Please Help With Starting Issue

[speedyclassic]

Hi everyone

I'm new here and really hoping you can help. I have a 2006 RAV4 Diesel with an intermittent starting problem which is really frustrating. I'm female so apologise in advance if my technical language is wrong!

Sometimes when the car has been sat idle (and I mean overnight, not for days) it won't start in the morning. The starter motor turns over but it won't "bite". Sometimes it does bite but when I put my foot on the pedal nothing happens and it dies. It then won't start unless I manually prime it (a pump under the bonnet).

The first time it went into the garage they changed the Battery and the glow plugs.

It then failed so badly that the RAC came out - it wouldn't jump start and it was the RAC engineer that manually primed it and it started straight away, so we then suspected a fuel problem.

It went back to the garage who flushed the fuel line out and replaced the fuel filter.

It only seems to fail when the fuel tank shows half full or lower, so my garage then replaced the clips on the fuel lines etc.

It has now had a new fuel pump, yet it failed to start on Sunday morning and again this morning.

I don't really have the money to keep throwing at this problem!

I know it must be something to do with fuel as it starts after manually priming it, and sometimes it starts but I put my foot on the gas and nothing happens and it dies. Once it has started and is running it has never faltered - it never splutters and stalls when driven, and when the engine is warm it always restarts. (So by the time I've driven it to the garage it always starts for them, which makes it difficult!)

Has anyone experienced anything like this before?

Many thanks, Cathy

[gjnorthall]

It's a reasonably common problem and results from fuel in the supply pipework etc draining back to the tank over a period of time. Hence the reason why the car starts when the system is then manually primed. It's often reported that the problem only occurs when the fuel tank is less than half full. It can be due to a split diaphragm in the filter head and I'm not entirely sure about the location of a non-return valve on this model - this may be faulty. Indeed several owners have installed a non-return valve in the fuel pipework just before the pump as a rapid fix of the problem.

Don't know why the garage fitted a new fuel pump - it was a hugely expensive experiment!

[speedyclassic]

Thank you - will mention that to my garage next time and see what they say