thank you for the info,had some drama yesterday,kindly mobile mechanic took a day out from his holiday to help get the car started so i could leave at autologic garage.from being stone dead it fired up first time,fast idle to rough idle very strong smell of petrol dirty exhaust cut out,stone dead again rinse and repeat 3 times,.before using his large scanner he used his multimeter on the battery,it blew it straight out of his hand,live earth heavy petrol fumes..panic,disconnected battery and isolated the terminals.has this been the problem all along bad earth causing an intermittant fault.so now i need to find all the earthing points,with a nasty dose of sciatica not so easy,at the moment i am sick of it.there is more to this than i have said,the car is under a warranty from the seller,fair distance involved and ferry and trailer costs to get the car back there and then getting a train back,apart from paying for the two lambda sensors they are not responding to my current polite e mails.i am in a difficult position i have already paid out a few hundred pounds and hired another car and would have paid for a more complete diagnostic test but am unwilling to get anybody else involved, car electrics on the island are not great.will try to find out how many earths there and their location and will wait until my back eases off.have just sent a not so polite e mail to seller will wait and see what happens