Car breaking down in same location numerous times

diomed

My 15 month old Toyota Avensis has cut out at least five times in the same area, Stillorgan, Co Dublin, all within about 600 metres of each other.
It has never cut out outside Stillorgan, and I've driven it in Wicklow, Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny, Kildare, Meath, Louth and more.

It happens chiefly at traffic lights when I move off. It stalls. In three cases it would not start for 15/20 minutes, taken in by the dealer (it is there now) and they found nothing. The first time it happened I had parked the car, crossed the road to post a letter, and it would not start when I returned.

I have a DOD LS430W dashcam running all the time.
Over the weekend I reviewed the files for the last week or so. Files are three minutes and average 406k each.
I looked for short files less than 406k which would be either the end of a journey or an interrupted file.

I drove to Wexford and back last Monday. All files were ok until the last two files back in Stillorgan which were corrupted/unreadable.
On Tuesday the second file of the day was corrupted/unreadable. From memory the car cut out on the Stillorgan Road at the Kilrmacud Road Lower / Stillorgan Park Road traffic lights junction. The first file of the day showed me coming up to a red traffic light at that junction. The second file was unreadable. The third file was ok and showed driving fifty yards past those traffic lights.

Later on Tuesday when I returned to Stillorgan from Kildare the car cut out on The Hill, Stillorgan for 15 minutes. Months previously it had cut out on The Hill, Stillorgan for 20 minutes.

Any ideas?

endacl

Stillorgan is haunted?

diomed

By a massive communications tower at the junction of the Stillorgan Road and Priory Drive or something in Stillorgan Shopping Centre?

When I returned from Wexford last Monday I drove through a yellow traffic light at The Hill, Stillorgan and in the 20 yards from there to the entrance to Stillorgan Shopping Centre car park the dashcam video ended. The next video which should have started recording and shown the car turning into the car park was corrupted / unreadable.

Too many coincidences to be a coincidence.

diomed

When I turn the key to restart the car there is no sound, no starter motor trying to fire, just silence.

diomed

https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/important-tip-owners-regarding-key-fob-signal-interference

Parapara2017

Could it simply be something like it being on a hill...?

I know someone I knew got called out by his friends wife worried about their new car that had broken down, but when he got there it started fine.

It cut off and wouldnt start because it was so low on fuel and the slope sent all of the remaining fuel to one side.

Something like that with the fuel or oil etc?

billbond4

Change the battery and it will be fine.

Del2005

Have you any passengers? A friend was having terrible trouble with their car blowing the main fuse when it was raining. They spent ages trying to fault find it, intermittent faults are a nightmare, thinking it was automatic door sensors etc. Turned out that there is a fuse box beside the passenger seat which was getting kicked. Since they found this out the car is fine.

Start looking at the simple things before the complex.

antodeco

artanevilla

Is the dashcam powered from the car? I.E not battery powered.

The power interruption in the car might corrupt the files, rather than it being separately effected by the same thing.

diomed

It has happened on level ground. When it happened there were no passengers.
A while back I contacted my car dealer to get the car serviced. They told me it was fully serviced before they sold it, so the next service is due in September.
There was only 15,000 kms on the car when it first happened.

I'm now on youtube looking at RFID wallets and tinfoil hats.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8t6v3mvXSSM/maxresdefault.jpg

redcup342

Sounds like a loose wire, maybe check if there is a loom under the glovebox that's loose ?

Had the same in my V50 ... drove me bananas, was fixed with a tie wrap

diomed

artanevilla wrote: »

Is the dashcam powered from the car? I.E not battery powered.
The power interruption in the car might corrupt the files, rather than it being separately effected by the same thing.

It certainly is a power interruption that is stopping the car and the video. That is the logic I used to list the stoppages in the last week. I looked for short video files (corrupted files), then looked at the video film before that to see where I was. Usually I was coming to a traffic light stop in Stillorgan.

Yes, the dashcam is powered by the car, plugged into a connector in the centre "glove box" behind the gear lever.
When the file corrupted 20 yards after I went through the yellow traffic light at Stillorgan SC something happened that didn't stop the car but did stop the video.
I don't think it is hill starts as I have driven all around Leinster and started without a problem elsewhere.

seamus

I had an issue with a Scenic after buying it where it would randomly not start and when I did get it started again, the radio would be looking for a code, etc. No rhyme or reason except that it usually happened near home.

Turns out when it was service by the garage the mechanic didn't secure one of the contacts on the battery.

