So the girlfriend got stranded tonight, on an uphill stretch of dual carriageway. Car ground to a halt with no power, and engine management light on.

Fair play to the breakdown service that she has free with Lloyds TSB, as the AA were with her within 10 minutes. AA diagnostic came up with suspect throttle position sensor , although she didnt get the actual fault code number :bang::bang:. The AA counldn't reset the fault so that might help int he long run.

Anyway car is back home, i've taken off the airbox, and been able to move the throttle butterfly by hand so at least its not jammed in its travel. I've taken the throttle body position sensor connection apart, there doesn't seem to be any corroded pins and connected / reconnected it a few times to clean contact surfaces.

Still got the light on, and the engine has a lumpy idle. Pressing the throttle will raise the revs to 1300rpm, still with a slight lumpiness - this might be enough to limp it to the local garage round the corner, but its not going to get to the Fiat dealer 26 miles away like this.

I know the throttle system is fly by wire, so the fault could be at the pedal end?.

Is there anything else i can physically check / do myself without any fault reader ???

Do i need to disconnect the battery for a few minutes to clear the existing faults ??

I could get another throttle body from a scrappy but it could be an expensive swap with no success ??


The car has done less than 70 miles since it was in the dealership for the ABS recall, so i wonder whether they've disturbed/ damaged the loom somehow when moving bits around the engine bay (although i can't see anything obvious hanging off !!)

all 5155 recall work is at the ABS pump nowhere else, really need to get that error code or if your good with a multimeter measure voltages at throttle body connector.

T14086 said:

all 5155 recall work is at the ABS pump nowhere else, really need to get that error code or if your good with a multimeter measure voltages at throttle body connector.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply

Well i have a multimeter so happy to have a crack if someone can talk me through which terminals to check (think there are 5 pins on the position sensor connector), and what values i'm looking for.

Must say the actual butterfly in the throttle body is rather brown in colour (i've not looked beyond the butterfly yet) so i wonder whether cleaning up the throttle body with some carb cleaner might be beneficial ??

Looks like a throttle body complete is £400 and the pedal end the best part of £600 so i don't want to be swapping too mnay parts lol!

Car is a November 2004 1.2 Dynamic with ESP , 45k miles, FSH

Might just be worth a check that the plug is fully seated on top of the unit at the pedal end. Mine got dislodged slightly during some over-enthusiastic Hoovering and the car went into limp mode shortly after driving away. Pushed connector back, turned off and on again and all was OK (the light went off, car drove normally, although the fault was 'logged' and cleared at the next service)

Herts Hillhopper said:

Might just be worth a check that the plug is fully seated on top of the unit at the pedal end. Mine got dislodged slightly during some over-enthusiastic Hoovering and the car went into limp mode shortly after driving away. Pushed connector back, turned off and on again and all was OK (the light went off, car drove normally, although the fault was 'logged' and cleared at the next service)

Click to expand...

Cheers for the suggestion - its not the most accessible area by any means but gave everything a waggle and all seemed secure this morning - will have a better look tonight though.

Called the AA guy back this mornign to see if he had the actual fault code - they don't keep a log and he didn't record it on the paperwork. His suspicion was more towards the pedal sensor box, but i don't know whether this was based on the original fault code or just his interpretation of 'throttle position sensor fault'

Off to pick the brains of the local Fiat dealership at lunchtime - probably no help, but worth a try, and costs nothing lol!

Spoke to the technician at the Fiat delaership lunchtime - suggested disconeecting the battery for 5 minutes as a starter, at least this might reset the fault long enough to be able to drive the car 25 miles to them for further diagnostics.

Asked my local garage, 500 yards from the house, and because they are a Ford/Vauxhall dealer they can't do anything bar read the initial fault code, and cannot do any further investigations from there as they don't have the fault finding schedule that goes with the fault code for Fiats. At least they haven't wasted my time and money having a fruitless look.

