Rover 75 1.8 non-turbo diagnostic

[mcirsta]

Hi,

I've bought a pscan.eu interface and tried it on my Rover 75 1.8 non-turbo. I tried to debug the car as it won't start.

The problem is that the car went through an engine rebuild with the engine block having been changed.

The engine light is on and it shows a P1520 error which comes back whenever I clear the errors. The engine light was not on before so this might be the cause for the non-start or it might be a red herring.

Also I hope I connected to the care in the right way, I wish there were more auto choices or some more documentation. It would have been so much easier of the correct mode to connect would have been auto-chosen. I chose Petrol and then the MEMS3 ISO option, the MEMS3 BMW option dind't seem to work.

I didn't see any live data but my question is if this is normal, should the live data be visible even if the engine won't start but the contact is on ?

I also got some message about the K-lines, waiting for the K-lines to settle or something.

[pscan.eu]

P1520 is normal on the MEMS3. This is documented at http://www.pscan.eu/mems3.html

Both ISO mode and BMW mode should work. The BMW mode was the first one that we developed, but later on we discovered that some tools connect using a different protocol which seems more reliable and so we decided to give customers both.

If the tool logs in well enough to give you error codes then it should also give you live data. If it doesn't then there is something wrong which we need to look at.

If you have used either EOBD mode or ISO mode then you have to totally turn off the ignition and back on before BMW mode will work, and you have to try it first. To be honest if MEMS3 ISO mode is working there isn't much point in BMW mode though.

What year is your 75? We will have to find a 75 owner local to us with a similar car so that we can try it out.

Another tip is that if your car is not running it might be that the battery voltage is a bit low and making the diagnostic protocol unreliable. If you can get it on a charger or jump leads to another car it might just make the difference.

[mcirsta]

Thanks for the quick response, it's a car made in 2002. It could be the battery but the car is now at a local service and I seriously hope they're not that ... silly . It's worth giving fully charging the battery a try though I guess though I can hear some stater noise ....
I'll give it a try and let you know.
Overall I quite like the software but it's still not quite user friendly and seems more like something the software author would use. I'm pretty excited to finally have something like this working for my Rover though.

Is there a list of parameters that are accessible ? Anything in particular I can look at in this case of no engine start ?

Thanks.

[MGJohn]

Shot in the dark here.

Non-starting 75/ZTs can be a result of the FFS ~ Fuel Filter Syndrome.

The In-Tank Fuel Filter ( BMW component ) can partially "undo" and this is what happened to my MG ZT 1.8t. No way would it start even with a spinning engine on a healthy battery. If I introduced some fuel into the the spark plug holes, it would start immediately and stop as soon as the spoon full of fuel in each cylinder had been used. So I searched both the 75/ZT and Xpower sites and after describing that my car would not start, was advised to check the in-tank fuel filter. Sure enough it had partially separated and undone a few degrees which resulted in insufficient fuel pressure to the injector.

I was advised to fit the FOC ... Fabled Orange Clip which is difficult to do with a nearly full fuel tank. The orange plastic clips cost about six quid posted. Fitted that and within a few seconds of the system priming .... immediate start.

Here's a tip. Never having worked inside a fuel tank before ~ terra incognita for me ~ I visited a local breaker yard and the first Rover 75 I looked at had already removed the rear seat giving immediate access to the two panels covering Fuel Tank access. I learned much by simply removing those panels on the scrap car. Then guess what ... it had the FOC fitted on the Fuel Filter. I had already ordered a spare FOC... but bought the fuel filter assembly with fuel pipes and its clip for eight quid anyway.

Having worked on a scrap car, from that experience working on my ZT was so much easier as I knew what to expect...

There again, your non-starter could be due to any number of other reasons... Here's my ZT which has been a joy to use since I got it running back in the early spring.



It was a "spares or repair" ebay auction non-starter car with suspect Cylinder Head Gasket damage. Thus rather than spend on the car, the previous owner decided to sell on rather than fix it ...

[mcirsta]

Thanks for the advice. I think I forgot to mention the important part, that the engine was rebuilt and the motor block changed so I guess it could be a number of reasons but I still wouldn't exclude the fueling system. The car was raised on a platform and probably suffered a bit to get to the auto service.
What makes is even harder is that it's winter and cold now and my car is still at the auto service with me not really having a place to work on it.

P.S. That's a lovely looking car as all Rover 75s are I guess ... sight, sometimes I'm so depressed about the fact that they stopped making them, I can't really find anything similar these days ...

[mcirsta]

First thanks for all that had an opinion regarding this.

I've done a few test using the pscan.eu scanner which worked well on my car. Here are some screenshots:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwMYod ... sp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwMYod ... sp=sharing

It seems to me that both cam and crank sensors are transmitting something but the readings seem a bit weird to me.

The cam sensors seems stuck at 0 but is that normal if the engine won't start ? It does detect it's cranking but the crank sensor shows weird values like 540 deg ? Isn't 360 the max ?

This might be the pscan.eu scanner interpreting the data in the wrong way or it might be an indication of the problem, I'm not sure.