jolly Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 Hi, I'm almost at the end of my tether trying to figure out this problem - and if anyone here can help me out I would really appreciate it. I've got a 98 406 coupe - 3.0 v6 manual. great car. bought it 3 years ago, and there has been an intermittent problem which has been getting progressively worse. basically, from time to time the car will stop pumping fuel for a very small amount of time - say a few seconds. really quite violent stop - as if the fuel pump has halted. then it comes back fine. the car has had about 60 hours of diagnostics at caffyns peugeot, and they can't find any faults. it gets worse though, the problem gets more frequent - e.g. every few minutes instead of every few days. then the car just stops completely. usually when I'm driving at full-pelt down the motorway, resulting in a freewheel into the hard-shoulder. once it's stopped it will not restart - again as if the fuel pump has gone. I get the orange engine-management problem light coming on. I disconnect the battery - by removing postive terminal - alarm goes off. reconnect battery - alarm still goes off. alarm will not turn off at all now - even with key. but, the engine works again. eventually after about 10 mins the alarm will stop its noise - really very anonying. the problem is that it's an intermittent problem and that I cannot get the car to the garage whenever it does happen, and they cannot reproduce it. the ECU doesn't store any faults. could this be a faulty ECU? - that's my gut feeling. has anyone experienced or heard of anything similar to this before? regards steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soapsuds Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 MODS - needs moving to the French Forum...... Sell it! Keep your fingers crossed that it wont happen on the test drive. Learn from your mistakes and dont buy French again! Seriously though, you are going to hit many brick walls if it has had that much diag. done on it with no results! You are throwing good money after VERY bad..... Good luck..... Oh and welcome to TSN! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeilB Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 Sounds like the ECU is knackard to me, but have a word with these guys as they are pretty good at pin pointing where problems are on Pugs. http://www.psooc.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A3Floyd Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 these cars are well known for ECU problems. My friend had one and he spent a small fortune trying to trace a fuel problem and the dealership was useless and got him to replace just about every part of the fuel/ignition system cos they simply didn't know what the problem was. In the end he sold it, still faulty. It's a real shame cos the 406 Coupe is in my opinion one of the nicest coupe designs around. A work of art. i borrowed my mates one for a month and loved it SOOOOOO much. just the reliability problems that put me off. It's very hard to help you out with this one though. it could well be the ECU but it could also be something as silly as a dodgy earth somewhere. You really need to get a good auto-electrician to have a look at it. Dont waste your hard-earned on a Pug dealer, they're pathetically useless. let us know how you get on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 thanks for the comments so far folks. any suggestions for a good auto-electrician in the north kent area? I'm just about at the stage where I'm going to sell it - if I reset the battery before driving it will go a few days without the problem recurring cheers, Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A3Floyd Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 [ QUOTE ] thanks for the comments so far folks. any suggestions for a good auto-electrician in the north kent area? I'm just about at the stage where I'm going to sell it - if I reset the battery before driving it will go a few days without the problem recurring cheers, Steve [/ QUOTE ] Dont sell it yet matey - they're too gorgeous to throw away. Someone on here should be able to direct you to a decent auto-electrician. fingers crossed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 true - other than this - I _love_ the car. one more thing - it's got a supersprint exhaust tacked onto it with a very nice airfilter which make it purr very nicely. the problems have got worse since I added this last christmas - but they were getting worse anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danksy Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 jolly, I would try fitting some supplementary earthing points, sometimes poor earth can create ECU problems. At least its a cheap, and not so drastic solution as selling your pride and joy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 OK -danksy - I'm willing to have a go with new earthing points. how would I go about doing that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pritesh Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 attach your earth points to the bare chassis mate....use any of the excisting holes/bolts in the engine bay with a washer and remember to wipe the area down first. when i had my pug it seems to solve my problem...but I did get rid of sharply! as i couldnt face being broken down on the M25 any more! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danksy Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 You could either by a kit like this.... or do it yourself by buying lengths of earth wire (20mm). Basically run some more earth points from you battery to alternative chassis grounding points (where there is metal!) Also you can cross earth from one chassis point to another. A good place to start would be the original earthing strap. WAK has done the same thing to his TT... WAK's engine earthing page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 OK, sorry for the naiivity - but I'm used to tinkering on the innards of my MGB, and leaving the insides of the pug to the garage. I'm assuming you mean to attach an earth wire from the chassis to somewhere else - not sure where though. On my MG, I've got all my earths coming onto the cast iron block - which then has an earth cable onto the chassis. The pug has an aluminium block, so not sure where the earth point would be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 ah... very interesting. someone from the yahoo peugeot group suggested an earthing problem too. I guess this is the problem with fancy new lightweight engines and why I've never seen such problems with cast iron lumps in the past Luckily I've got about 100m of earthing cable from earthing my bathroom recently. doesn't look pretty, but it will look obvious in the engine bay - and that's a good thing now. I'll try it out tonight and see how it goes. Thanks for the help folks - I really appreciate it. This is the kind of forum I've been looking for for a while now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 one more thing... this is probably even more annoying than the stopping and is related as the alarm is problematic whenever I reset the battery to get going again... it's fresh on my mind as I had to run out to check the alarm now the alarm is going off at random times for mibbe 10-30 seconds. so it's parked out front, nobody tampering with it, and it's gone off 4 times today already. sometimes it comes on when I'm driving - right before the car stops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 6, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 just ordered 5m of cable to experiment with from here: http://www.cablesexpress.co.uk/shop/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=28 and ring terminals from here: http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=17661&doy= will let you know how I get on. thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChadW Posted September 6, 2005 Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 Hi jolly, Sure TSN won't mind me pointing you in the direction of www.peugeot406coupe.com if not already been there. Off top my head the best place to start would be MAP fuel sensor, as this will cost about £40 to replace and will probably sort it out in one go. Btw Coupe is a work of art but mine seems to be pretty reliable, only one broken exhuast so far, compared to my last car an Audi TT which had about 4 different probs. Ok french means not as high quality but whats the point paying for quality if it does go along the road like it should, and people still hit the car or scratch it anyhow, not like German cars are indestructable is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirving Posted September 6, 2005 Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 I had the same problem on a Coupe with the ECU, but mine was chipped. However running on diagnostics revealed nothing to cure the problem! I eventaully traded the car in as the problem did seem to get worse and you eventually lose all confidence. Still one of the best looking cars on the road today and not dated as yet! Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 6, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 springbok - you had the same problem? how often would it happen? were you able to get the car going again like I could with battery disconnect? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 6, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 6, 2005 ok, found some more info... when the car stops, it's not as immediate as I made out. the car will slow down to <1000rpm and then stall. as if the fuel pump had stopped functioning. when I try to start the car, ignition fires, but car stalls immediately. I reset the battery and it works fine. someone's suggesting that this sounds like it could be caused by a faulty inertia-switch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jolly Posted September 11, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 11, 2005 hohoho. on a whim - sounded like a lot of problems with other 406's - I replaced the MAP sensor - £66 - fixed the problem. amazing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danksy Posted September 12, 2005 Report Share Posted September 12, 2005 Excellent nice one mate now time to complain to the stealers that they couldn't sort it, and demand a refund Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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