Have ordered an OBD reader from ebay, will take a few days to arrive, but it might be useful in the long run.

Disconnecting the battery for 20 minutes hasn't cleared the fault, in fact I struggled to get the car started afterwards but it's back where it was after a few seconds idling. Going to have to wait for the fault reader now or limp it 25 miles in the wee hours one night to Fiat.

Tonights activity is to test the resistance of the throttle position sensor on the throttle body - i'm hoping this might give some erattic behaviour, which i can then confirm when i get my fault code reader (despatched today apparently).

I was under the impression that you could only buy the sensor as part of the complete throttle body, but having read this thread https://www.fiatforum.com/panda/234117-throttle-body.html i'm hopeful i might be able to do it at a lot less cost !

Multimeter didn't exactly reveal what i was expecting - not helped by the fact the throttle body had 6 pins on the connector, presumably a couple of those to power the motor that moves the throttle butterfly ?

Anyway measuring resistance across any pair of pins only gave a response on the middle pins (3 & 4) which with the butterfly in its 'closed ' position gave 2.1-2.3 Ohms, which isn't a lot at all.

Moving the butterfly manually whilst monitoring pins 3 and 4 gave higher resistances whent he butterfly was in motion but reverting to the sam ~2 Ohm when stopped. Voltage wise i couldn't muster more than 0.5V when operating the butterfly, even rapidly.

So i'm none the wiser whether this is good or bad results ? - most of the info on the net suggests a reistance of 3.5-6.5 kiloOhm !! is normal.

Anyone any suggestions ???

Well google is an excellent tool, came up with this info, albeit its related to a Peugeot Citroen unit..

electronic unit (motor and potentiometer(s) are made by Magneti Marelli (type CTS CA.0011607B).
Connector has 6 pins in one row.

• Throttle closed
  • pins 1-2, 1.89 kOhm
  • pins 1-5, 2.46 kOhm
  • pins 1-6, 3.71 kOhm

• Throttle open
  • pin 1-2, 3.92 kOhm
  • pin 1-5, 2.46 kOhm
  • pin 1-6, 1.75 kOhm

• DC motor, with gearing
  • pin 3-4 2.3 Ohm
  • pin 3 = (+)
  • pin 4 = (-)

- has spring return to closed position.



Looks like i'm about there with the DC motor resistance, but not getting any respose from elsewhere ??

Now, I don't have an actual 1.2 petrol Panda to look at as mine is a diesel but the connector shown on the CD manual that I have for the Panda only has 3 connections, which is the norm for a throttle position sensor.
Are you testing the correct connector? Is there another connector with 3 pins in the area of the throttle body?

doctorchris said:

Now, I don't have an actual 1.2 petrol Panda to look at as mine is a diesel but the connector shown on the CD manual that I have for the Panda only has 3 connections, which is the norm for a throttle position sensor.
Are you testing the correct connector? Is there another connector with 3 pins in the area of the throttle body?

Click to expand...

Definitely the right one Chris - i believe it has six connectors because its a motorised throttle body, not cable operated. So the middle two pins are the control voltage from the ecu to operate the butterfly motor and i'm guessing the others are sensor signal and sensor ground for light throttle and wide throttle tracks on the position sensor.

I've another multimeter, which i'll check with tonight. Fault code reader should arrive today, but i can't get hold of my laptop til the weekend, so no chance of reading the fault codes this week .

I'm tempted to tow the damn thing to Fiat, although i'd prefer to know the fault codes myself before leaving them with a blank chequebook !

Thankfully i managed to get a bit more sense out of the second mulitmeter...

