2000 VX Commodore Berlina Losing Power While Driving

[thrifty1984]

Hey Guys
I have a 2000 VX Commodore Berlina = Automatic. I have had a few problems in the last couple of months.
Firstly I had trouble starting it, so the NRMA recommended I get a new battery. After about a week, occasionally it would still be hard to start and the car lost all power while driving it. I called the NRMA and they told me that the Alternator wasn't charging the battery, so I got a new Alternator.
Everything was going fine for a couple of weeks until I was at an intersection and the car lost all power while idling. I had to wait a couple of minutes before I was able to start the car again. The car drove fine for about 50m before losing power again.
I had a mechanic come to my house to have a look. They checked for fault codes and discovered that the Crank Angle Sensor was faulty. I had the CAS and coil packs replaced as well as the spark plugs and leads.
The car drove fine for about a week, until I was caught at a railway crossing for about 20 minutes. All of a sudden the car lost power and took a while to start again. I got the mechanic back to have a look and they found no fault codes, but they replaced the Fuel Relay and told me it could be the Fuel Pump, but they couldn't test the fuel pump while the car was driving ok.
Once again the car drove fine for a couple of days until I was on my way home from work and it lost all power AGAIN.
I have been told by a Holden mechanic that it is possible for the CAS to be faulty, but not record a fault code. I'm not sure if it is a coincidence, but when the car has lost power, I have only had about a 1/4 - 1/2 a tank of petrol.
It has got to the stage where I am nervous about driving the car as I don't want to cause an accident.
Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing the car to lose power while driving?

 

[ACEMonkey]

Not sure about the servicing history of your car...maybe get the fuel filter changed first and see how you go. It might also be you have a bad batch of fuel in your car too but thats rare. Your fuel pump could be on its way out but thats a bit hard to know when the problem is so intermittent until it cuts out completely on you.

 

[thrifty1984]

Car has been regularly serviced. Fuel filter was replaced about 2000km ago. Had a new CAS put in today, so fingers crossed it doesn't play up again.

 

[thrifty1984]

Car had been driving fine for a week, until Australia Day. Driving along at 80km the car lost all power. Had the AC and radio on. Took a little while to start, but got the car home. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what is wrong with my car? The mechanic I have had looking at the car says that he can't diagnose what is wrong because it is not playing up when he is driving it.

 

[holdenvtman1123]

could be the socket the plug goes in for the fuel pump, it can sometimes be intermittent with the connection to the pump inside, my fuel pump stopped but when i dropped tank it worked again so i know the connection is dodgy, this is worth checking. this socket is located on top of the fuel tank.

 

[Tsunamix]

Anything that intermittent strikes me as electric.

Firstly - When your driving, is there anything consistent about the times of failures - has it never failed on short drives - only on longer drives ?

If so, what you have is a heat soak failure. Something is getting hot and failing. I had this happen to me once in an old Triumph sedan, back when Coils where common and not coil packs. What woudl happen is that I'd go for a LONG drive - 1Hr plus, and around the 1hr mark the engine would shut down. Plenty of current, and fuel but no spark. After an hour of stuffing around on the side of the road, it started again. Drove for an hour again. Failed again. Waited an hour. It Started agin etc....

Turns out the coil had be put in backwards - Pos connected to negative lead and vice versa. Consequently it would provide spark until it overheated, then shut down. Took a hell of a long time to figure that out...

To me, it sounds like the original problem has not gone away, and is something heat related.
Rule out CAS, alternator and battery, Coil packs and leads and plugs, as they have all been replaced. Whats left is things like Terminals on alternator leads, alternator leads themselves, PCM, battery terminals, CAS leads, and probably a hundred other associated connections.

Start carrying a multimeter with you. Next time it stops, immediatley drop off a battery terminal and measure the voltage at the battery with a terminal off. Should be 13.5-14.5V. Anything lower means the battery is not charging or failing. Anything higher means the battery is overcharged and heat stressing.

When you get amoment, measure the charge at the battery with the engine at 2000RPM. this is your base recharge rate. should be 13.8-14.5V. Anything lower means that the alternator is not charging properley.

It terms of cables and connections, the most likeley point of failure is the terminals themselves. Since it's not hard or expensive to do, reterminate all the connections at the alternator and the CAS.

Could consider investigating the fusebox, and checking the connections on the appropriate relays and fuses for lose connections too. reterminat anything that is remotley dodgey.

I think it's highly unlikely to be the fuel system, although I have heard of exactly the same thing happening in a Land Rover. It sat in a shed for 6 months, with the fuel cap off, and a wasp built a nest in the dried out tank. When refilled the nest was washed through in bits into the filter. As fule went through the filter, the mud would collect at the top of the filter choking off flow. When the flow stopped, it would settle back to the bottom again. Presto - intermittent failure. This is pretty unlikeley a scenatrio though and your filetr has been replaced recently.

When it comes to the PCM, I'm no expert, but i could easily imagine a vibration or heat situation causing a track to lift on a circuit board, or a terminal to become loose. There are a zillion of them around, so before replacing any other parts than have been replaced already, get one from an identical car and swap it in, remembering to change the chip if your old one is not standard.

If you come back with the measured voltages, that make be able to rule some parts out.

Cheers

 

[06Calais]

Hey Tsunamix, maybe you can help me. Im almost flat broke. I could never afford to have all the work the above guy did only to find nothing was helping. The thing that you said that really caught my attention is something failing / going faulty at high / higher temps. When my car is cold it goes great, but once it gets to a certain temp an extremely high pitched electrical sound becomes apparent (its like the sound a old TV or faulty TV makes, it sounds like tinnitus almost) when this happens it seems to loose about 10 to 15% power. With Engine off, batter reads about 12.5 volt. Under Cranking Battery reads 10.19 at its lowest. While running at any RMP Voltage reads between 13.9 and 14.3 (Depending if I have air con . Heater fan on, plus stereo headlights etc) Sometimes I feel like there may not be enough fuel pressure because Alternators is doing everything and not doing it right. I dunno man. Im stumped I just hope its nothing Expensive like an New ECu required. Any help advice would be most appreciated, biggest thanks in advance. P.S. First thing Tomorrow morning I am changing the Fuel Filter and Changing Auto Tranny Fluid. Im sure its not the tranny but its iver due for fludi change, in fact it could prolly use a small overhaul / service.

 

[Tsunamix]

That actually sounds a bit like it could be the Ignistion control module thing that sits under the coils. It essentially tells the coils when to fire, a bitlike an electrionic replacement for a coil, but it does some other stuff as well.

Run the engine until you run into problems.

Mark and unplug all your leads at the coil packs. Remove the bolts that hold in the coil packs. Lift off the coil packs and put them aside. At the right hand end of the ignition module is a single boltthat holds the electrical connection in place. remove it.

Take off the Ignition module and see how hot it is. It should be around body temperature, no more.

Wipe it down with metho, make sure all the contacts are clean, and refit.

All the above should only take a couple of minutes. If you put it back in cool, with the engine still hot and run it, has the problem gone away. Does the problem come back relatively quickly ? If so - replace the ignition module.

New from bursons or maybe a second handy from a wreckers.

No programming issues to worry about - any Ignition module will work, from the same year and engine.

I have personally bought a brand new Ignition module that was faulty from new, so pinching a known good from a mates running engine is a good idea to test the theory.

Luck.

 

[jr689]

Does the alternator/battery light come on at all???

 

[Jamiejamie]

My car did something similar to this but on a smaller scale. I replaced the regulator on the alternator and it was fixed.