won't start, unless bumped

I have a 1.4 diesel that will no longer start, unless I bump it, use Easy start in air intake or spend around 18 minutes try to turn it over. After trying to start I can here a whinning noise which I'd guess is the fuel pump.

It had a leak in fuel line which has been changed, new fuel filter, starter motor, battery and been recently serviced.

Once it going it generally fine but sometimes gets an engine management light on under acceleration, but once engine stopped again for about 5 minutes it again won't start.

I would guess it not getting fuel and From reading forum it sounds like it's pressure related.

Does anyone know what best place to start would be? (top of a hill helps), or anyway to test if pressure valve or rail is working, I have an OBD2 but unfortunately not compatible. Thanks

You didn't mention the primer hand pump...

Does it start after hand priming? Does the hand primer stiffen up after a few hand pumps?

Hello Arfur Dent,

The hand primer doesn't stiffen as I would expect and once squeezed returns to usual shape quite quickly,

I cannot hear any air being sucked in, (I could before fuel pipe was replaced),

Thanks

Hand priming doesn't seem to have a big impact on it starting, it

If you have the engine light on at times you will have some fault codes logged. The way to read these on the early diesels is to use lexia tool (info here). The engine light may not be connected to your starting fault but the codes could yeild some useful information on common rail pressure etc.

Engine light generally isn't on just sporadically comes on whilst accelerating normally on fast roads, when this happen power drops, then lights goes off after few seconds then back to normal driving