DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Have you reconnected the fuel regulator vac lines? Hoses correct way on the filter?

Also doubt its your immobiliser, I think it's the same as mine if so it just immobilises the starter motor circuit so it wouldn't even crank if at fault.

Thanks Nige. Are you around tomorrow? An extra brain and pair of hands would be great.

Good luck today
Hope it goes well

Thanks Jason

Updates required. We are invested in this now!
You’ve been on it for hours… or have you sacked it off and gone to the pub…

OK so it’s not gone well….

But we think we’ve narrowed it down.

Nige came round (thank a million Nige) and we spent all morning on it

OK so - Fuel is fine - pouring out - while cranking
Spark is fine

However connecting a noid bulb across the injector socket gives no light at all while cranking - it should give a flashing light. Tried on 3 different injectors.

Then we ran tests on the main plug that the ECU plugs into. From that we were able to establish that the ECU is getting power.

We were also able to find the pins that should pulse the injectors and by grounding them to earth we were able to manually pulse the injectors. So the connection from that plug to the injectors is fine and does what it should do.

on the face of it we have an ECU problem. I was worried that when I started it without the rear engine earth connected that somehow I’d ‘fried’ the ECU. However I was able to plug my laptop into the ECU and all came up fine. While cranking it over the ECU was reading what was happening and showing it on screen.

The only measurement that stood out was injector pulse width which was showing at 8-9ms and was in red.

We’ve reached a dead end here though.

So I’ve emailed Canems to see if they can be of any help - if there are tests I can run on the software to check why it isn’t sending the pulse to the injectors

I’ve also reported to the AA that my car won’t start. I’ve put the engine hoist and stand away and they are due here in about half an hour.

At the moment it looks pretty unlikely that I’ll be taking this car on holiday in a couple of weeks time. As has been pointed out to me my plan B for the trip (the GT4) is not so bad - I will fully admit that this comes under the category of first world problems - but I’ve been working on the old car since Christmas specifically for this trip.


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That’s a real shame.
Good to narrow it down but a bummer when it turns out to be the complicated expensive bit.

Has it ‘lost’ the map?

More thoughts:

It could still be an issue with the speed sensors as the ECU needs a signal from them to fire the correct bank of injectors, though we did get continuity at the harness end so the wiring should be up to snuff.

As we could log onto the ECU through the software port, I'm not 100% sure the issue lies there.

After we manually pulsed the injectors by grounding each bank, the engine would chuff into life very momentarily. So fuel up to the injector is happening along with a spark.

Eitherway something isn't triggering the injectors. Even when cranking you can't feel or hear them click.

Your speed sensors are relatively new right? Could they have gone bad over winter, as you said the car hasn't been started since December.

But I got this from Pelican:-

1. If you have spark and all that is missing is the fuel your sensors are good. Period.

2. The injectors need permanent +12V on one side and the pulse (GND) from the DME on the other and fuel pressure of course.


Currently expecting the AA any minute - will write again once he’s been


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True, and the ECU did say it was getting a signal from both sensors. mmmmmmm

OK the AA man has been and just confirmed that we’ve done everything we can and agreed that it’s pointing at the ECU in some form.

We sprayed carb cleaner down the air intake and it fired up (not great but it fired)

Discussed everything we’d done and he came to the same conclusion. He looked at the crank speed sensor but again said if that wasn’t working (and the software said it was as well) then we wouldn’t be getting spark.

He was a nice guy - into old golfs

Looks like I’m dependant on a response from Canems


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ECU's are repairable Mark, don't see why the Canems one wouldn't be either. Hopefully not a full replacement.

Yes that’s what I’m hoping - I mean it was functioning well when I logged into it so hopefully if there is any damage it won’t be too much - at the moment it’s more a question of how quickly they could do anything


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Fingers crossed


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