I have had a fiat punto for 18 months now bought it second hand. 7 months ago i was driving my car first thing in the morning and it started judering with low revs after i had been driving this for 5-10 mins this went away. this happened for a few mornings but happened on alternate days. one of the most noticiable things is that i would put my foot down out of a junction or at the lights and i would get no power. after a few seconds i would get the power back and it would really throw the car forwards. after a week this problem went away. thought nothing of it. then one sunday i went through a car wash car had been running fine. as i left the carwash i had the same symptoms as prevous but this time the engien management light would flash after what felt like the car had misfired. it only seem to be misfiring in idle then the engien management light would flash as i statred to drive. nipped into quickfit as this was the only garage open on a sunday they said they couldnt help but the car was not misfiring in idle at this point. i drove round a few local garages to see if any were open but not and the problem then seemed to go away. so i left it at that then around feb this year i was driving to work had been driving for 20 mins when all the power dropped was doing about 25mph at the time and thought that i was just getting the same problem put my foot down a bit and the power came back for about 1 second then there was virtually no power could just get about 2 mph out of the car if i reved high and used the clutch carefully. The RAC came out and told me it sounded like one of the cyliners was misfiring. they plugged in there hand held computer in that confirmed a misfire. he thought that it could be one of 2 things the coil pack or the information from the ECU being corrupted. he got a spare coil pack and tried that no difference so he put the old one back on and towed me to a garage. they had a look at this and said it looked like a ECU problem so they replaced the ECU and all was good. the night after i collected it from the garage i was driving down the moter way and the engien managemnt light came on again then went off. just thought that it was wrighting some info back as it was new. 2 days after this i was driving and all the warning lights came on the dash for a few seconds the went off no problem so i carried on. then just the other day i was driving down the moterway at 70mph - 80mph and the engien managemnt light started flashing again but no problems with the car as seemed. this happend a few times. but i got to my destination ok. returned home that day wbout 40 miles and no problems what so ever. then got in the car the next day in the morning started the car up and had the problem with the car juddering to what felt like a misfire. i coped with this and the problem went away after i had driven the car for 5 mins but then when i florred it felt a little judder but this went after 10 mins got in my car to go home and this problem was very slight and lasted 1 min. the problem has carried on for the last few days but getting a little better. could anyone shed any light to what is wrong. i have a 2002 fiat punto 1.2

hey! did u get this problem fixed in the end???

ive just drove down the motorway, engine made a clicking noise,on idle the car was shuddering like hell when i accelerate the clicking noise returned, this noise is coming from the engine. fiat have told me the ecu has failed, but it seemed more mechianical then computer fault. ..

just wondered if ur problem was same?

rgoddard said:

hey! did u get this problem fixed in the end???

ive just drove down the motorway, engine made a clicking noise,on idle the car was shuddering like hell when i accelerate the clicking noise returned, this noise is coming from the engine. fiat have told me the ecu has failed, but it seemed more mechianical then computer fault. ..

just wondered if ur problem was same?

Click to expand...

Sounds like classic misfiring. This is where one or more of the cylinders in the engine is not igniting the fuel/ recieveing fuel/compression etc. There are several causes for it, but a common reason on the punto, is either coil failure (the bit that provides the high voltage impulses to make the spark plugs spark, or ECU failure (this controls the rate of spark and tells the coil when to send the pulse to the plugs). If you have a look in HERE there is a good guide on how to diagnose either coil failure or ECU failure if you want to have a go yourself.

Hope that helps,
Alan