As said, look at the simple stuff rather than assuming anything weird. It's probably the battery. The reason it appears to happen a lot in stillorgan is probably because most of your trips go through stillorgan at some point.

Also as said above, the camera corruption is probably a symptom of the same electrical issue.

diomed

My garage have a strange logic. They take the car, tell me they drove it overnight (150 kms once) and didn't find a problem.

I don't want to know there is no problem when the car is working. I've driven the car 100 kms after it stopped.

They are fixated on their codes. They plus in their diagnostic tester and if they find no codes they say there is nothing wrong.

The last time there was a yellow engine block warning light on the dash for 15 minutes. When it went out the car started.

Plenty of diesel in the car.

diomed

It did stop once on Temple Road, Blackrock so probably not aliens or ghosts.
A couple of times it refused to start was when it was half on a footpath / half on a road (to avoid blocking traffic).

ectoraige

I had trouble with an alternator which was intermittently failing, we thought it was the alternator itself but after replacing it the problem continued. It turned out to be minor corrosion on the ring terminal connecting to the battery, a bit of copper paste resolved it. It was very hard to trace though, the path was tested multiple times without seeing a voltage drop, except for one occasion. Perhaps something is shifting minutely when you are coming to a stop. Perhaps you halt more sharply at this particular junction?

DaniilKharms

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=576

^^^

diomed

When it is fixed do you want to know the solution?

Redderneck

I have the polar opposite of this geographic position specific issue with my wife and the Dundrum Town Centre. She powers up. Good luck with your fix. I've given up.

diomed

Thus isn't an anti-Toyota rant.
I had a Toyota Auris that was as dependable as day following night.

mickdw

Id start using my phone to record journeys through area where it happens.
Then present that to garage as proof of fault. Put this in writing also to them. If they give it back 3 or 4 times and fault returns each time with video evidence, you can then play hardball with toyota to either finally fix it or replace it - assuming it is toyota warranty you are dealing with.

Cee-Jay-Cee

diomed wrote: »

Thus isn't an anti-Toyota rant.
I had a Toyota Auris that was as dependable as day following night.

Unless you live in the northern Artic region....

Nuw

seamus wrote: »

Turns out when it was service by the garage the mechanic didn't secure one of the contacts on the battery.

This.

Nuw

Sorry for double post.
@mod, please delete.

Henry Ford III

Better Call Saul - Chuck knows all about this stuff.

Del2005

diomed wrote: »

My garage have a strange logic. They take the car, tell me they drove it overnight (150 kms once) and didn't find a problem.

I don't want to know there is no problem when the car is working. I've driven the car 100 kms after it stopped.

They are fixated on their codes. They plus in their diagnostic tester and if they find no codes they say there is nothing wrong.

The last time there was a yellow engine block warning light on the dash for 15 minutes. When it went out the car started.

Plenty of diesel in the car.

They can't fix a problem that they can't see. So they either need codes or to see the error. Would you be happier if they spent a week on the car and replaced loads of parts for the issue to still be there.

What you need to do is start checking all connections and cables for signs of damage so that they have somewhere to look. Otherwise you'll be dropping the car in and out constantly, as an intermittent fault is nearly impossible to find.

Gazzmonkey

diomed wrote: »

My garage have a strange logic. They take the car, tell me they drove it overnight (150 kms once) and didn't find a problem.

I don't want to know there is no problem when the car is working. I've driven the car 100 kms after it stopped.

They are fixated on their codes. They plus in their diagnostic tester and if they find no codes they say there is nothing wrong.

The last time there was a yellow engine block warning light on the dash for 15 minutes. When it went out the car started.

Plenty of diesel in the car.

Hmm... if the car loses power and cannot run any electronic hardware then would it still be able to log faults?

diomed

Del2005 wrote: »

They can't fix a problem that they can't see. So they either need codes or to see the error. Would you be happier if they spent a week on the car and replaced loads of parts for the issue to still be there.

What you need to do is start checking all connections and cables for signs of damage so that they have somewhere to look. Otherwise you'll be dropping the car in and out constantly, as an intermittent fault is nearly impossible to find.

I am not a mechanic. As far as I know there is a 5 year warranty. If I start checking things they will be quick to distance themselves from the car.

Surely the main Toyota dealer that I bought the car from should be checking all connections. Instead their tactics are to plug in the diagnostics, find nothing wrong, drive the car at night (I assume that means use my car for their commute), and tell me nothing is wrong for the fourth time.

