Another A610 back on the road (ish)

Hi all, having stalked your forum for some weeks I thought it was about time I joined the club (cheque should be with you Mr Dell) & said hello. I've recently bought the funny coloured A610 that had been abandoned at Paul Sages place & am intending to restore it to it's original yellow. But so far I've had two weekend runs with it & have broken down twice, a 100% record I'm hoping someone here can help me break! It seems to suffer from the familiar cutting out problem and once left for a while seems to restart. On both occasions it was blisteringly hot, the first also involved sitting in traffic jams on the M4. The second was after it was sitting in the sun all day on one of the hottest days of the year at the Goodwood festival of speed & it promptly broke down about 20 minutes down the road. I'm going to try the trick of running it with the ECU on the back seat to see if it's related to heat transfer through the firewall but any other tips would be hugely appreciated - The girlfriend is likely to start losing her sense of humour regarding the purchase of what she sees as signs of a midlife crisis at this rate

Thanks for your help

Hedley

Yes definitely let the ECU run a bit cooler. You can space it away from the bulkhead, glue heatsinks to the BOTTOM and een add fans if necessary.

My A610 and my Venturi both did it, but they would wake up after a matter of seconds (and promptly cut out again if I tried my right foot).

[mettersl]

Hi,
First of all welcome!
If you do a search in the forum you will(already?) have found a few threads about this, there are no shortage of theories, the hot ecu being the most common.
Personally I'm not a subscriber to the overheated ecu theory as the ecu is in the engine bay of many of its sister cars and that will be hotter than the a610 location.
I am sure i am pushing my luck here, but so far I have had only a few issues with the dreaded hot weather a610 problem in the early days I had the car (2005). In my case an injector overhaul cured the problem as I had two that were leaking all the time, effectively flooding the engine in traffic. A quick overhaul (under 100 quid) and the problem went away and also improved fuel economy substantially.
New batteries have also been identified as a cure, but I can only see that working if the voltage regulator was being affected.mine worked fine with a very dead battery.
For reliability its always a good idea to check all of earths and operation of all the cooling fans. It's not unusual for the two "above engine "thermostats to be reversed as the parts book has them the wrong way around. This means the fans come on after the warning light, useless!
The workshop manual is correct.
Persevere, they are worth it and yellow is the best colour (IMHO) even through mine is red....
Cheers
Lee

but then some have cured it with just an injector swap ....It really needs a systematic check and perhaps even some RR time fault finding .
I have 4 610'S here with one due back soon and some have never had an issue .
Trouble is the fault is so random ..Faulksie has a fault code theory that would seem to be logical and explain why some suffer whilst others never have .We couldn't get into the ecu last time we tried to test but it may well be that a dodgy sensor/input is causing the problem

A show of hands would help with those who have and have not + all the fixes .Also some have made various alterations at once so ...that really doesn't help to narrow it down .

Edit ..wot the other Lee said as well

The behaviour I had on my Venturi was very specific and pointed in no undertain terms to a component (prolly the main injector driver fets) which was/were hitting its max operating temperature. BUT as I said above, the scenario was very specific with it cutting back in again after a few seconds, or immediately with a power-cycle.

The Venturi had fewer than 20k on the clock and had been garage stored since new - the engine bay was immaculate so I hesitate to blame the injectors, but I live to learn!

I'll add that I had a similar issue twice on the GTA.

One time was caused by the TDC sensor - pretty common and just down to ageing.

Second time was more tricky to identify. That was the coil pack. Again just age but then mostly (but not always) connected to heat.

Seeing a few more coil pack issues of late so perhaps the shelf life has expired ....GTA don't seem to suffer with heat soaked ECU mind but perhaps the French are perverse retro-modern gremlin innovators ....

Check out the large round multiplug in the engine bay that connects the engine to the main car wiring. There are approximately 36 pins in this connecter and they corrode with time. Take apart and clean with switch cleaner. They had a plug like this on the early GTA's and this caused the problem you have, that the engine would suddenly cut out, but would start again just by turning the ignition off for a few seconds and then the car would restart immediately!

Andrew

Never thought of that .Well worth a look as I have a few to compare .Sort of thing that might well self correct

[BIG_MVS]

Never had a problem with my Blue car and that included a spirited tour of wales

The red one seems ok so far but not had a long run yet. Previous owner said he never had a problem so it should be OK fingers crossed.

Now that's interesting as the feckers were a botch to get undone on that Blue one .

[BIG_MVS]

Now that's interesting as the feckers were a botch to get undone on that Blue one .

What the loom connectors? Did they look ok inside corrosion wise?

Yes main top engine and the lower were both buggers to undo .All looked OK ,nothing shouting .I give all connectors a quick blast before plugging back together .Might do nowt but can't hurt .
Just another possibility and worth looking at .Might just be some aren't as airtight as others ?????

Good call Andrew. It's something I checked when I found the problem with the headlights/indicators etc that I had a while back. The connections were corroded and 'green' and it's well worth spraying with DeoxIT or similar.

Check out the large round multiplug in the engine bay that connects the engine to the main car wiring. There are approximately 36 pins in this connecter and they corrode with time. Take apart and clean with switch cleaner. They had a plug like this on the early GTA's and this caused the problem you have, that the engine would suddenly cut out, but would start again just by turning the ignition off for a few seconds and then the car would restart immediately!

Andrew

[mettersl]

There are clearly multiple problems here.....the connectors on mine are easy off and easy on with no corrosion (well they were 5 years ago when I last played) and would explain why it's a610 specific.
On the coil pack, the a610 has a big cat on the same side, so that could be a factor, but mine still has it fitted and hasn't missed a beat when used for commuting last week during the heat wave, despite motorway runs followed by stop start.
It got so hot the garage was still cooking the following morning, as we're the rear wings....
Looks like there are no short cuts and even if you can get into the ecu diagnostics, no easy information there either.
That reminds me, I had a faulty air intake sensor when first bought too. Anyone else changed those? Mine thought it was over 100 degrees all the time.
Good luck.