Car’s been running perfectly. Came to start this morning and it turned for quite a few seconds and then started chugging weirdly like it was half firing.

It then told me there was an engine fault, and to take it to a garage.

I removed the key, tried again and it was fine. The exclamation mark disappeared after about 10 mins of driving.

What gives? Injectors playing up?

Passat 2.0TDi 2006. Which is notorious for having dodgy injectors in some cars.

It will probably be a camshaft sensor or similar.

How do I know this, well mine has been doing a similarish thing for the last few months.

Take it to your garage and they will be able to read any faults codes that were logged when it went funny.

Take it to a garrage and find the fault code (or buy a reader and do it online?)

Could be anything from glow plugs not getting it warm enough to fire in some cylinders, to water in the fuel.

Was the same on all cyliners – the weird noise was exactly in synch with the engine turning.

Air or water in fuel – considered this, but after I started it was perfect. It also wasn’t intermittently firing like it did before I *ahem* figured out how to use the glow plugs…

When it was running lumpy was it idleing at the corrrect RPM?

As above though, just take it into a garrage, the plugging it into the machine bit and reeding the code is usualy quite cheep at an independant.

I know I can get the codes read, I just wondered if STW had any ideas. I know that garages fix cars 🙂

It didn’t run lumpy – it didn’t run at all first time. What I meant was that as I was turning it it started to make an extra noise on top of the starter noise a bit like chugging, but NOT like coughing into life. It didn’t run on its own, it stopped as soon as I let go of the key.

It was most weird – never heard an engine sound like that before. I was convinced something terrible had happened.

At a guess moisture in the electrics (it is a French car after all). Cooler damper nights = condensation. Engine warms up, moisture dries out viola, problem gone.

French car?

You misunderstand tho. I turned it over for 6 or 7 seconds, got weird noise. Removed key, inserted key, started and ran perfectly.

Plus it’s diesel, so no HT circuit.

Don’t worry about it, treat it as a one off 🙂 Might never do it again!

Lol 🙂 Indeed… curiosity as much as anything else.

I don’t know if the current VAG diesel has wiring to the injector solenoids (that sit inside the cylinderhead and get cooked!)like the PD engine did. I had an intermitant misfiring issue with my PD engine: Bought a £20 fault code reader on ebay, googled the code it came up with and it said “injector wiring fault no.1 cylinder”.
Bought the wiring loom (£45), spent an hour fitting it and problem solved.
I bet half the reported “injector faults” are as simple as this as the wiring gets replaced when you change the injectors.

That’s good info chickenman.

It’s the last of the PD engines – with piezo controlled injectors. The older PD engines didn’t have wiring on the injectors afaik, so it sounds like you may have the same engine as me (or similar).

If something goes wrong with it the engine will normally go into “limp home” mode, maybe this is what you experienced with your car?

No no – it was not running. It did not start at all that first go. Not limping, not running.

Limp home!! limp home!! We limped round the Alps and back up the Autobahn.
Only way to make fault go away was to turn engine off for half a minute; it was actually safer to do this in the inside lane infront of a slow lorry than try to pull back off the hard shoulder; never been so scared in my life!!
Had several garages offering to replace fuel pump or to replace all the injectors (for about £1500!),

My car is an automatic, so I was quite puzzled when I actually managed to stall it, although, as it turns out it was not me stalling it the engine was stalling itself.

Most of the time it stalled in a car park, but once it did do it out on the open road. Thankfully not the autobahn like chickenman!

Might be worth taking it in – the ECU is 99% likely to have registered a fault code. When our Astra (1.9CDTi 150) did similar, it was a pretty serious issue. Had it not been under warranty, I would have cried a lot.

I forgot it was a diesel, expensive things to run in comparison to petrol cars when they go wrong aren’t they 😉

Dunno, it’s never gone properly wrong yet 🙂

I’ll get a fault code reader or some gadget.. will be worth it in the long run.

try disconnecting the battery for about an hour or so as this should reset the ecu and hopefully clear the stored fault if not look for someone close to you with vag com to read the faults.

molgrips – Member

French car?

You misunderstand tho. I turned it over for 6 or 7 seconds, got weird noise. Removed key, inserted key, started and ran perfectly.

Plus it’s diesel, so no HT circuit.
Duh, speedreading fail!

dont disconnect battery, waste of time.
limpmode is only active on the journey that the fault was detected.
if you had a warning lamp on the dash when driving this was requested by the ECU due to a fault being detected.
get a copy of VAGCOM from ebay and a USB dongle to connect a laptop to your car. Install Vagcom, setup driver port (will need to identify the USB dongle as COM1), connect to port on underside of steering column, turn ignition ON and search for engine control module, read fault codes DTC’s.
Search on web for SAE fault codes using the 4 didgit code you read from your ECU and this will tell you whats wrong.
The google for repair process, if u can fix yourself do son, if not ask garage to specifically repair to your instructions.
If you go to garage without info chances are your wallet will be randsacked and a lot of unnecessary parts replaced.
PS > dont clear the fault code until you believe youve fixed the issue.
Once you believe the fault is repaired clear fault codes (with ignition ON but engine off)and use for a few days to see if it reappears..