After the time belt issues over Christmas, we've been battling with limp mode issues for a few months. A few cycles of the cleaning stuff from a very helpful garage haven't sorted it out, so now every time we hit 3000rpm in 3rd or 4th the limiter kicks in, and if we get the engine light reset it only takes one strong pull away onto a motorway to bring the light back on and limp mode back into play.

Garage has just quoted £1,380 inc VAT for new turbo (not a Fiat garage).

Reasonable? Worthwhile (08 Multi, but family of 6 so we definitely need something this size!)

Bear in mind we dropped over £2k on the car back end of last year so this is starting to turn into a money pit, but I have relatively little confidence that if we picked up another second hand it wouldn't potentially start to have similar issues.

From what you've said, it seems strange that they've diagnosed it as a turbo fault. I assume the 'few cycles of cleaning stuff' were for the VGT mechanism?

Limp mode kicking in when you hit 3000rpm at full throttle is typical of the symptoms of a leak in the vacuum pipework. I had it on mine years ago and the eventual fix was a short piece of rubber carb hose to replace the perished version of same. Total cost - 20p. Finding the fault was rather more expensive, as the garage had replaced the MAP sensor and a couple of other bits in an effort to rectify the fault.

If it is the turbo at fault and the attempted cleaning of the VGT in situ hasn't worked (and watching various YouTube vids of people doing it, I'm not surprised - it's a bodge at best) then I'd be tempted to whip the existing turbo out to have a look at it. It doesn't take that long to get it out. A good mechanic would have it on his bench inside 2 hours, easily. At £1,380, I'd tell them to take a running jump. List price of a new turbo is a lot (around £7-800) but only a fool wishing to part with his money would pay that. Official Fiat refurbed or even brand new ones can be had off the 'bay for around a third of that. I got a genuine brand new boxed one for mine for £250, delivered, from a reputable seller. And as I say, 4 hours hours labour should see old swapped for new. Find the part number on the current one and have a delve on the web.

Has your garage got an office in the Bahamas?

Thanks for the quick reply. To give the garage owner his due, he has had the car in on three consecutive weeks (and giving us use of the courtesy car) fir a day, applied the spray through stuff and given the car a test drive each time, all for no charge at all, and then over the last couple of days given us a courtesy car while he arranged for an auto electrician to help him out with the diagnosis, so I don't think he is particularly a rip off merchant - he's not pushing us into getting the work done with him, he was just quoting for the work.

But keeping the part costs down and then just paying for 4-5 hours of labour does sound like a more promising option - either that or just finally ditch it and get something else!!

larkim said:

Thanks for the quick reply. To give the garage owner his due, he has had the car in on three consecutive weeks (and giving us use of the courtesy car) fir a day, applied the spray through stuff and given the car a test

But keeping the part costs down and then just paying for 4-5 hours of labour does sound like a more promising option - either that or just finally ditch it and get something else!!

Click to expand...

Hi,
it seems very coincidental that the fault has only been in evidence since the pipework was disturbed...,

have you got another FIAT indy in your area.?, (who was it The Beard uses.??)


no point getting rid now -as you've basically given it another 5 years of service life - just needs someone familiar with the set-up,
Charlie

Don't be too suspicious of a maverick garage owner please on this one. We took it to him because we were having problems with the limp mode issue and he's tried cost free options for us as part of the diagnosis cycle before getting to the stage of concluding this is the solution answer. He's not actually that keen on the work for himself I don't think!

One thing which I forgot to mention was the diagnosis concluded that the diaphragm was failing to hold pressure. Does that sound more technical as a solid reason to replace the turbo rather than take it anywhere else for further diagnosis?

You can get just a replacement vacuum actuator unit (with the diaphragm inside) on ebay. Something like this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Turbocharger-Actuator-454135-Fits-IVECO-NISSAN-AUDI-BMW-FIAT-OPEL-VW-SKODA-/142045191111?hash=item21128d9bc7:g:01kAAOSwOVpXelNL
or this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Turbocharger-Wastegate-Actuator-Fiat-Marea-Multipla-Stilo-1-9-JTD-2000-/331060182826?fits=Car+Make%3AFiat&hash=item4d14b97f2a:g:MY4AAOxyLN9Sef0u
but you'll need to see if your turbo part number is in the compatibility list. Getting the part number from the existing turbo is critical - then you have sound basis for purchasing replacement parts. Don't just rely on the ebay compatibility checker - that is often wrong. Unfortunately the forum ePER here only covers cars up to mid-2005, otherwise I'd have said look your VIN up on there for a definitive answer. The ePER on the Polish(?) Fiat forum has a much newer edition of ePER which would cover your car, but it's best to go looking on there in the wee small hours as it can only cope with a very small user base and it's easy to get kicked off by the server if too many people are using it.

Don't be too concerned about buying parts from Latvia and Baltic states. It seems like a lot of the refurbishment for these turbos is based in that area. nerings on ebay sell a huge range of turbo parts - take a look in their ebay store.

