the patriot

update for anyone else on here who gets the same problem, car now back at last, new crank sensor fitted and afetr 2 weeks and a few hundred miles, some with the caravan on tow, and no problems. So looks like if the French dealer would have fiited a £28 part, it would have prevented a bill for greenflag recovery in excess of £3500 to get me, my family, our Galaxy and caravan back home

Thanks for the info and reply, The ford dealer in France did clear down the faults before last failure, at which point the breakdown cover agreed to repatriate the vehicle, so hopefully when it arrives back here in a week or two (fingers crossed) I will be able to check teh codes again and see what if anything has returned. I have so far based my thoughts on experince with other vehicles and many years in the trade, along with the symptoms... Whilst the £45 single trip european recovery pack has paid out for me this time I would have much preferred that the French dealer was able to diagnose first time around or been in a position at least to install a new CPS. Lets hope that they dont damage anything on way home... Thanks again and will post the outcome when fixed.

I would suspect that something has seized on the drive belt side making the belt slip and caused the powers steering to feel weak, due to lack of tension. Both the auto belt tensioners and alternator free wheeling clutch in teh pulley are favourites for causing belts slip. which reduces power steering feel and normall belt squeel. could be that your AC pump has failed if you can not rotate any of it, again causing belt to slip etc.. It may also be that if the alternator has not been spinning correctly you will have no charge when driving and that the battery has gone flat, meaning no crank or start. Assuming you have full charge in battery what happens if you take the drive belt off does the engine turn over?

Hi Guys, Having reviewed a number of posts on here I am torn between realy 109 and possibly the crank sensor, but was hoping for a sense check and/or further advice with my 2004 plate 130 1.9tdi Galaxy. In short we have just been across to South of France and had to leave the car (and caravan) there for recovery back to UK after a local main dealer could not fix the problem? Not the best experince for our first foreign trip with both Galaxy and Caravan ;) The problem being that we can be travelling along the autoroute at circa 70mph with the caravan on the back when without warning the engine just stops, you notice immediately that the engine rpm on the rev counter is ZERO, even when left in gear and coasting so engine turning over but not running. If you do this for long enough after a few seconds you get stop engine and an oil warning meesage with a beep. Problem is that this is very intermittant and could take as little as 10 mile or as much as 250 mile in between failures, each time the sysmptoms are the same. :26: Try to restart and unless you wait a minute or two the engine will not restart, have to say not 100% sure if the glow plug (ECU) light is or is not coming on but certtainly no RPM shown on cluster when car not starting. Having managed to read about the 109 relay when out there I did try to get access to this hoping to swap it, but its not the same with any others and we could not get one from local dealer as none in stock and no time to order before we was due back. I did try pulling this relay out when runing and car does stall but I am sure I retained RPM when cranking and this removed, can anyone say if they are aware if you loose RPM signal with this relay failure or not? The local Ford dealer in France did do a fault code read but this was after I had already been fiddling with relays etc... so had a few codes which i am sure where related to me rem,oving relays etc.. in an attempt to reproduce the problem, but there was 1 interesting one of P0322 CPS signal. When I attempted to discuss this with them they said in their view this is a symptom and not the cause, from my experience I just can not seem to accept this? :excl: My guess is that I have a crank sensor failure as I loose all RPM but retain all other functions? When the vehicle finally gets recovered back to me here in the UK over next week or two I will stick VAG COM onto it but was hoping for some more advice before hand. As an interssting point we have never experienced the problem before this trip and it has only failed when we have had the caravan on the back (although we did not do that much mileage down there without the Caravan on tow - too busy enjoying the sunshine) :20:. This could be a red herring or may be that its making the motor run hotter in general and causing the sensor to breakdown. Average air temp was up in mid 30's and the cluster showed the engine on a consatnt 90' but fan was working hard. Any help greatly appreciated Steven