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taneqtoday at 4:09 AM1 replyview on HN

“The car won’t start after I buy ice cream”

The old classic, I think it turned out that in hot weather the fuel line vapour locked a few minutes after turning off, and the ice cream was at the back of the store, and took just long enough to walk there and back to trigger the issue.


Replies

VorpalWaytoday at 1:15 PM

I have a personal one with my car: if from a cold start during spring/autumn temperatures (or early mornings in summer), I drive about a km and shut it off, then come back to the car after a few minutes it will not manage to stay idling once I turn it on. What happens instead is that the RPM goes too low, and the engine shuts off, then the start/stop feature kicks in and restarts the engine. This happens every few seconds repeatedly. If I press the accelerator it can keep running. And if I just drive a meter or two it will work fine again when I go back to idling.

I tried both with neutral or in gear but with the clutch pressed (yes, it is a manual, fairly common in Sweden still) and that doesn't make a difference.

I haven't managed to figure out the cause, but since it is a modern car I would assume it is something with the ECU that goes wrong. (It is a Dacia Duster in case anyone else recognise this issue. The mechanic I asked hadn't heard about anyone else having this issue though.)