How did they locate faults before codes?

I should point out that another problem with the car was an error message "check parking brake" as I was travelling on the M9 motorway near Carlow. The car was sluggish but as far as I could tell the brake was not a problem. The car freewheeled down hills.
I was told to bring it to a Toyota repair centre in Naas who replaced the EGR (exhaust gas recycling value). The car had been in "limp home " mode and it had nothing to do with the warning message about the parking brake.

diomed

This is an extract from my e-mail to my Toyota dealer. I've edited to remove personal stuff about my situation and also not shown the Toyota garages.

I’ve looked at the dashcam videos that are automatically recorded as I drive.
The dashcam records three minute files.
When there is a problem with the car the video file is corrupted and unviewable.

When there is a shorter video file it is because of two reasons
(1) I ended a journey and turned off the engine.
(2) The engine cut out unexpectedly.

I viewed recent files and looked for files less than three minutes long (406k file size).
There are a few corrupt files and the strange thing is they are all in Stillorgan.

The following notes are lengthy but might give clues to the problem.


PREVIOUS CAR CUT OUT PROBLEMS

I said that I had a few previous cut-out problems in the Toyota Avensis in the weeks before the big problem on The Hill, Stillorgan on Wednesday, 12th July.



I reviewed previous files.


MONDAY …………. CORRUPT FILE (ONE)

On Monday 10th July I drove to ……….., Wexford.
The journey to Wexford and back was recorded in three-minute files (all good files).
Towards the end of the journey there are two corrupt files, at 17:22 and 17:37.
The last good file ends at 17:19:59 on the Stillorgan Road (less than a kilometre from home) travelling northwards between the Brewery Road junction and Kilmacud Road Lower junction (at about St John of Gods about 550 metres to The Hill, Stillorgan).


TUESDAY leaving ……… CORRUPT VIDEO FILE (ONE FILE)

On Tuesday 11th July at 13:36 I was driving to Newbridge.
Just after the start of my journey the second video file is corrupt and unreadable.

The first video file records my travel on the Stillorgan Road to the Priory Drive traffic light junction, then along the Stillorgan Road southbound to the Kilmacud Road Lower/Stillorgan Park Road junction.
The first video stops recording after the usual three minutes as I come up to the traffic light at red. Obviously, I stopped at the traffic lights.
When I tried to move off on green I assume the car stalled.
The first file stopped at 13:35:54
The second file was corrupt.
The third file starts at 13:36:48 and begins on the Stillorgan Road fifty yards beyond that junction.
Distance from that junction to The Hill, Stillorgan is 220 metres.


TUESDAY returning …………. CORRUPT VIDEO FILES (TWO FILES)
Tuesday 11th July at 16:35 AND 17:03
Here I was returning from Newbridge.

The video file before those two corrupt files ends on the Old Stillorgan Road just past the traffic lights at the junction with Kilmacud Road Lower (the Stillorgan Shopping Centre traffic lights).

A few seconds before I had driven through a yellow light on The Hill, Stillorgan at 16:33:26, and as the file ends its three minutes recording I can hear my indicator clicking.
I guess I was going into Stillorgan Shopping Centre main car park.

There was no traffic on The Hill at that time as I drove through the yellow traffic light. Usually there is traffic there and I have to stop.
It looks like the file that would have automatically started recording as I went into the car park corrupted.
And the next file which started 28 minutes later (probably after I completed my shopping and was leaving the car park) was also corrupted / unviewable.

That first corrupt file is 356k (usually files are 406k) which indicates the file corrupted 2 mins 38 secs after it started recording as I passed St John of Gods .

The last file of that day, start at 17:35:03 and shows me reversing out of a parking space in Stillorgan Shopping Centre and ends with me reversing into my driveway.

How did I get from the Stillorgan Road into the Stillorgan Shopping Centre? I drove down the slip road at The Hill, Stillorgan.


WEDNESDAY ……… CAR CUT OUT PROBLEM

On Wednesday 12th July I had returned from Newbridge,
The car was working ok and the dashcam video records until 13:41:53 (actual time was 14:41:53).
The DOD LS430W dashcam records 3 minute files.
I then travelled down St Brigid’s Drive, then Glenalbyn Road, and then The Hill, Stillorgan.
The video file recording that section is 359k and is corrupt / unviewable.
All previous 3 minute video files that day are 406k to 408k and viewable.
That tells me the video stopped recording 2 minutes 38 seconds (158 seconds) after St Brigid’s Church, presumably when the car cut out as I moved off when the traffic lights went green on The Hill, Stillorgan.

