02 freelander starting issue

[Mud&Rox]

MY WIFE'S 02 freelander ramdomly will not start......today she drove it all day to 4 stops.....on the 4th it would crank all day long but wouldnt turn over. I ran out there with a reader to pull codes as usual, but this time no codes.....checked fuel.....got it, checked spark.....got it. disconnected the battery for a few minutes and bam hit first time....she went on with her day only to call me after making 2 more stops with the same issue......same fix....

any idea?

 

[Axel]

Crank sensor going bad would cause those symptoms. Had the same thing happen, and didn't get a code either. Sensor was failing intermittently.

I see this post is 3 years old, did you figure it out eventually? Adding a reply anyway, for general interest.

 

[discostew]

First thing I would wonder is if the generic scan tool is reading the faults that are stored . Lots of times I have used my snap on scanner on a Land Rover or Jaguar and had no codes . but when I put the IDS or T4 on it then I see the crank sensor faults or cam sensor faults. I've seen lots of cam sensors cause no starts , also seen camshafts break and the frt of it is spinning but the back half where the sensor sits is no longer spinning . If in fact there is no codes then the crank sensor would be suspect because the PCM has no way of knowing that the starter is spinning with no crank sensor activity . Not sure why a hard reset would clear up a crank sensor , that makes me think it was imobilized by security .

 

[Axel]

Assuming the ECU is picking up the codes and storing them correctly, I would agree. When the crank sensor started failing for us, the ECU was loosing the codes for a while, masking the problem. Once we figured that out and reinitialized the ECU the crank sensor errors came up on the reader, and the problem has not happened again after the sensor was replaced.