1. On the throttle body connection..

Spec values on left, actual readings in bold on right





Throttle closed

• • pins 1-2, 1.89 kOhm actual 2.01kOhm
  • pins 1-5, 2.46 kOhm actual 2.34kOhm
  • pins 1-6, 3.71 kOhm actual 3.66kOhm
• Throttle open - maximum degree of travel of butterfly
  • pin 1-2, 3.92 kOhm actual 3.54kOhm
  • pin 1-5, 2.46 kOhm actual 2.34kOhm
  • pin 1-6, 1.75 kOhm actual 2.11kOh

• DC motor, with gearing
  • pin 3-4 2.3 Ohm actual 2.5Ohm
  • pin 3 = (+)
  • pin 4 = (-)

The values don't look a million miles away from the spec (given the car had 45k miles on it), but i'm not sure whether they are sufficiently different to cause the engine to go into permanent limp mode ?


2. I removed the MAP sensor as well (immediately below the throttle body), and whilst there was a little oily residue on it (as expected) it looked OK - gave it a clean with some WD40. Ran the engine with the MAP disconnected and the fault was still there, but the car was running very rich mixture. Reconnected MAP and back where i started. Measured resistance across pins 1 and 4 of the MAP at 5.6kOhm, and across pins 2 and 4 at 8.03kOhm - no idea whether these are good or bad ?



Diagnostic scan on Sunday evening will hopefully reveal more !!

My information on throttle position sensor resistance readings is that dynamic readings are more useful. That's to say, do the resistances change smoothly as the throttle is moved or are they erratic, the latter suggestive of a fault?

Back from the weekend away and managed to hook up the diagnostic tonight - 2 fault codes present...

P1220 - throttle position sensor 2 circuit
P0105 - MAP sensor insufficient activity


not sure whether the second one is a result of me cleaning the MAP with WD40 a few days ago - the cars only run on the drive for 10 minutes since then.

Reset the faults but the same ones came back instantly upon starting the engine.

Any clues where to start with the P1220 ? - connectors, throttle body, ECU or throttle pedal ??????

Going to disconnect the battery for an hour tonight (only left it 20 minutes last time), to see if that makes any difference. Will then do the throttle learn procedure (i found one for the Stilo, so assume its similar for the Panda), clear the fault codes again and see what happens.

i found the fault codes using Proscan - i think the CDs that came with the ELM327 code reader have other software too, so i'll try a few other programmes and see if they pull anything else up.

The fact that there are no other codes specific to the throttle pedal is leading me towards an ecu failure or a bad connection somewhere.

Does anyone know if there are additional connectors (such as behind the glovebox ?)as a result of the conversion to RHD ? Or better still a drawing of where the connections are in the wiring loom from throttle pedal thru to throttle body ?

Disconnecting the battery for an hour did nothing, so cleared the two faults and embarked on throttle relearn.

Engine light on straight away but percevered with relearn. As the car started to warm up there were occassional stutters / shudders with the revs dropping from 1300 to 1200 for 5 seconds. Relearn completed. Ran diagnostic again and still got the P1220 code but nothing else now.

Checked allconnections including ecu but no different.

Unable to unplug at the throttle pedal as no space and not sure how the connector comes apart.

Looks like will be towing down to Fiat dealer

It's not getting any better...

Tried to find replacement throttle body today but all listings against vin number/ model description bring up one that isn't the same as on the car, having two connectors rather than the single one I need. Got shop4parts investigating-very helpful when I spoke to them late this afternoon.

Also sought advice from experienced mechanic who also thought wiring fault or throttle position sensor but he's pointing towards the sensor on the pedal, not the throttle body ??

Thought i'd try my luck finding a used throttle pedal today - within 5 minutes of raising the enquiry on findapart i had two calls, one quoting £35 and the other £40.
Thought i'd double check with Fiat that there was indeed a sensor int he pedal assembly, which there is.
By the time i called the first place back they denied all knowledge of the enquiry and calling me - fantastic !
The second place took my order over the phone, and then rang me to say they'd misquoted and didnt have a Panda at all !

Awaiting further enquiries.

If anyone has access to eper, coudl they check the part numbers for the 2004 1.2 petrol (M5, V3, no air con) against a similar spec 1.3Mjet to see if the throttle pedals are the same please.