[Closed] Car keeps stalling – new battery and alternator?

[i]This has been getting steadily worse over the last year[/i]

When was it last serviced?

Petrol or diesel?

Serviced every two or three years but this is our second car and it does less than 3k miles a year now which might be impacting the battery.

edit - petrol

do you have the red battery light on the dash?? If not I wouldn't spend hundreds on an alternator just yet.
Get a battery in it, some places will do free fitting, if not its really easy, just have your radio code to hand.

If it needs loads of revs to keep going that might be something else, do the cheap thing first!

Sounds like a battery to me.

Where would you go for a Battery - Halfords?

not halfords!

Any dodgy looking back street motorfactor. Best place to look is the rough end of whichever town you live in. Your battery will have some number on top, probably 500amps 62ah. Get one of those for about £50, look at yours, disconnect all the wires, take it out, put new one in, reconnect everything (positive first iirc). Job done.

If it only struggles when cold, could be the thermostat/auto choke.

Halfords own brand batteries are fairly good value and come with a 3 year warranty. If you smile nicely on a slow Tuesday afternoon they may even fit it for you and get rid of the old one.
Being a bloke, I just borrowed some tools from them and fitted it in the dark, in the car park and skinned my knuckles when the spanner slipped!

Fuel sensor or filter clogged?

The battery is a quick and relatively cheap fix. Buy the batter from Eurocarparts. Alot cheaper than a dealer and no hassle to do.

If you live nearby I could help you swap over (I'm Manchester but over in WYorks this weekend).

Circa 50 quid if yours is a 1.6?: http://www.eurocarparts.com/ecp/c/Renault_Scenic_1.6_2004/p/car-parts/car-electrics-and-car-lighting/electrical/car-battery/?444770751&1&d49f6746742526ca1b31ba23f0c6df7e57dd97fb&000020

Halfords probably similar- or maybe a tad more.

Thanks for the offer Hora, my reluctance is due to being a bit lazy, I think I can manage it. I will see if I can find a battery from a local supplier and give it a bash.

Thanks all

A new battery is always nice, if your old one is a few years old. Nice quick starting, assuming nothing else is wrong. So it won't hurt. Except for the £60 from your wallet, of course. You could get some Ultegra brakes from CRC for that...

Take your old battery to the scrapyard and weigh it in, I got a tenner for my last one (was a big battery off a VR6 though).

Stalling when cold and needing revs to keep running doesn't sound like a battery issue to me. It's worth trying as you'll need one anyway at some point. Does the car run fine when warm - if so it is unlikely to be the alternator either.

It keeps stalling when the engine is cold and needs loads of revs to keep it going

Agreed, it doesn't sound like a battery (now I've read the OP properly). See Taff's thread about his car earlier. Temperature sensor is likely or some other sensor.

We had this one one family car - temp sensor, few quid. The car thinks the engine is always warm so doesn't pull the choke out - remember those?

If its the original battery its best to change it. You never know when it'll die (probably after a long weekend away in deepest Scotland when your ready to comeback). It'll just refuse to start!

Its soo easy to change (ehow is quick good guide) and I'd recommend wearing glasses, any glasses as a precaution.

I assume a temperature sensor would be a garage job?

This would make sense as the problem is more severe in the winter.

Possibly but you put alot more load on your battery on start up in winter- your lights on, demister, fan on hot/faster etc from the start.

Temp sensors are not a garage job. It's just a little thing that screws into the engine somewhere. Of course you'll need to drain the coolant and re-fill it, and you need to find out where the sensor actually is. Having said that if you're not comfortable doing it then a backstreet garage could do it in a jiffy and wouldn't cost you £50 probably if you just go in and say 'can you change this please'.

Have you tried googling for your car? There are loads of forums for every kind of car with this stuff on.

Hora - once the engine's caught it would be fine battery or not. If the alternator was really bad you'd see the red battery light when the car's running.

Battery/alt won't cause stalling unless the alt isn't charging at all.

Lots of standing around might cause the idle air control valve to get sticky, which will cause poor idle control. And they're renowned for it (I've had to do it twice on my other half's renault megane). Easy job.

But you really need "a service" more than once every 3 years, even if it's barely used. Nay, BECAUSE it's bearly used.

If its the original battery its best to change it. You never know when it'll die (probably after a long weekend away in deepest Scotland when your ready to comeback). It'll just refuse to start!

