Car dead

[yorkshirelad]

Hi,

I am posting this message to hopefully help people who find that there PHEV will not start the only sign of life is a dim blue start button.

So my troubles started when filling up the car. I went into the shop to pay and then came back to find that my PHEV would not start. The start button was a dim blue but pressing it did not bring the car back to life. In this situation, you cannot bump start it but have to call out the recovery people. While trying to phone the Mitsubishi Recovery Service I heard an electrical click from the back of the car. I pressed the start button and magically things started to work. The car was doing a complete reboot of itself. After the car was started I noticed that all the presets on the car had gone. I immediately took it to the Mitsubishi dealers where I had bought it from so that they could diagnose the problem. They could not find any problem in the log files for the car and increased the logging so that if it happened again we had better tracing.

For several months the car ran well until it developed a very annoying habit of the alarm going off. Another trip to the garage revealed nothing. Then as the weather got colder the car started its trick of not starting. However, I had by this point discovered that by putting the key into its little key holder in the car near the heated steering wheel button it would start. However, not everything worked in this mode. The internal heater fan would not work and the radio. When this happened I got Mitsubishi Recovery out and they could not figure out what was wrong with it. What did work was taking the starter battery off causing the car to reboot itself. Magically it came to life again the radio presets gone but all working.

The dealership ran full checks on the car again and found nothing. However, after pushing them again for a solution from the problems I had described it sparked a mechanic to say that he had seen something similar on a i-Miev . The problem discovered there was that the main fuse in the car was not put in correctly on delivery it was loose. They double checked the main fuse on my car and sure enough it was loose. This fuse is the main fuse for the complete car it is put into the car when delivered to the dealership. It has to be secured in a special way and this had not been done so after several miles of traveling it worked loose and caused weird problems. Which was probably the cause of it going into neutral while on the motorway. Something that could only be fixed by stopping the car and restarting. Physically it should not ever happen.

Hope that help someone out there.

Regards,
Graham

 

[jaapv]

Ah-the joys of electronics with four wheels... :twisted: Thank you for your post, it may indeed be very helpful, as faults like these are extremely difficult to trace.

It reminds me of a Volvo 245 Turbo-R I had. Every few months it would break down, destroying a series of electronic black boxes in the process. It turned out that one earth point had not been cleared of paint at assembly, causing an intermittent peak current, setting off an electronic chain reaction.

 

[Regulo]

Yes, many thanks for posting that. Where is this main fuse? Is it something we can check ourselves?

My neighbour had a Ford Focus about 10 years ago. Beautiful, fully equipped car, but plagued with electronic faults. Particularly, instruments would suddenly "die", mid-drive. Returned to dealer on numerous occasions, but "nothing in fault log", and they could never reproduce the troubles. Eventually, whilst fiddling with something under the bonnet after a drive, he happened to touch the battery cable lead, adjacent to the terminal. It was red hot! A faulty crimped lead in the terminal was the cause of all his trouble. New leads fitted, and all was well. So it's not always the computerised whizzery that goes wrong!

 

[paa451843]

Yes, many thanks for posting that. Where is this main fuse? Is it something we can check ourselves?

In the relay box in the engine compartment. There is a "storage connector" in the upper left corner. It must be pressed down firmly with the car in OFF

 

[Regulo]

Thank you. I'll give it a look. Haven't had any problems - and don't want any!