The fuel pump control circuit is faulty. Classic symptoms are intermittent cutting out and a car that will not restart when hot.
P0230 — also written PO23O, P 0230, 0230 — is the OBD-II code for fuel pump primary circuit malfunction. Same code, same fix: this page covers every spelling of it.
P0230 is a fuel & air fault code, typically costing £80–£650 to put right in a UK garage.
What causes P0230?
- Failed fuel pump relay
- Corroded relay socket or fuse box terminal
- Failing in-tank pump drawing excessive current
- Broken wire to the tank
How P0230 is fixed
- Test relay and voltage drop at the pump plug
- Replace the relay and repair the socket
- Replace the in-tank pump if current draw is high
P0230 repair cost in the UK
Most P0230 repairs land between £80–£650 including parts and labour. The spread is wide because the cheap fix (a sensor, a hose, a leak) and the expensive fix (a major component) throw the same code — which is why a proper diagnosis before parts are bought saves the most money.
Can you drive with P0230?
No — this is a stranding fault. Get it diagnosed before a long journey.
Urgency: high.
What P0230 is telling you
This family of codes is about metering. The engine needs a known mass of air and a known quantity of fuel; when a sensor, pump or valve stops reporting honestly, the calculation falls apart and the ECU protects the engine.
On P0230 specifically — fuel pump primary circuit malfunction — the stored code records the moment that check failed, not the moment the part gave up. That gap is why two cars with the same code can need completely different repairs.
How P0230 is diagnosed properly
Each of the known causes is ruled in or out in cost order, cheapest and most likely first. On P0230 that means working through them like this:
- Failed fuel pump relay — tested for delivery and current draw under load, not just for whether it runs.
- Corroded relay socket or fuse box terminal — opened, inspected for green corrosion and spread pins, and back-probed rather than unplugged, so the reading is taken with the circuit live.
- Failing in-tank pump drawing excessive current — tested for delivery and current draw under load, not just for whether it runs.
- Broken wire to the tank — checked with the loom flexed and the engine warm, because a wiring fault that is intermittent when cold shows itself under heat and vibration.
An hour of diagnostic time on P0230 routinely saves more than it costs, because the alternative is buying the most expensive part on that list and hoping.
The repairs that actually clear P0230
- Test relay and voltage drop at the pump plug
- Replace the relay and repair the socket
- Replace the in-tank pump if current draw is high
After the repair the code is cleared and the car is driven until the relevant readiness monitor completes, rather than handed back as soon as the light goes out. A code that has only been erased will come straight back on the next drive cycle.
What happens if P0230 is ignored
This is a stop-and-sort fault rather than a wait-for-the-service fault. Ignoring it risks turning a sensor-money repair into a component-money one.
For reference, P0230 typically lands at £80–£650 all-in at an independent garage in the UK — main-dealer quotes for the same job usually sit above that.
Getting P0230 looked at
Bob's Mechanical Repairs is an independent garage in Birnam, Dunkeld, Perthshire, with 32 years of Bob's experience on the tools. If P0230 is showing on your car, bring the scan results with you — we will read the live data ourselves, tell you which of the causes above it actually is, and price the repair before any work starts.