UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Hello,
A week ago I passed my driving test and I bought a second hand 1.4 2002 polo with 43,000 Miles on the clock. I bought it privately so obviously no warranty.
When driving back from north Wales where I got it up to the lake district the engine cut out on the m6 whilst doing 70mph. It then continued to cut out the next day at varying speeds on a journey over to Bradford. It will stop when driving at speed, when idling and when coming up to a junction. Very scary for a first time driver.
The engine fault light came on and the fault that showed was the lambda sensor which we replaced. Engine light and fault now cleared - the problem is still happening. Also, we read that this can happen when the throttle body needs cleaning - we did this and it was all clean. The next thing we are going to change is a the crank sensor.
It has been into a garage this week and had a guy who specialises in vw's look at it and they can't find anything wrong. My dad is now going to look into everything on the engine (wiring etc) and we are currently looking at buying another car. However we still want to fix this as we may need to sell it.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Also, I apologise if anything I've written seems dumb. I'm a complete novice female with No experience when it comes to cars.

Thank you

Hi, welcome to this forum!

What a horrible and dangerous experience for a new driver!

My wife owned a 1.2 BBY engine Polo from new in September 2002 until we traded it in in August 2015 after running 15,000 miles, so these cars, with that engine should be reliable. The throttle body needing cleaned should only have taken care of it not being able to idle cleanly and I don't think that it would cause the engine to cut out when driving at speed above idle.

This sounds like an obscure wiring problem that maybe is logging faults that VCDS could find, what I am meaning is that if that car has so far, only been scanned using a "general purpose" diagnostic tool, then quite a few fault codes could have been missed - maybe try to find someone local to you who has VCDS.

Finally, after cutting out at speed, like on a motorway, do you get left with "immediate no power and lights on on the dashboard" - and how does it restart, did you bump start it easily or did you need to get onto the hard shoulder and hold the key in the start position for a long time, remembering and saying how/what you need to do to get it running again should help with diagnosing the root cause - a bit!

Edit:- without waiting for your reply, I'd be thinking that checking all that car's fuses and fuse boxes - there will be some under the dash area, and maybe even buying a new fuel pump relay, might be the next smart move - though I do understand that there is a limit on how much you can replace "just in case".