Breakdown

It was a sad day when the van died! It’s been working perfectly for 5300 miles, then it decided to stop! We returned with our trolley of shopping, loaded the van and tried to start it in the supermarket car park… Starter motor and battery fine, but she just wouldn’t start. We tried in vain for some time. We even tried lifting the bonnet, looking at the engine and scratching our heads, but to no avail!

At this point we didn’t know what to do. Do they have breakdown services in Turkey…? How do we get towed…? We spoke to the lady at the info desk in the shopping centre and she called the VW garage, which happened to be 5 miles away! Within an hour the big red bus was winched atop a tow truck and we set off for VW.

Much to our surprise, the VW mechanics took seconds to start the van. They spent one hour doing checks with their computer and told us there was nothing wrong. In fact, according to their computer, the van was working perfectly! Perhaps it was just having a bad day. Then came the bill… Amazingly, they charged us £21.50 for the tow and all the checks were free! We even got free cups of tea! May have been more expensive in England…

We’ve since realised (through discussion with others) it was most likely that the immobilizer had disabled the fuel pump. We can only guess that driving through the deep ford got some electrics damp and upset the immobilizer in some way. All has been well since…