Just bump start it - no point changing (edit: some) stuff until it's failed. 12 years the battery lasted on my dads car. He'd have spent near 750 quid on batteries if he'd changed it just in case every 3-4 years. That said it's still on it's original exhaust, tip to tail. It's a 1991 vehicle 🙂

Battery/Alternator would fail to turn over, and need constant recharging.

Stalling when cold probably the temperature sensor. They cost pretty much peanuts, and didn't cost much in labour when I got mine done (was part of service anyway). Also had a fault code and ECU light on iirc (on VAG, renault may be different).

Leaving it a long time won't help the battery, though. Mine totally drained to an un-rechargable level in a few months. 8.5V or something after about 4-5 months, due to alarm etc. still working, but me not using the car.

Thanks for all the input.

The car is booked in the garage on Monday for a service, new battery and temperature sensor.

I will let post up the feedback from the garage.

batterys seem to be pretty resiliant ....

mines the original - killed the alternator - took the battery to 8.5v.

new alternator , stuck the power pack on it , started it and went for a drive - been great ever since.

if the battery dies ill use my powerpack to start it again and drive to nearest halfords- it lives in the van anyway !

you deffo have something other than a battery/alternator issue and 2nd the you must service more regular than you do - if you only do 3k a year that suggest town driving - is it choked up full of crap - does it ever get a good blast through the revs "italian tune up" 😀

Sounds like a throttle/idle control valve issue to me. A good clean of said valve may cure things, or alleviate the problem for a while, however some you just have to replace as no amount of cleaning helps.

A faulty temperature sensor would cause starting problems, not cutting out problems.

Trail rat, i have booked in the chemical engine clearout thing with the service so that should help. Its the second car now so its just a run around

A faulty temperature sensor would cause starting problems, not cutting out problems.

Yeah it would... engine would sputter and be prone to die because of mixture problems.

Any modern fuel injected petrol wouldn't. The engine coolant temp sensor is mainly* used by the ECU to calculate the starting mixture, once the engine is running and entered into closed loop control, the ECU primarily relies on the pre cat lambda sensor, knock sensor and throttle position to determine fuelling.
You could disconnect the temp sensor with the engine running, and not notice any difference, unless it's an older motor (pre late 90s) that relies on the temp sensor to determine when to enter closed loop.

*it is often also used to control other items, but not related to fuelling.

The car is booked in the garage on Monday for a service, new battery and temperature sensor.

Worst thing you can do is ask a garage to replace certain things. If you're going to trust them to do stuff, don't diagnose for them. They'll change them anyway and charge you for it even if it doesn't fix your issue. Just tell them the problem and what you think might be the cause to give them a starter in case they're stupid.

i can tell you that there is a good chance your problem is the throttle body it will need removed and cleaned as i have the same problem with mine it's the same year as yours has been like that for ages , or you can have a new one but it costs about £300 for a new body.

Idle control valve is the part in the throttle body that gets sticky. Throttle bodies almost never wear out, literally. ICV's are about £80 give or take if it's buggered.

why are you self diagnosing and asking for confirmation on a bicycle forum?? take it to a back street garage and say.. fix this mate.. its not hard.
fwiw i reckon the battery isnt the issue.

I've come to this post a few hours late but my 04 scenic grande is doing the exact same thing. I give it a few revs and it sets off ok, but then it will stall in 2nd or 3rd on the A59 roundabout (not the best place). MC, your diagnosis sounds the most reasonable. Uwe, let me know what the problem is when you take it to the garage, I really need to sort mine out.
Can't believe I sold my Mazda 6 for this french piece of poo.

Yep its a renault alright.is it a 1.6 petrol ,does it somtimes make a short grinding noise when starting?

Mine was doing this and it wasn't the battery. Put a multimeter on it, if you don't have one go to Maplin/scewfix etc and get one for a tenner. Best tenner ever spent. Put it on a battery that's been sat for a few hours if you get <12.4v then it's probably on it's way out. 12.6v is fine. I can't remember what the voltage should be when the car is started so that you know the alternator is working.

Starting and conking in the past for me has been idle control valve. That was on a diesel and was easy to free up/adjust. Recently I've had a temperature sensor fail that had trouble starting and then conk.

With all this road crap at the moment I'm finding my engine bay is getting covered and could probably do with a bit of a wash down but you obviously have to be very careful doing that!

Take it to someone before you start spending hundreds on stuff that you didn't need in the first place. Pay them to find out what the prob is.. then, take it from there ;O)

Worst thing you can do is ask a garage to replace certain things. If you're going to trust them to do stuff, don't diagnose for them. They'll change them anyway and charge you for it even if it doesn't fix your issue. Just tell them the problem and what you think might be the cause to give them a starter in case they're stupid.

