The postscript:
The Jag is in Norfolk at the moment having some surgery on his rear end, so when I decided to take Mrs Renaultvation (Liz) on a cruise, it was decide that Bertie would take us to the airport. With long stay car park booked, the evening before we left, I took Bertie to fill him up with petrol. With tank full he decided to throw a wobbly and would not start. Two hours later we returned home on the back of a recovery truck and a text was sent to my son who was working until 1am to see if he could take us to the airport at 5am.
Holiday over, Bertie started and ran perfectly, but I am not happy to live with this potential unreliability - the search was on for a new crank sensor. After some trawling one appeared on ebay - original Fiat sensor in box, no model number, but Fiat part number was given. It was the right one, which is lucky as very few 1.6 Puntos were made.
Part was fitted, ran for 9 minutes and cut out. I refitted the aftermarket item and the engine ran again. I thought I had bought another duff sensor, but did not want to believe it. I checked the resistance on the sensor and it was fine, so decided to fit it, run it until it stopped, then check the resistance again. However, when I fitted it, it did not run at all. I then checked the pins on the connector and noticed that the Fiat pins looked a bit thinner than the aftermarket sensor, so I closed up the female connector on the car, fitted it and it has been running perfectly ever since! Was that little connector, requiring a 30 second fix the problem all along? :I
True test will be tomorrow when Bertie takes us to London.
'I intend to live forever - so far, so good'