Auto. starts engine in "Drive"
 

Discovered today that my KV6 auto. can be started with "D" selected. Fortunately I had plenty of clearance in front of the car so no damage apart from a clean pair of trousers! Further (careful) investigation proved that the engine will also start with "Reverse" selected so can one of you knowledgeable people please point me in the right direction to cure this potentially dangerous fault?

Detent on start inhibitor switch stuck .Check operation of switch

Mine does this as well. Jules found it out while he was doing its air con.

If you manage to solve it, please report back how you did it.

It was reported to me that this is sometimes a symptom of the ECU having been replaced with one from a manual car at some point, but never had the chance to check it out yet.

Yes it does sound like the inhibitor switch is not doing what its meant to. Mine was deliberately disconnected by the garage that re-installed the rebuilt engine in my P5B which with the weight of that car would have catastrophic consequences, plus my next door neighbours had gone in his Ford Granada, which as he parked in front of his house one day he smashed into a bay window which caused major structural damage to that half front ground and first floors of his house.

I wouldn't have a clue how to fix it, but would recommend it is fixed as a matter of urgency.

V6 auto starting in "Drive"
 

I have this problem too - been present since I bought the car and seller warned me about it. I have changed the auto inhibitor switch with what appeared to be a good used one but it made no difference which seems to indicate it's not the switch. Do any of the T4 guys have any suggestions (if T4 can show anything relevant)?

You may be able to check if the ECU has been changed if you unplug the ECU and remove it it should have a Sticker with the car VIN number on it.
If it doesn't match or the sticker is missing then it's likely to have been changed.

I've come across this a few times now usually on diesel autos but the same applies to the V6

Russ

Can it be reprogrammed by a T4 if it does turn out to be a changed one?

I might have a chance today to send all my plenum clips down the engine bay and take a look.

In you case David if it is a manual ECU that's been fitted the I'm afraid it may need a replacement ECU depending on the age of your car.
Early Auto cars use NNN100720 the manual uses NNN100692
Later cars both Auto and manual use NNN500340.

If it's had an ECU set from another car, to get the car back to as it should be, is quite involved there's two choices
First the car can be reconfigured to original the ECU will need to virginised and configured to the car, the Vin in the immobiliser edited to the original along with new transponders for the keys. The ZCS coding may need correcting if the original config has been corrupted also ;)
Other way is to change the electronic identity of the car to the Vin of the ECU set, this would need the LSM and IPK virginising and then configuring to the car along with reconfiguring the ZCS coding. This can present problems though as if the ECU set has come from an MG and it's a 75 or vise-versa then it can can cause some issues and the car would have to be booked in as it's opposite version if you needed to put it on T4 if you need to diagnose problems in the future.

Personally I'd use method one as it's the best way to do things.

Putting an ECU set on may get you going but it can and does cause all sorts of problems.

T4 will not reconfigure or virginise ECU sets from another car or IPK's and LSM's it's incapable of doing that, we use various equipment and software to be able to do this.

Russ

Is this the car that your sent the water damaged ECM to me for repair David?

Not that I would have altered anything during the coding transfer, however the EWS holds the key to whether a car is an automatic or manual.

Fortunately with the V6 this can be corrected in the same way as for a diesel, using the method Russ describes ;)

Brian :D

This is indeed the car which had ECU water ingress and was successfully brought back to life by your good self, Brian. As soon as I get time, I'll check if the VIN numbers match and report back.