Came home today, mums car had been dropped off on a tow truck. Trying to find the problem, any pointers? RAA guy said it was possibly the fuel pump.

-batterys good, few months old
-starter turning over well
-plugged a spare fuel pump in and could feel it run, listened near the one in the tank with it plugged back in and could hear it run.
-haven't found any blown fuses yet, about to co check some more.
-Apparently the RAA guy squirted petrol in somewhere and it spluttered a bit but wouldn't run.

If you turn the engine over and have someone hold their finger on the back of the injector, should you be able to feel it "pulse" as it fires? Can't feel anything.

Sounds like the mimmobiliser has carked it.
Do a search and you may find that is fixable.
It is a black plastic box on the RHS of the steering wheel behind the cover under the steering wheel.
It is a well known problem. I had it and ecentually had the BEM module replaces and reprogrammed.
So search on immobiliser and BEM.

Mal commented that an internal circuit breaks,
Gerry

Yeah its looking that way. There is spark.
Mums car is a TH advance, I have a KH xi, if I plug in my bem and hold my key near the barrel front while starting it would that test for immobiliser issues?

Edit: http://www.aussiemagna.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91782&highlight=broken+immobiliser

Apparently it has been having intermittent starting issues, not wanting to start on the first go or two every few days.

Yeah,get under the dash where the BEM is located a give it a bit of a wiggle,well ,the wire's any way..jiggle the connector

One thing is ,when it happens to mine ,is that you cant keep trying to start it as it just wont go,You have to give it a bit of time between attempting to start it again.

If it is a imobiliser issue,one thing i have found is that it will start ,then stop straight away,one way around this for me has been to pump the throttle a bit immediately it catches and before it stops again...work for me

If its a immobiliser issue I would be checking the connections around the coil on the ignition barrel
I had this problem recently
Car would fire then die, try to restart and would die again
Sometimes took 3 attempts for keep it started
People said it was a battery issue and was not the case
If you pull apart the lower dash plastics aswell as the surround arounf the key barrel you will see a metal coil in a plastic ring screwed in
There are two metal prongs, if these dont make contact then the immobilsier wont disengage
Ever since I bent the prongs more I havent had any problems since, going on afew months now

Cheers guys, I'll update tomorrow if any luck.

A wire jiggle has brought it back to intermittent, mum wants it fixed fixed by an actual profe$$ional now though.

yeah mate, the connection to the barrel is a common prob, the plug coming loose is common. i had the same prob on my old verada (diamante here in NZ) .