It's good that you have faith in your garage. If they tell you that they think it's the actuator that's at fault, they are in effect saying that something is wrong on the vacuum actuation circuit. But there are several items that can cause a loss of vacuum, not just the turbo actuator, and most of them are cheap to fix becasue they're basically bits of tubing. The actuator solenoid can also go TU - they're about £50-60 for a Pierburg one if you shop around.

varesecrazy said:

Hi,
it seems very coincidental that the fault has only been in evidence since the pipework was disturbed...,

have you got another FIAT indy in your area.?, (who was it The Beard uses.??)

Click to expand...

Heath Road Garage in Sandbach. Alfie (Alfredo Martone) served his time at Mangoletsi and reckoned he could do a better job. I tend to think he's right as the Panda has been maintained there for several years, our 156 came from there and the Giulietta MA is also serviced there.

Plus, not a million miles away from Frodsham. We make the trip from Mancland whenever a job needs to be done.

Thanks for the suggestion about the Sandbach garage. Sadly, convenience will trump this as neither myself or SWMBO work any where near there (opposite direction).

Any recommendations for north Liverpool or Chester / Ellesmere Port based fiat-friendly garages? I would like to get some alternative options here, though for the time being we're driving it in reset mode so the limit isn't imposed and power levels are OK so at least it is livable with.

It's only 21 miles down the A533. I travel 30 miles to get there. Sandbach is a little like Frodsham in as much as it's a small town with an old centre, although it's a nuclear town as opposed to Frodsham which is linear.

You can walk into town in 15 minutes and stop for a Pannini and Cafe Latte at Rafaele's or lunch at Casa Mia, both excellent and both run by Italians not people of indeterminate near eastern or south Asian extraction.

So you can have your Italian car repaired by an Italian while you eat and drink Italian in a pretty small town. Might even be worth taking the day off for.

What's not to like?

LOL, you make it sound idyllic! Sadly the reason I have a Multipla is that I have a family of 6 with four young boys pulling us all over the place so oftentimes its convenience that wins out!

Resurrecting this because in all honesty we've got no further and just lived with doing our level best to avoid tripping the ECU fault light.

However, I tripped it a few days ago so decided to get a bluetooth ODB2 adaptor and see if I could read the fault and clear it.

Fault code which was displayed was P0238 - https://www.autocodes.com/p0238.html

I've got the Torque Pro app on my phone so can monitor a few things whilst the car is being driven (if my wife drives!) - anything that I could keep an eye on to help identify potential problems / solutions which may not have been addressed previously (short of replacing the turbo).

Bear in mind I am an engine numpty, but with decent enough instructions and caution I'm not averse to having a go at fixing relatively easy things providing there is little risk of a) blowing up the engine completely or b) killing us all in a horrific safety accident.

I might take some time to sit in the car with the adaptor / app running and see if I can trigger the ECU fault through stationary revs now I know how to clear the fault.

I'm not 100% convinced that the turbo is doing anything at all at the moment (and perhaps hasn't been for a couple of years) so any way of looking into that as a pointer would be gratefully received.

Would using "mutliecuscan" be a better option to see data on the turbo etc?

MultiECUScan (MES) - yes it would. A great bit of software and free too.


As for triggering faults just by raising revs (car stationary) - I doubt that would work.

I'll get MES downloaded and installed then. Will try the free version as most of the stuff is supposed to work with the Multi in the free version, and I can't quite justify 50Eur on something I don't yet know how to use properly!!

What could / should I look at to help attempt to diagnose stuff in relation to the turbo?

It's all well and good saying sensor X is reading Y but unless i know that Y is wildly out from normal parameters it won't tell me anything useful!

I'm surprised you got the torque app and a bluetooth obd working. Mine always read nonsense like it was looking at the wrong channel. Worked fine on other marques though. I think I paid €45 for multiscan ecu so i missed a trick there!
With my old Golf it went into overboost because of sticking vanes. Do a few accelerations in all the gears and you should see the boost plateau off at a value like 1400mbar. Its good to use live recordings or graphs for this. Overboost will normally cause an error if its out of tolerance for too long - say 5 seconds. On my Golf this was when you did a full throttle acceleration in 5th from 1200rpm up to 3500rpm. Here the boost spiked over 1400mbar and just stayed over the set point for over 5 seconds and then went into limp mode.

Torque worked first time, no issues. Which was nice!

Thanks for the steer on what to look for when I get the laptop hooked up to the car. Fingers crossed it can all be properly read from the laptop over bluetooth as I know some of the BT adaptors are a bit flaky and I've read some mods involving soldering irons might be required - not my strong suit!

I'll post back with some data when I have it and at the very least will have a chance to give some data to a garage if we do get around to trying to sort it.

In the meanwhile, SWMBO is happy not to have an orange light on, so that was worth the £10 spent in any event!