That shortened 359k video file is unreadable which suggests that something electrical interrupted the power to the video.
The next four video files that day also are not 406k, they are 8k, 8k, 13k, 13k, and they are all corrupt/unreadable.
That indicated that I started the car four times, the dashcam started to record, but stopped after 4, 4, 6, 6 seconds, and all those video files are corrupted and unreadable.

The next video file starts in the car park of Toyota …….. when their staff drove the car from where I parked it out the front to the repair shop around the back.

There are seven full video files, each three minutes long, recording sound and vision inside the Toyota ………… garage.
This indicates that the electrics were working properly during that 21 minutes (7 x 3 mins) in the repair shop.

The videos at Toyota ………… end at 15:47 when the mechanic parks on the forecourt after a test drive up the road.


ANOTHER CAR CUT OUT PROBLEM (NO VIDEO EVIDENCE)

From memory the car also stopped at that Priory Drive junction in the last few weeks at about 22:00 on a Sunday night. I was stopped at the traffic lights waiting to turn right towards Oatlands College. I do not have dashcam video files of that.


PREVIOUS CAR CUT OUT PROBLEMS IN 2017 AND 2016

The first problem was in October 2016, about a month after I bought the car from Toyota
I parked the car on the Old Stillorgan Road, walked across the road to post a letter, and when I tried to restart the car it would not start.
That spot on the Old Dublin Road, Stillorgan, about 450 metres from The Hill, Stillorgan, and also close to the big communications mast at the Stillorgan Road / Priory Drive junction.
About 40 minutes later a mechanic from Toyota started the car first time.

The second problem was in around February or March 2017, when the car stalled as I moved off when the traffic lights went green at The Hill, Stillorgan. The car restarted after twenty minutes.


As far as I can remember I have had no car cut-out problems with this Toyota Avensis outside Stillorgan [edit: there was one in Temple Road, Blackrock].
Co Kildare; Co Wicklow; Co Wexford; Co Louth; Co Carlow; Co Kilkenny all ok

On the videos recorded in the Toyota ………. garage the mechanic says to another employee he heard about another customer having problems with electrical interference.

There is a big communications mast at the junction of Stillorgan Road and Priory Drive.

Nuw

I was under the impression that all electrics in cars were correctly isolated these days, if it is indeed interferences due to something emitting radio wavelength, wouldn't it be messing around with other electronic devices (namely phones)?

Come to think of it, if it was the lead on the battery, you probably would have noticed it when passing over speedbumps, so forget I said anything :angel:

R.O.R

Is it an Avensis with the city auto brake feature, so you can't run in to the back of the car in front?

There have been issues with the sensors for that getting moisture in and causing problems. If it happens in the same spot, is that in direct sunshine?

Del2005

diomed wrote: »

I am not a mechanic. As far as I know there is a 5 year warranty. If I start checking things they will be quick to distance themselves from the car.

Surely the main Toyota dealer that I bought the car from should be checking all connections. Instead their tactics are to plug in the diagnostics, find nothing wrong, drive the car at night (I assume that means use my car for their commute), and tell me nothing is wrong for the fourth time.

How did they locate faults before codes?

I should point out that another problem with the car was an error message "check parking brake" as I was travelling on the M9 motorway near Carlow. The car was sluggish but as far as I could tell the brake was not a problem. The car freewheeled down hills.
I was told to bring it to a Toyota repair centre in Naas who replaced the EGR (exhaust gas recycling value). The car had been in "limp home " mode and it had nothing to do with the warning message about the parking brake.

There's no issues with looking around the car for loose or bad connections and cables, it will have zero effect on the warranty.

A garage doesn't have the time, or more importantly the money, to have a mechanic spend hours chasing an intermittent error.

Before codes cars where much simpler and most parts were repairable. But even then intermittent faults where a nightmare to find. A friend had an old bike with only basic electrics which died occasionally. He dropped it to a mechanic who couldn't find anything, called a few other places and none would take it. Eventually, after several hours checking, he found a wire pinched on the swingarm which was frayed and causing the issue.

diomed

R.O.R wrote: »

Is it an Avensis with the city auto brake feature, so you can't run in to the back of the car in front?

There have been issues with the sensors for that getting moisture in and causing problems. If it happens in the same spot, is that in direct sunshine?

