Club 80-90 Forums

Another intermittent problem on my 1990 T25. It was 1.7 diesel but is now a 1.9 Aaz turbo diesel.

Hopefully, another forum member has experienced a similar problem and has already found the solution.

Occasionally when you hit a bump all of the electrics dissappear. Sometimes they reappear after less than a second, sometimes they reappear at the next bump. Longest they're gone for is about three minutes. The engine keeps on running, but clocks (except speedo), indicators, wipers, washers and horn all stop. It's only happened in the day on the open road, so I don't know about headlamps or starter motor. When the power comes back, the glow plug lamp lights up for a few seconds and the coolant warning light flashes a few times. It's almost as though the ignition has been turned off then turned back on again, except the engine keeps on running and the radio stops working (radio normally works without turning the ignition on).

There's plenty of juice in the battery, the terminals are clean and tight, the black box in the engine bay's dry, the fuse box behind the glove box is clean and dry, no obvious rust behind the fusebox (I haven't started taking things apart yet, so I might find some hidden rust) and the loom is all original.

The puzzling thing is that the radio stops working, but the engine keeps on running. Does this rule out a faulty inIit ion switch?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Many thanks,

David.

Sounds like a major earth problem to me.
A diesel will run until you switch off the fuel supply.

Errr.... fuel cutoff solenoid needs power otherwise no fuel passes.
If terminals are all good, possibility of cables broken inside insulation especially main battery pos.

Thanks for the information chaps. I'm old enough to remember when diesels were stopped by pulling a cable operated stop valve and would run even without a battery fitted. At the other end of the spectrum, I've also had a 1z tdi shut itself down due to lack of power to the ecu when the alternator failed.

Anyway, back to the T25. The only time the radio shouldn't have power when there's power at the stop solenoid is when the ignition switch is in position three and the engine's cranking. Also, wipers, horn etc all stop working when cranking. This makes me suspect the ignition switch. Having said that, everything's had twenty five years of vibration and damp, so anything's possible.

Thanks again for the good information,

David.