Hi people
Just as a quick note, I'm not much of a car person, I can do basic maintenance and I'm stubborn enough to try a lot of things myself but by no means do I know what I'm talking about.
My partner has a 2001 petrol Micra, absolutely wonderful car, she got it 6ish years ago with 10,000 miles on the clock, has put another 50k on since and it's been sailing through MOTs ever since until now.
Car was working absolutely fine last week, we went away for the weekend in my car and when we got back on Sunday hers wouldn't start. Or first couple of times it turned over and started for about a second, and then gave up. Since then it just turns over without starting, and after a while the immobilizer light comes on.
I spent the bank holiday Monday f-ing about with it, figured it seemed likely to be fuel related so I put a new filter in it, replaced the spark plugs, cleaned it up a bit and still nothing.
I've got a mate with an EDB reader who came over and it gave me error code P1610 NATS Malfunction
Cool, we're getting somewhere. A mechanic said he thought the most likely cause would be key malfunction, the key is pretty knackered so figured it might be the case and I spent a lot of money in getting a mobile locksmith out to run some checks.
He took the key and could see that it was giving off a reading as expected, he plugged it into his computer and did all of the stuff with that and it showed that the key was programmed for the car, so that should be fine.
What he did find with his little wand was that the ignition wasn't putting out any reading, from what I understand this should send out a signal and read what they key puts back at it and that tells the immobilizer that the car can go?
For some reason it doesn't look like the ignition is doing that, he was pretty stumped by the whole thing and suggested getting an auto electrician out to look at it, because his best guess is that a connection has gone bad somewhere in the steering column.
For some reason when he put it in his computer he couldn't get the error code to come up, so no idea what was going on there.
I tried whacking it a few times to see if I could jump the connection back but no dice unfortunately.
I saw after some googling that someone (probably on this forum actually) said that disconnecting the battery and leaving for a couple of hours sorted out their problem, but that made no difference for me.
My main concern is that I might end up paying a lot of money to an electrician to come out, poke about and still have a completely dead car and no more ideas.
Was sort of hoping someone might have an idea, or a suggestion of something else I can try myself?
Any ideas welcomed
Thanks
Chris
Just as a quick note, I'm not much of a car person, I can do basic maintenance and I'm stubborn enough to try a lot of things myself but by no means do I know what I'm talking about.
My partner has a 2001 petrol Micra, absolutely wonderful car, she got it 6ish years ago with 10,000 miles on the clock, has put another 50k on since and it's been sailing through MOTs ever since until now.
Car was working absolutely fine last week, we went away for the weekend in my car and when we got back on Sunday hers wouldn't start. Or first couple of times it turned over and started for about a second, and then gave up. Since then it just turns over without starting, and after a while the immobilizer light comes on.
I spent the bank holiday Monday f-ing about with it, figured it seemed likely to be fuel related so I put a new filter in it, replaced the spark plugs, cleaned it up a bit and still nothing.
I've got a mate with an EDB reader who came over and it gave me error code P1610 NATS Malfunction
Cool, we're getting somewhere. A mechanic said he thought the most likely cause would be key malfunction, the key is pretty knackered so figured it might be the case and I spent a lot of money in getting a mobile locksmith out to run some checks.
He took the key and could see that it was giving off a reading as expected, he plugged it into his computer and did all of the stuff with that and it showed that the key was programmed for the car, so that should be fine.
What he did find with his little wand was that the ignition wasn't putting out any reading, from what I understand this should send out a signal and read what they key puts back at it and that tells the immobilizer that the car can go?
For some reason it doesn't look like the ignition is doing that, he was pretty stumped by the whole thing and suggested getting an auto electrician out to look at it, because his best guess is that a connection has gone bad somewhere in the steering column.
For some reason when he put it in his computer he couldn't get the error code to come up, so no idea what was going on there.
I tried whacking it a few times to see if I could jump the connection back but no dice unfortunately.
I saw after some googling that someone (probably on this forum actually) said that disconnecting the battery and leaving for a couple of hours sorted out their problem, but that made no difference for me.
My main concern is that I might end up paying a lot of money to an electrician to come out, poke about and still have a completely dead car and no more ideas.
Was sort of hoping someone might have an idea, or a suggestion of something else I can try myself?
Any ideas welcomed
Thanks
Chris