It has the autobrake. A red screen flashes on the dash telling you to brake if you get close to something, but I didn't get any messages when the car stopped. Usually I just stopped in traffic at the traffic lights and the car stalled when starting off.

I had problems with motorway driving when roadspray on the windscreen blocked the sensor and I got a message to clean the screen.
This was constant when I first had the car, but its now a long time since I got one of those error messages.

I went into my garden just now and checked the sun position as two of the problems happened at this time (about 17:00).
The sun would be high and to my left where the car stopped and shielded by a terraced row of small businesses.
One problem happened at 22:00 at night, another at 14:00 in the day both going in the opposite direction.

I like your thinking beyond the obvious.

diomed

Del2005 wrote: »

A garage doesn't have the time, or more importantly the money, to have a mechanic spend hours chasing an intermittent error.

I don't have time to spend on the side of the road waiting for my €28k second-hand car to start working again.

I bought the car so I would have something reliable to use visiting my mother who lived in a nursing home in Newbridge for seven years.

The car packed in on Wednesday. I had visited my mother on Tuesday and Wednesday. The car was left with Toyota on Wednesday evening. I asked them for a courtesy car to visit my dying mother the next day and they refused.

On Thursday morning at 08:15 my sister was contacted by the nursing home and told my mother was fading. My sister had to cycle to someone and borrow a car, collect me, and we drove to Newbridge. My mother died before we arrived.

I am not pleased with the Toyota dealer who responds that they plugged the car into diagnostics and found nothing, drove the car overnight, and found nothing, and expect me to drive the car until it breaks down the next time and we go through the same routine again (three times with them so far for this problem, once for the EGR problem in nine months).

oppenheimer1

diomed wrote: »

I don't have time to spend on the side of the road waiting for my €28k second-hand car to start working again.

I bought the car so I would have something reliable to use visiting my mother who lived in a nursing home in Newbridge for seven years.

The car packed in on Wednesday. I had visited my mother on Tuesday and Wednesday. The car was left with Toyota on Wednesday evening. I asked them for a courtesy car to visit my dying mother the next day and they refused.

On Thursday morning at 08:15 my sister was contacted by the nursing home and told my mother was fading. My sister had to cycle to someone and borrow a car, collect me, and we drove to Newbridge. My mother died before we arrived.

I am not pleased with the Toyota dealer who responds that they plugged the car into diagnostics and found nothing, drove the car overnight, and found nothing, and expect me to drive the car until it breaks down the next time and we go through the same routine again (three times with them so far for this problem, once for the EGR problem in nine months).

It is next to impossible for them to find a fault when it is not present then they are inspecting. That doesn't excuse the extremely poor service you received. You should have been provided with a courtesy car at an absolute minimum.

mickdw

You need to get evidence of the fault - sounds like its easily captured so do that so dealer cannot fob you off next time.
To be honest you evidence of currupted videos at time of fault is doing you no favours in terms of dealing with garage.
While its clear that its a power interuption that is causing the video issues, the delaer could just think you are making it all up.

Nuw

Considering the dashcam is third-party, most manufacturer (of cars or anything else for that matter) will not consider any of its behaviour as proof as they wouldn't know how it normally behave. They might even ask you to remove it for the time of a test as they cannot guarantee it doesn't affect the car in any way (I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm saying they might ask you to do so to rule it out).

I second the thought of getting a video proof of the car behaviour from your phone or another source (possibly with the dashcam removed, to be safe), and send that over to Toyota directly. Once they have absolute proof of the existence of the issue, they cannot turn away from it.

Gravelly

This made me laugh because I'd a similarly weird car issue about 2 years ago. I was working out of an office around a 20 minute drive from my house, which included around 8-10 minutes of a fast blast along a wide, usually quiet, main road. EVERY SINGLE DAY my car would suddenly cut out in the exact same spot - literally, within 10-15 meters of the same place. It would only cut out for a second, and would run perfectly fine straight afterwards. The car never cut out or gave any trouble anywhere else. I was flummoxed. I have family in the garage trade who always service my car, and I dreaded the slagging I'd get when I presented them with this one! Next time it was in for a service, I mentioned it to the mechanic. He knew what it was straight away - turns out it was a problem with the petrol pump, it was losing pressure, and in that exact spot, after the fast blast along the main road, my car was being starved of petrol before the pump managed to catch up when the car cut out. Mystery solved! (though I did have to pay for a new petrol pump).