911 PORSCHE

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Into our workshop this week was this nice 911 with electric window trouble. With the drivers side door stripped down the mechanism was found to be faulty. We managed to remove the mech and repair it saving the customer substantial expense of replacement mechanism. Another satisfied customer.

Non running Ford Focus TDCI

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Into our workshop this week was this 2007 Ford Focus TDCI which would not run it had been to 2 other garages that had given up and said it must be an electrical problem. The symptoms were it would almost start or fire briefly then cut out. We plugged our diagnostic machine in and there were no relevant codes present. So we did some initial tests to check injection pulse, fuel pressure and various sensor readings. All seemed fine. Through experience in dealing with these types of engines we know that EGR valves can effect the starting if they are stuck open as they should be closed at idle. So we disconnected an EGR valve pipe and cranked the car. Hey presto it fired and ran. A new valve was sourced in this case it comes with the inlet manifold which makes it trickier to fit as the turbo and exhaust have to be moved to gain access. But again a good professional job was done and the customer was very happy as the previous garages had had the car for 2 weeks trying to solve the problem!
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Here it is with the EGR removed

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Note the heavy carbon build up in the inlet ports of the old manifold this is mainly due to the EGR valve resurculatting the exhaust gases. An oil change and engine flush are always recommend in these cases.

VOLVO V70 Non runner

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Today into our workshop was this 2009 volvo V70. The customer had broke down in Scotland on holiday,the history with the fault was that the car had gone flat over the period of a couple of hours the AA had come out to it and got it going and couldn’t find any faults with it. The car had been Ok for a couple of days but then had been completely dead. A local garage had been out to it first saying it was the battery,that hadn’t worked so they then put a startermotor on and that hadn’t worked. The garage then recommended taking it to a volvo dealer, but because the customer had used us with success previously he wanted it recovered to our workshops. The first thing we did was to plug in our diagnostic machine there were various voltage related codes and ecu communication codes. One thing we have come across with some later Volvos is if the battery voltage drops it can corrupt the immobliser and the system would need a reflash (reprogram of the ecu). This was our initial thought because of the flat battery a couple of days earlier. So to confirm this the easiest place to start was the startermotor circuit. We fed the starter direct and it cranked over but still didn’t start. So we started tracing the circuit to find out where the power for the starter comes from. The starter is fed via a main ignition relay,we linked out this relay and hey presto!the vehicle started. So now we had to figure out what triggered this relay. With the correct wiring diagrams we worked out that once the ignition key is inserted the BCM confirms the key is correct and activates part of the ECU which then sends out a negative to this relay which in turn sends a positive feed back to the ECU activating the rest of the system starting the car. So with a pin diagram for the ECU we traced the wirer to the ignition relay and a break in the wiring was found under the airbox caused due to a cable tie holding the loom too tight and crushing the loom.
As you can see the modern vehicle is a complex machine with many modules and ECU’s that all have to be communicating successfully for the car to work. Here at WIDNES AUTO ELECTRICAL we are specialists at this kind of work so you can be sure of a quick and cost-effective solution to your problems.

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Skoda immobliser trouble

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Into our workshop this week was a Skoda with intermittent non start. Intermittent problems are tricky to find but luckily we have a lot of experience with VAG vehicles and some investigation found a problem with the gauges as these contain the immobliser. We removed the gauges and stripped them down and repaired the circuit board which cured the problem and saved the customer the expense of a replacement set of gauges.

The old classics!

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Two old classics in this week with wiring issues. The Porsche 944 had sunroof issues, the customer had fitted new motors and switches but the fault remained. Broken wiring turned out to be the problem. With the Morris van the customer had stripped the vehicle to respray and had put the wiring back incorrectly and had burnt the loom. So we cut out the burnt wiring and worked out where they had wired it wrong and got it up and running. Two happy enthusiasts picked up their pride and joys ready for the summer.

JAGUAR XKR

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Today in our workshop this JAG XKR came in for a softtop conversion. These lovely machines strangely never came with remote operation as standard. With this conversion the owner now has full open facility where all the windows come down and roof opens with 1touch of a button on the key fob and the same for closure. Also the internal roof switch is now 1 touch rather than having to press and hold it for the duration of the roof operation. One happy customer was now looking forward to a sunny bank holiday weekend with the roof down.

2012 Renault Master

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This Renault Master came in this week with heater blower trouble. It was quickly diagnosed as a faulty blower motor and speed control module. The diagnosis was the easy part. To change the motor the whole dashboard had to be removed as seen below. But with our experience in these type of jobs once the parts were sourced it was fitted and reassembled quickly so the customer could get back to work.

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2012 SKODA FABIA ABS FAULT

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Into our workshop this week was this nice little car with abs faults. It had been into another garage for diagnosis and a rear abs sensor had been fitted, but the fault remained. The garage had then fitted a wheel bearing hoping that would cure the fault,but to no avail. So the lady came to us upset with this garage because they had fobbed her off having taken a load of money off her. So we started our investigation by plugging in our diagnostic machine and confirming the fault which showed up as a rear near side sensor open or short circuit. So the next step is to see if we are getting any signals at the sensor. We found one of the wires to be open circuit so now it’s a case of tracing the wirer back and finding the break. The cable runs up under the back seat then along the sill to the engine bay
. We removed the front passenger seat and exposed the wiring and found the broken wire in the sill. We bought a replacement loom repair section from SEAT cut out the bad section and refitted the carpet and.seat,cleared the fault codes and road tested to confirm the repair was good. A happy customer picked up the car knowing where to come in the future with electrical problems.

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Summer is on its way

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2010 VW Golf

Into our workshop today was this VW GOLF with electric window trouble. We diagnosed it as a faulty mech and as you can see on alot of vw’s the door has to be completely disassembled to fit a new mech, not one for the faint hearted!
But another successful job and another happy customer.

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