Engine management light on

Hi Guys,

Your feed back on the following would be much appreciated.

My engine management light came on the other night. The funny thing is, it came on after I went over a traffic calming road bump. This may/may not be related. It now comes on and then goes off throughout the journey. When the light comes on, the car still drives smoothly and it can get up to high speed, but it doesn't accelerate very fast, just like a diesel without a turbo, then when the light goes off it goes back to normal acceleration. Any suggestions?

Has anyone heard of a sticky turbo? I am wondering if this could be the problem.

Mine (JTD) also does this, especially on bumpy roads. I believe it to be linked to one of the plastic connectors under the driver's-side dashboard tray (where the fuses are.) When I 'wiggle' the connector and it's wires (not too much!), the problem goes away for a while, but eventually comes back after a few thousand miles.
Note, I had a new throttle potentiometer fitted, which was diagnosed as having broken down inside, but the fault is still there intermittently, so I suspect the plastic connector that this item is linked to.

Thanks for that. Did your power drop when your light came on?? My light has not came on for a couple of weeks now and is driving great. I will keep that in mind should it happen again.

I am told that when the light goes on, the engine management system defaults to a 'get you home' mode, which accounts for the loss of power. It has always reset to the normal setting (so far!) when the light goes out. Sometimes it 'kangaroos' a bit while deciding which mode it wants to adopt!

This sounds kind of familiar, and similar to the query I posted yesterday on here:

http://www.fiatforum.com/multipla/59151-wont-rev-over-3000-rpm-engine-control-faulty-warning.html

Except no-one offered any help to me in the Multipla section

Anyway, I had the engine management light come on, plus the warning 'engine control faulty - see garage' displayed on my friends' 1.9 JTD.

Power was down, it wouldn't rev over 3000rpm and at low speeds it was kangaroo'ing and misfiring on part throttle. If I drove around for a bit it kind of sorted itself out and the ECU seemed to settle down into low power (limp?) mode and the car would drive but with very little power.

Anyway, general advice was to take it to a diagnostics place, so as there is a Fiat dealer up the road I took it there. Turns out that an 'over boost' pipe from the turbo has come adrift, which they think is the cause of the problem.

And like the other threads in here, it seemed to have started after I went over a large pothole in central London (Grrrrr... I'm gonna sue your car hating ass off for that Mr. Livingstone!) I get the car back on Monday, and they're also looking it over to see if it needs work done because of the front suspension spring re-call (it's an '03 model).

Fingers crossed that the problem will be solved and all will be well with 'that wierd car' as most of my friends know it as!

So if anyone else has this problem of kangaroo'ing, loss of power and inability to rev over 3000rpm then check the turbo overboost pipe.

Chas