AdeB
Established Member
And typical that it happened on my longest single journey to date - Wiltshire to Lancashire, 213 miles.
Stopped for a top-up charge at Strensham North, at one of the Ecotricity units. It was in use by a Zoe when I arrived, but the guy driving it said that as he was planning to charge to 95% and I wanted it for only 10 minutes (to give me comfort in reaching my main charge stop at Stoke) he'd take a break and let me plug in (what a gent!).
But it wouldn't connect - cycled through the on-screen multi-stage initialisation process and then 'charge cancelled'. Three times. So I gave up and decided to press on. Except I couldn't - the car wouldn't boot up, and the dreaded red Vehicle Control System Fault, followed by HV Battery Shut-off, appeared.
AA/MG First said it would take about an hour to get someone out. But then I found an AA man already in the services! I asked him for a 10mm spanner (of course, there's nothing so sensible or as useful as a car accessories shop at a motorway services these days
) and he offered to come and take a look anyway.
Well, the 10mm spanner option didn't work. I told him of forum users' experiences (@ryanoneill1970 ), where a similar fault had been cleared by connecting the diagnostic device to the OBD port. So we tried that. As others noted, no faults or errors were logged to the device, but the simple process of connecting the unit cleared the fault - and the car happily booted up again. I had no further problems for the rest of the drive, nor any issue on my return journey today.
Chris, the AA man, said he'd provide me with a formal report to send to MG. He says it's the only way to try to get faults like this fixed - which makes sense. Whether it will spur MG into diagnosing the specific problem and releasing an update...who knows? And since the only way to effectively submit the report will be through the dealer, it will need a really switched-on, committed and conscientious dealer to make enough of a fuss, or know the right channels, to ensure that reports like this get through to MG in the first place.
Stopped for a top-up charge at Strensham North, at one of the Ecotricity units. It was in use by a Zoe when I arrived, but the guy driving it said that as he was planning to charge to 95% and I wanted it for only 10 minutes (to give me comfort in reaching my main charge stop at Stoke) he'd take a break and let me plug in (what a gent!).
But it wouldn't connect - cycled through the on-screen multi-stage initialisation process and then 'charge cancelled'. Three times. So I gave up and decided to press on. Except I couldn't - the car wouldn't boot up, and the dreaded red Vehicle Control System Fault, followed by HV Battery Shut-off, appeared.
AA/MG First said it would take about an hour to get someone out. But then I found an AA man already in the services! I asked him for a 10mm spanner (of course, there's nothing so sensible or as useful as a car accessories shop at a motorway services these days
) and he offered to come and take a look anyway.Well, the 10mm spanner option didn't work. I told him of forum users' experiences (@ryanoneill1970 ), where a similar fault had been cleared by connecting the diagnostic device to the OBD port. So we tried that. As others noted, no faults or errors were logged to the device, but the simple process of connecting the unit cleared the fault - and the car happily booted up again. I had no further problems for the rest of the drive, nor any issue on my return journey today.
Chris, the AA man, said he'd provide me with a formal report to send to MG. He says it's the only way to try to get faults like this fixed - which makes sense. Whether it will spur MG into diagnosing the specific problem and releasing an update...who knows? And since the only way to effectively submit the report will be through the dealer, it will need a really switched-on, committed and conscientious dealer to make enough of a fuss, or know the right channels, to ensure that reports like this get through to MG in the first place.