I learnt this the hard way listening to some dooshbags on a forum [not this one]. If its conking out then get them to put a code reader on it. Get them to check the code errors and go from there. A temperature sensor doesn't necessarily pick up on this if it's starting to fail.

as coffeeking. has pointed out in my post it's not the throtle body but the idle control valve however it was renault who diagnosed the problem i think you should be having it looked at first.

have you jump started it from another car? May have possibly blown a fuse in the chargin circuit? Worth having a look before you start splashing out the cash.

Back from the garage. (And no I didn’t go in there like I was ordering of a menu - coffeeking).

Old age and old battery was the guy’s first guess. They ran a diagnostic on the car as they reckoned a temp sensor or anything else electrical would be unlikely (they cause a warning light / error message when they go and I didn’t have this).

The Battery was knackered (when tested) and was the likely significant contributor to the problem, this has been replaced. Also had a gas clean of the engine and an oil/filter change.

Starts and runs a lot better now.

i must have miss read it first time round , i thought you said it had had a few batterys already - if its battery number 1 then yes change it probably will solve all your issues !

It was the original battery that was replaced yesterday. The only non original things are the tyres, wiper blades and light bulbs and now the battery. That’s not bad for a shit Renault!

New Battery now and runs good but it needed the service anyway.

Whats a gas clean of the engine?

I dunno how a new battery would help it run, if the alternator was working. But I am not a mechanic 🙂

Gas clean?

Thats a new one. I bet they charged you £50+VAT for a jet wash of your electrics?

😆

Either that or they fitted NOS? 8)

Gas clean?

Thats a new one. I bet they charged you £50+VAT for a jet wash of your electrics?

😆

Either that or they fitted NOS? 8)

Maybe they just cleaned the ICV or throttle body using compressed air.

See the blurb below of the website. Its basically fuel additives that you can buy but in the garage they disconnect the fuel line and run the engine with a fuel with a very high concentration of solvents. I also assume it involves a bit of an Italian tune up.
I am pretty confident it doesn’t involve jet washing the exterior but whatever!

We use Forté Advanced Formula Gas Treatment that has been specifically formulated to combat driveability concerns caused by the by products of combustion and the adverse affects of fuel degradation.
• Improve engine performance and driveability
• Reduce noxious exhaust emissions
• Improve cold starting
• Prevent fuel system corrosion and control fuel oxidation
• Provide injector and upper cylinder lubrication
Remove lacquer, varnish, acid and soot deposits
Must be done in conjunction with an oil change service.
During the long interval between oil drains, crankcase acids are produced. If left within the system when the oil is changed, these acids immediately go to work breaking down the new oil leading to the creation of lacquers and varnishes which are deposited on the oil system components such as Hydraulic Valve Lifters, Variable Valve Timing Systems and Piston Rings. These components work within very tight tolerances and any sticking due to the deposits in the oil system results in inefficient operation of the system and poor driveability.
• Neutralises crankcase Acids.
• Removes lacquer, varnish, sludge and insoluble deposits from the crankcase.
• Frees sticking Variable Valve Timing systems, Hydraulic Valve Lifters and Piston Rings.
• Stabilises cylinder compression restoring lost engine power.
• Cleans engines internally and provides anti-wear protection.
• Cleans oilways ensuring oil flow to critical moving parts.
• Keeps new oil cleaner for longer

molgrips - Member
I dunno how a new battery would help it run, if the alternator was working. But I am not a mechanic

POSTED 8 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

What Trekster said, the battery needs some life or the alternator works overtime to try and meet the jobs as well as trying to charge a battery that can't be charged. Seen it loads of times at work before we got contestant charge points fitted now only happens when the batteries are well dead.

FWIW your ECU will start the car as long as the starter will turn the engine,they generally run from low drop-out 5v or 3.3v regulators and these operate down to about 1v above their regulated voltage. A shafted battery will drop to about 7 volts during cranking, any less and the starter won't even begin to turn the engine. So they're very capable in brown-out situations.

Also FYI a mildly sticky ICV will be nicely masked by lobbing a nice fresh new battery on the task. Been there, done that too 🙂 When it starts doing it again take a peak at a haynes breakdown diagram of the intake, locate the ICV, remove it (2 or 3 bolts) and clean it with WD40, re-lube with a very light oil and wipe clean, re-fit and all should be well. Free fix in 90% of cases from what I read.