Hi all
I've had my Panda 4x4 since March 2016.
It had a fairly loud turbo since day one, and started having various small issues about 3 months after purchase. They were mild at first, so I let them go, but towards the end of the year, things started getting worse, so I booked the first service a month early in February and asked the dealer to check things out whilst it was in.
The first thing they said was that the turbo was extremely loud and therefore faulty, and this was probably causing all of my issues. A new turbo was fitted, but unfortunately, when I got the car back, all of the issues were still there......apart from the noisy turbo which was now whisper quiet.
The various issues are as follows:
1. When gently accelerating in 2nd gear, as I pass through 1500rpm, the car has a spit second drop in power. It basically feels like the car hiccups. I can recreate this every time, and I have some plots from a plug in OBD device that show this happening. The green lines are engine load.
2. When driving the car after it's been stood for long periods, especially overnight, if I'm accelerating gently in 1st or 2nd gear, then it will sometimes bog down and hesitate/stutter, until it gets to around 2000-2500rpm when it will suddenly get a surge of power and take off.
3. When on the motorway doing a constant 70mph, every now and again the car would surge for a split second, then settle back down.
Whilst messing around with the car trying to force these issues so that I could demonstrate them to the dealer, I came across some other small issues.
4. If I rev the car to 1000rpm whilst stationary, I can hear, and feel the revs varying ever so slightly. It doesn't do this above or below 1000rpm. When I grabbed a trace from the OBD device, I could see that the revs were fluctuating quickly between 1000-1060rpm. It's barely visible on the plot, but as you can see, the engine load is also fluctuating rapidly.
5. As I was getting a fluctuation when revving the engine whilst stationary, I decided to see if there was any obvious fluctuations whilst driving which could maybe be causing some of the surging.
I waited until it was nice and quiet, then got the car up to speed on the dual carriageway before depressing the clutch and the holding the accelerator at various positions. I found that one position resulted in the engine revving to over 3000rpm, then fluctuating up and down. When this was happening, the throttle was being held in a constant position.
As the car was showing no error codes, and some of the issues can only really be seen when the car has been stood, the dealer have had a hard time tracking down these issues.
So far, it has spent over a month in the dealers on and off. I've been letting them keep it for a week at a time, as I need it every other week for work, and I can't risk taking one of their courtesy cars which comes with a hefty £1000 insurance excess.
I initially thought the issues would turn out to be EGR related, but they refuse to actually check that as there aren't any codes. They are telling me that, as the Euro 6 engine is so emissions-focused, then it would 100% have to throw a code if there was an EGR problem.
It was also suggested when I originally booked the car in, that it could be an accelerator issue, as they've changed quite a few of them. However, as there were no codes, they again refused to consider it.
We have hit a bit of a dead end, and a couple of weeks ago, the basically said there's nothing else they can do as they can't recreate the issues that I'm seeing, and every time they've drove it with the computer hooked up, everything has been normal.
I pointed out that they could very easily check over the accelerator throttle sensor and that it could be a good trouble shooting step, and they eventually agreed to change the pedal just to see if it helped.
Initially, I thought it hadn't made any difference, however, I now believe it has. The surging at motorway speeds seems to have stopped, and I can no longer get the revs to fluctuate whilst driving as I mentioned in number 5 above, so I think the throttle sensor could have been the cause of that.
Issues 1,2, and 4 are all still there. I'm now talking to Fiat, and hopefully the next step will be for them to send some engineers to have a look. Something is definitely amiss, and I still suspect it's EGR related. I have a video of the rev counter when this happens, and it's extremely similar to the video in the first post of a thread called "150 multijet... nothing, nothing, nothing... WOOSH!" in the Bravo section. Forum won't let me post an URL yet .
Edit:
Sorry...got so excited to post that I forgot to say:
Thanks for reading......all input appreciated
I've had my Panda 4x4 since March 2016.
It had a fairly loud turbo since day one, and started having various small issues about 3 months after purchase. They were mild at first, so I let them go, but towards the end of the year, things started getting worse, so I booked the first service a month early in February and asked the dealer to check things out whilst it was in.
The first thing they said was that the turbo was extremely loud and therefore faulty, and this was probably causing all of my issues. A new turbo was fitted, but unfortunately, when I got the car back, all of the issues were still there......apart from the noisy turbo which was now whisper quiet.
The various issues are as follows:
1. When gently accelerating in 2nd gear, as I pass through 1500rpm, the car has a spit second drop in power. It basically feels like the car hiccups. I can recreate this every time, and I have some plots from a plug in OBD device that show this happening. The green lines are engine load.
2. When driving the car after it's been stood for long periods, especially overnight, if I'm accelerating gently in 1st or 2nd gear, then it will sometimes bog down and hesitate/stutter, until it gets to around 2000-2500rpm when it will suddenly get a surge of power and take off.
3. When on the motorway doing a constant 70mph, every now and again the car would surge for a split second, then settle back down.
Whilst messing around with the car trying to force these issues so that I could demonstrate them to the dealer, I came across some other small issues.
4. If I rev the car to 1000rpm whilst stationary, I can hear, and feel the revs varying ever so slightly. It doesn't do this above or below 1000rpm. When I grabbed a trace from the OBD device, I could see that the revs were fluctuating quickly between 1000-1060rpm. It's barely visible on the plot, but as you can see, the engine load is also fluctuating rapidly.
5. As I was getting a fluctuation when revving the engine whilst stationary, I decided to see if there was any obvious fluctuations whilst driving which could maybe be causing some of the surging.
I waited until it was nice and quiet, then got the car up to speed on the dual carriageway before depressing the clutch and the holding the accelerator at various positions. I found that one position resulted in the engine revving to over 3000rpm, then fluctuating up and down. When this was happening, the throttle was being held in a constant position.
As the car was showing no error codes, and some of the issues can only really be seen when the car has been stood, the dealer have had a hard time tracking down these issues.
So far, it has spent over a month in the dealers on and off. I've been letting them keep it for a week at a time, as I need it every other week for work, and I can't risk taking one of their courtesy cars which comes with a hefty £1000 insurance excess.
I initially thought the issues would turn out to be EGR related, but they refuse to actually check that as there aren't any codes. They are telling me that, as the Euro 6 engine is so emissions-focused, then it would 100% have to throw a code if there was an EGR problem.
It was also suggested when I originally booked the car in, that it could be an accelerator issue, as they've changed quite a few of them. However, as there were no codes, they again refused to consider it.
We have hit a bit of a dead end, and a couple of weeks ago, the basically said there's nothing else they can do as they can't recreate the issues that I'm seeing, and every time they've drove it with the computer hooked up, everything has been normal.
I pointed out that they could very easily check over the accelerator throttle sensor and that it could be a good trouble shooting step, and they eventually agreed to change the pedal just to see if it helped.
Initially, I thought it hadn't made any difference, however, I now believe it has. The surging at motorway speeds seems to have stopped, and I can no longer get the revs to fluctuate whilst driving as I mentioned in number 5 above, so I think the throttle sensor could have been the cause of that.
Issues 1,2, and 4 are all still there. I'm now talking to Fiat, and hopefully the next step will be for them to send some engineers to have a look. Something is definitely amiss, and I still suspect it's EGR related. I have a video of the rev counter when this happens, and it's extremely similar to the video in the first post of a thread called "150 multijet... nothing, nothing, nothing... WOOSH!" in the Bravo section. Forum won't let me post an URL yet .
Edit:
Sorry...got so excited to post that I forgot to say:
Thanks for reading......all input appreciated
Last edited: