Hi

I wonder if anyone can help. I have a 1999 Carisma 1.6 petrol with high mileage.

Recently I have it put through it's APK (MOT) test. It was done by a back street mechanic, what I had done was.

New Oil Filter
Full oil change
New air filter
New Spark plugs

Pretty soon after that, the orange engine light would come on not long after the car was started then go out again when the engine is hot and choke goes off.

Anyway the situation got steadily worse to the point the car would sometimes cut out when this light came on. When that happened (or if I turn off the ignition with the orange light still on) the car will not start until the temperature drops below a certain level (20 - 30 minutes), it starts for 3 secs then dies.

So what I've done so far is had the throttle body cleaned, verified the plugs, verified/cleaned the MAF sensor, cleaned all connections to the ECU and had it into 2 Mitsubishi dealerships. The engine was plugged into 6 different computers but only 2 could connect to the car computer and no fault codes were registered.

The advice I got from Mitsubishi was don't spend any more money on it, run it until it dies because the car computer must be broken or we'd see some codes.

Anyway I'm not ready to give up on her just yet.

One other thing I just noticed recently. When I turn the ignition one notch, normally the Engine light, battery light, brake light, oil light and ABS light come on then the engine and ABS lights go off after a few seconds and once I start the engine the oil and battery lights go out.

However I noticed recently (but may have been like this for a while) that when I turn the key 1 notch the oil light does not come on at all. The car starts ok.

When i reset the computer by unplugging the +ve battery terminal for 20 mins and everything else required to re-set the computer, once i reconnect the battery then the oil light comes on on the first notch and goes out again when the engine starts - normal behaviour??. After 3 or four journeys in the car the issue is back again, no oil light on the first notch.

Could anyone offer any advice on this. I'm no car mechanic but logic tells me it must be sensor related, the TPS is ok as is the MAF, not checked the O2 or Cam sensors. Could the above possibly point to a problem with the oil pump and / or a sensor which is related to oil delivery?

thanks