Intermittent Ignition Problem - Rav 4 2002 2.0 Vvti Petrol

[Scratsh]

Hi everyone,

I have a RAV 4 2002 2.0 VVTI Petrol, manual transmission.

WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW:

When the car is cold (first start of the day), sparks immediately and the car turns on and drives smoothly, for some minutes, suddenly the RPM goes down and the engine shuts down. If try to start again, car cranks but there's no spark until the car get cold again.

We replaced the crank sensor, nothing changed. If we remove the coils and the spark plugs from the cylinders, still there's no spark going on.

When this problem started, the misfire was randomly choosing one of the cylinders. And if we exchanged the coil, it would change the OBD code. The Battery goes flat after some attempts and now we cant read anything from OBD reader when there's no spark. The codes read before this error become constant were: P301, P302, 1300, 1305. The codes were erased and never happened again. We also replace the Battery.

PS: there's no engine light at all. Seems like some garage before selling the car to me removed the light bulb of it... :|

STORY ON HOW IT STARTED:

I was driving the car without issues for some months. I notice some times (extremely rare) the car loosing power for a fraction of a second, like if I release the clutch pedal too fast, without stepping on the gas pedal. I imagined that it was a problem with my foot, not the car, as it was happening something like once a month.

One day, the car started to do it several times consequently and very intensively. As the fuel tank was almost empty, I imagined that it was related, so I refuelled it. On that day, after some minutes driving, on 3rd gear, like if I were running out of fuel, suddenly the car hesitates, the RPM pointer goes up and down. Sometimes it recovers from that, other times, the RPM drop to zero and the car ignore my foot on the gas pedal and the engine turns off, so steering wheel also goes off etc.

This problem persisted for a couple of days, when the next time the car got dead, it could not start anymore. The starting noise existed, but could not initiate. If I wait a couple of hours, with the car cold again, it works as new, until it dies again.

Toyota said that could not find anything wrong, as they couldn't reproduce the issue (of course, the car was cold). They said that coils, spark plugs and fuel related components seem ok. They could read a misfire code on their computers: XXXX. They suspects it could be the Crank Sensor causing this.

A friend came to have a look on the car, clean up some connectors and, with one eBay £7 OBD reader, we could test with the car reproducing the issue, we could exchange coils after the issues, and we could read: XXXX.

After that, a professional mechanic came to test, but could not read any code with his OBD reader. He drove the car until it goes off on the road. Now the Battery gone totally flat, now, turning on doesn't bring any starting sound at all. I called the recovery service. He recharged the battery, we could drive some seconds, dead again. His OBD reader also couldn't read anything wrong.

After all those tries the battery got totally flat. We bought a new one. Also, the mechanic replaced the crank sensor. The issue continues.

I and the mechanics are totally clueless... :(

Thanks all for any possible help!

Intermittent ignition problem

[Oilkid]

Hi

Have you changed the Battery in the key fob?

[Scratsh]

The Key Fob is ok. Now with a new car Battery, it works fine. The Battery is not getting flat anymore.