After 3 days of ownership, somethings packed in and it won't start. Any ideas?

[MZpog 10]

Hi all. Purchased my 1992 2L 16v on Saturday, driven 70 (fun filled) miles problem free and then after leaving it parked all day it wouldn't start and AA had to rescue me.

 

The car was parked facing down a fairly steep hill. It cranks ok, has a spark, has fuel up to the fuel management head but not checked if its getting beyond. The AA chap seemed to suspect the fuel management head, but before I start randomly purchasing bits, I thought I'd check on here for any hints/tips.

 

Ideally this car is going to be used as a daily driver, so it needs to be on the button so are there any parts, other than the obvious spark plugs that I should consider changing to avoid AA towing.

 

Stuart.

[steveo29 0]

is the fuel pump priming /buzzing when you first turn the key?

 

could have a look down the plug hole after cranking with a torch and see if its wet or not

[stereoflaver 0]

I had the same problem with my 92 16v. It turned out to be the hall sensor in the distributor. After paying an auto electrician, buying a new ecu, compression testing for head gasket failure, I bought an eBay special distributor n it fired right up n has been no bother since. Dizzy has been on 3 year now.

Edited December 24, 2013 by stereoflaver

[MZpog 10]

Fuel pump is priming and it has a spark so surely it's not the dizz.

[steveo29 0]

so now crank it a bit and see if the plugs /pistons are dry or wet

 

or pull an inj and point it in a jam jar and see if its working

[MZpog 10]

So after charging the battery I flattened due to cracking, attached it to the car and typically it fires into life.

 

I could do with a top 10 of items that fail to cause an intermittent (and hopefully not returning) problem.

[steveo29 0]

fuel pump relay , lift pump , dodgy dizzy , dirty ecu connectors /any connector batt cable

[Mawrick 0]

If this thing is random (especially if it turns out to be a random hot start problem) the first and easy/cheap thing to do is to take off the feed hose from the fuel pump, buy a small non-return valve, and some fuel hose (so you don't have to cut the original hose) and fit the non-return valve between the pump and the old hose.

 

How I did mine - after having a look thru pretty much everything else........:)

 

 

 

turned out VW actually made a kit for fixing this due to some problems with the fuel pump on the VR6 - but this kit is not available from VW any longer...

 

it looked like this:

 

 

 

 

Just make sure the hose and non-return valve is of correct size (can't remember from top of head, but I'm sure someone in here know if it's 8 or 10mm :))