This is a relatively fresh 1.9TD aaz motor with around 3000 kms on it.
Came out of work just now and tried to start the car and it half cranked and stopped, seemed like it fired but just puffed and shut down.. did that 2-3 times in a row (had the cold start lever pulled out at the time, and just charged the glow plugs up with one cycle).
Pushed the cold start in, and this is probably not related, but it started right up after the third or fourth try.
Could this be related to a bad ignition switch, possibly not getting the starter to turn over enough for the motor to catch? Kind of worried here, because it almost seemed like the compression was off by the way it puffed after it stopped each time I tried cranking.
Sounds more like a starter issue to me. Half cranking not turning over, not enough power from battery more so than from the switch. Clean the cables, the grounds and check the tightness of the nuts on the starter. If you have some jumper cables you could pull the starter and test it outside of the bell housing and see if it was hanging up on something or is the solenoid was not making good contact and spinning the starter motor up to speed.
Seems the last time I had one apart it was pretty gummy in there. Once it was clean and free to spin up there was no problem starting the car.