Newbie question... re Auris TR Valvematic S-A 2011

[tom154]

Hi all

Firstly this is my first post, so apologies for any unintentional etiquette breaches..

My daughter has recently bought a 2011 Auris - TR Valvematic S-A 2011 model. Semi-automatic...

Strangely, she is struggling with actually starting the car using the start stop button a few times a day.

I'm a few hours drive away so cant physically see how she is doing it but she has followed the official instructions from the manual and over the phone with me, and she never seems to get it going.

However, other times she gets it going no issues at all..  i think personally she is just getting flustered and trying all different ways without actually doing the correct one, but wondered if anyone could give me some pointers to try and get it thru to her..

Thanks

Tom

 

Her manual shows this - "Multi-mode manual transmission Check that the parking brake is set. Firmly depress the brake pedal, press the “ENGINE START STOP” switch at once and shift the shift lever to N. The “ENGINE START STOP” switch indicator turns green. If the indicator does not turn green, the engine cannot be started. Press the “ENGINE START STOP” switch. The engine will crank until it starts or for up to 30 seconds, whichever is less. Continue depressing the brake pedal until the engine is completely started. "

[furtula]

She probably forgets to put it into neutral, or press the brake.

I have a manual so i hold the clutch on mine when i want to start the car.

Often i just press it before it's actually green, the car waits a bit anyway and starts fine.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Does she have floor mats in the car? If so are they properly anchored to the carpet using the mat hooks? If not they could be moving forwards and limiting the travel of the brake pedal.

Otherwise I suspect at times she may not be fully depressing the brake pedal.

[tom154]

Thanks for the replies guys - well after another few episodes of it starting and then not starting, she's called out green flag today and they've not been able to start it either. 

Currently being towed, so i'm as baffled as anything....

[tom154]

On 4/25/2019 at 5:42 PM, tom154 said:

Thanks for the replies guys - well after another few episodes of it starting and then not starting, she's called out green flag today and they've not been able to start it either. 

Currently being towed, so i'm as baffled as anything....

Latest update - a few days after the tow home from the green flag roadsider who is a mechanic i know from donkeys years back  (and with it not starting in the days after)when the recovery truck was picking it up, the car started absolutely fine. 

But we took it to the garage anyway... where it has started on every occasion. 

She has it back, has been starting it as normal tonight, but is absolutely dreading tomorrow morning for work as she is paranoid it won't start.... baffling to say the least and i think it will probably end up with her flogging the car as she has no confidence in it anymore.

 

 

[furtula]

Has she bought the car from the private seller, or a dealer?

If the car in fact has such problem, i'd rather either return it, or sell it again, and get something else. If she is getting so upset about it, honestly it's not worth it. Get a normal one with a mechanical key. 

 

[Catlover]

The 5 Toyotas we have had.... either you depress the clutch fully (manuals), or the brake (autos), and hold down till car is started. Have you 1) checked the Battery in the key fob is good strength, 2) the key fob is somewhere near the stop/start button ie it’s not “in her hand bag on the back seat” type of position. Individually both situations can cause problems, put together even more so.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Does she have difficulty starting it just at her home or anywhere?

[tom154]

Morning all

Thanks for input from everyone.. she has the difficulty at home, work, basically in all scenarios.

Tonight however even tho it's been ok , she mentioned that sometimes the brake pedal is hard to depress as part of the sequence she needs to do to start it.

On another of the forums here, i think a yaris one, someone reports the same thing with the mmt box where the brake is stiff as hell, so they cant depress it far enough to start the ignition sequence..  and vaccuum pressure is mentioned ?  I think the advice the other poster was given was not along the lines of  not depressing the brake unless they were  actually starting the car as it would get stiffer and ultimately need to be left to build up again..  

Could this be a possible ?  I know squat about mechanics so apologies if i''m barking up the wrong tree hugely here.

Tom

 

[Gerg]

Hi,

With the engine off it is normal for the brake pedal to firm up after about 3 depressions of the pedal  That is the same in almost any modern car.  There is a reserve of power-assistance that is vacuum driven (from the engine) - after a few pedal depressions it is all used up.  When this happens the brakes still work, but they are very, very wooden indeed, and the pedal limit will seem to have risen up towards you.  When the engine is next started the vacuum will be almost immediately be topped up, and if your foot is hard on the brake pedal when the engine spins up, then the pedal will slowly sink towards the floor.  This will seem very odd if you're not expecting it.  There is no other way off restoring the brake assistance, just by getting the engine running.

So, I wonder if the brake light switch is badly adjusted, or only intermittently operating?

The brake light switch is adjustable (not that easily - it's very cramped down amongst the pedals), and normally operates the moment the pedal is pressed.  If yours is adjusted so that it is only working after the pedal is pushed a lot further down, then it might not operate at all if the pedal has 'firmed up', as you've referenced above.  I think you may just have cracked this one - It will feel like you are pushing the pedal as far as it will go, but because the brake assistance has stopped working, you aren't pushing it far enough for the car to detect it via the switch.   And the car won't start.

If two of you could check how easily the brake lights come on when the pedal only just depressed, then you would be able to rule this theory out.  If the brake pedal has firmed up, and the brake light switch hasn't triggered, then you will just have to push the brake pedal much harder, harder than you ever would in 'normal' driving! 

To check if the brake lights (and switch) are operating when there is just the driver in the car, perhaps you could stick some duct tape (or similar) on the hatch window, overlapping the high level brake light enough that you can see the faint red glow onto the tape, so you could check it by looking in the rear view mirror?

Japanese switches of any description are usually incredibly reliable, but your car is made in Derby, so may have a brake light switch made in some other part of the world, perhaps where electrical theory is still a bit of a mystery (France?).  If the brake light switch was only working intermittently through a fault, then this could give starting problems too, of course.

It is also possible that, when parked, the car is slowly leaking it's vacuum reserve, perhaps through a leaky one-way valve in the servo, compounding the situation mentioned before, as by the time you returned to the car, all the power-assistance would have disappeared and the pedal won't move far enough to trigger the switch.  This shouldn't be difficult for a garage to diagnose, and is a very rare problem. 

Just a theory, really.

HTH.

[Gerg]

No more posts yet on this one.  So, the search for the problem continues.....