burnerman, i thought it was a 1.7 di??? im unsure
it has done 131,000 .
Right, that's as good as anything, if it's a Di then it's got the intercooler-less Y17DTL engine inside it.
No, it's not a water ingress issue, it's a dry solder joint issue. Usually, it flags up a pump sensor or spill valve error code, which is a red herring, and can results in a garage wanting £1000 to replace the pump. Furthermore, the crank sensors on these protrude into the crankcase, so shouldn't get dirty (unless you really need an oil change!). If it was an immobiliser, you'd have flashing spanner lights I reckon, and no response from the starter.
The problem is the 'interface' EDU (between pump and ECU) which sits at the back of the engine, and looks like this.
It can be accessed from underneath, and is fairly easy to take out and swap. A garage will probably charge about £300-£400 to swap it, or you can have a look at it yourself.
At the back, you can peel away the cover to reveal the PCB:
The common failures are dry joints on the components with legs, examples of which I've shown below
Yes, for a lot of them you have to look VERY carefully, as they're never as obvious as that last picture!
What I would suggest, and with the aid of the photo below, is dab some non-corrosive solder on them (Fry's fluxite is pretty mild) and then go at each with a 25W soldering iron or gun, held for a couple of seconds after the solder has melted.
The silicone is to seal the cover back on afterwards. That should fix the problem, or at least it did on my girlfriend's Corsa after it did the same thing after 150k, cost = £2 of silicone. Again, it was fine after it cooled down, but was dead again once we towed it home, so you're right not to trust it. My Astra did the same after 70k, but the garage fitted a new EDU that time.
