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Stop-Start Switch

The dashboard or console button that lets the driver disable automatic engine stop-start. Its circuit is usually more considered than a plain on-off contact: many are designed so that both a short and an open produce readings outside the valid range, precisely so the module can tell a broken switch from a pressed one.

The behaviour when it fails confuses owners, and it is worth knowing. Most vehicles default to stop-start enabled when they cannot read the switch, because that is the emissions-compliant state — so the complaint is almost always that it can no longer be switched off, and the engine keeps cutting out at junctions. That is a switch fault, not a stop-start system fault, and the distinction matters because investigating the stop-start system is expensive and pointless here.

Note that the setting rarely persists. Most vehicles deliberately re-enable stop-start at every key cycle regardless of the switch, so a driver who says "it turns itself back on" is usually describing normal behaviour rather than a fault.

It fails like any console switch — a spilled drink reaching the contacts, a worn contact, or a connector disturbed while something else was fitted behind the trim.

Also known as: stop start button, auto stop disable switch, isg switch, start stop button, engine stop start switch

Referenced by 20 codes

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Codes involving this component (20)

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Information, not instruction

CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.

Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.

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