of the low pressure supply at 340kPa on cranking which slowly fell back when cranking stops.


One oddity which I caught out of the corner of my eye as I pulled the OBD connector; the LED in the l/hand mirror adjustment selector button was lit, when I pulled the connector it then went out? Was that part of the car’s ‘handshake’ with the P-Scan unit? I did grab a screenshot of what ‘live’ data was available seeing as it isn’t running and can upload that if it might pin anything down.

So that’s where I am at the moment. First job is to get this baby purring again and then attend to the ABS judder (local garage couldn’t figure it), the water ingress from the bodged rear light clusters, the spinning door lock barrel, the variable fob locking/alarm, airbag light/connector and the bipolar CD changer, the feel of the bonnet release means I daren’t even shut the bonnet down until I’ve stripped and lubed ‘em, oh and some numpty replaced a centre punched driver’s window without vacuuming out the seal so the first time he pushed the up button…screeeeiiiiiiitzch!! Been bugging me since I bought him, it gots ta go.

All advice and critique welcome.