(T) Desperately need advice. My Story

Collected our daughter's 'first' car (Punto 1.2 8v ELX) from a seller in Shropshire last tuesday. She passed her test the week before.
Car looked very nice, engine sounded well.. 9 months MOT & 8 months tax... just what she needed.

set off to drive it home to North Manchester, the wife following me in my company Car. Initial thoughts when driving were good. Engine very responsive, very pleased with it. After about 45 mins we hit the M6... 10 mins later the engine started to lose ignition and was cutting out and then starting again... another 5 mins and it just cut out....DEAD! The 'key code' light now illuminated.

Read the manual and it mentioned an emergency start procedure... looked for the key code card, but couldn't be found. Phoned the seller who seemed genuinely concerned and said he'd never had this problem before... (infact it was his wifes car and she just used it for rural journeys to and from work.) He said there was no key card as UK cars didn't have them????

So, called AA and my cover wasn't valid... only covered my car.. so had to join the AA... £120! AA arrive and states immediately it's the immobiliser.. thentows me to stafford services so he can have a proper look. Get's to services and he unclips the crank sensor, say's there is no 'pulse'.. but then the key code goes out and it starts... then cuts out and won't re start. He waggles the wires about (crank sensor & starter) then starts it again.... advises that he 'thinks' the ECU has gone and that I need to upgrade and get it recoverd to home.. another £65. He tells me that under EU rules.. he can only take the car as far as Lymm, then local Manchester AA will take over..
Me & the wife get home at 2am.. 9 hours after setting out to collect the car.

Next morning the car is delivered by another AA man who asks what was the problem as he has it running outside.. Told him that his colleague said the ECU had gone and he said thats rubbish as if that was the case, it wouldn't start at all!! so confusing.

Had 2 local mechanics on it yesterday who said it was the key/immobiliser...The put the code reader ('Snap On' expensive thing) on and it said it was key code not recognised. I said I didn't think it was that as I started it earlier. They got the key/immobiliser code from fiat and went through the emergency start up... it fired but cut out... they then changed the transponder.. no luck Now they think it's the crank sensor... (this is what the original AA man messed about with and got it started for a while.) They never returned today to do the job, so I'm stuck with a daughter who is so frustrated!!! and a car that won't start.

Can ANYBODY shed some light/offer some advice on this problem?
Is it likely to be the crank sensor? Or could it be the ECU???

Does anybody know a good auto electrician/technician in North Manchester/Oldham area?

Any help or advice greatly appreciated.

hello, i sort of had that problem, i had loss of power and my revs would take ages to rev up and i couldnt get any speed out of it what so ever, my engine management light was flashing at the time , i had an ECU problem with mine, the key code card am not sure about , i didnt have that when i sorted mine, i have the same car as ur daughter, it only has blue keys , doesnt have a red master key with a mk2 , they just didnt bother to make 1 which is kinda handy , i took my car to fiat dealership and it cost me about £496 all together for a new ECU , sounds alot i no but u cant get 1 from a scrapyard because it needs coding to ur engine , so if its already coded to an engine then ur buggered really , i really advice u to take it to fiat . sorry if i havent really helped out alot =) let me no what happens or if u want any more answers

or he could of searched the forums & found the answers without having to type all that out.....................but sometimes its good to talk I guess!

Fiat never supplied the code cards with UK cars AFAIK.

From what you've said the crank/TDC sensor is what I would first look at. Check the clearance from sensor to crank sprocket. As wiggling/moving it seems to get some sort of response, I can see two things that could be wrong with it.

1. Loose cabling within the sensor
2. The sensor to crank sprocket clearance is out of tolerance.

If it was me, I'd be sourcing a new/known used crank sensor and trying it. They shouldn't be particularly expensive.

HTH

Thank's for your comments.. Apologies if you thought I was rambling on a bit. Thought it would be best to post as much info as possible regarding the drive and the comments from so called professionals. I did try searching the forums... but couldn't find any similarities....
I couldn't do the job myself anyway... Just wanted to make sure I had an idea of possible actions... rather than getting ripped off...

Only have 2 blue keys... and now have the key code. If the mechanic had tried the emergency start up procedure.. does this mean it will never start normally... unless I take it to fiat?

Thanks for listening...

No, it should still start fine once the problem's been sorted. What year Punto do you have?

The sensor will be literally one or two small bolts and a wiring plug.

It's a 2000 W Reg.

Update.....
after having 3 local so called techs look at it to no avail... I decided to bite the bullet and tow it into FIAT (Oldham Motors)... Expecting a huge bill... but.....

They fixed it for the huge sum of £40:20... It was a bad earth on the throttle housing... Now running like a dream..

Should have taken it to FIAT in the first place . (There is a lesson there)

Thoroughly recommend Oldham Motors to anybody in Manchester area. Very helpful, very attentative and top class customer service.

peoples perspective of dealers are often wrong but however its fixed so good stuff...one point is why was the throttle body earth loose?

I have no idea... they said they ran a check and that was the fault..

Is that type of fault unusual?

Thanks for letting us know what the problem was in the end

Glad you got it sorted.

Hi

I'm writing this just in case it helps you (and anyone else) and stops them going through what we've just gone through with my daughter's 51 plate 12v ELX manual which kept cutting out -2/3 years of frustration, cost and worry.

This was her first car after passing her test at 17 (she's 21 now) and it started after cutting out about a year. I knew it was electrical as gauges would flick and the car would jerk while driving (cutting out then jump starting itself etc) - no fun at 80mph on a bend on the M25 when the electric steering locks, that's for sure !! PLEASE NOTE - When it stalled the KEY CODE symbol often illuminated. I checked all the obvious stuff, earth leads, connections, new battery etc but nothing helped.

Sometimes it would start no problem then stall, then start again and stall up to 4/5 times especially when slow reversing off the drive. I had it into 2 trusted auto electricians and 3 known mechanics but no-one could find the fault as it was intermittent and they just couldn't make it happen. I work with electronics and know that these types of faults are a real pig to find so didn't blame them at all. Funnily enough, one of the auto electricians had exactly the same fault on another Punto about a year younger but it happened so rarely and so quickly it was impossible to trace. He thought that it may be the ignition switch but it was £200.00 job to change it and the other client wouldn't pay this unless he could guarantee that it would be fixed (which he couldn't).

I then paid Fiat £100.00 to check it over as they told me they could read hidden "codes" which other garages couldn't. Guess what ? No codes recorded but they DID have the gall to tell me it had the wrong plugs fitted which they changed and would solve the problem. Obviously THAT worked 100% - 5 minutes after leaving the garage the bloody thing cut out again ! I phoned Fiat who said that it would need a major electrical strip down to locate the fault at a cost of £400 plus.

Sometimes the problem wasn't there for days, even weeks and just as you thought maybe if had gone away - BANG - it did it again!! I was pretty worried for my daughters’ safety but we didn't have the money to just change parts randomly or part exchange the car PLUS I wouldn't someone else to be lumbered with the same fault. We just kept hoping that whatever it was would finally go altogether making the fault obvious but no, it stayed the same for ages.

Eventually the fault became more frequent and my daughter told me that it would almost stall and restart itself but more at night, causing the headlights to flash making other drivers think she was flashing them. We eventually conceded defeat when she called me in tears 5 minutes from the house. It was pouring with rain and the car had cut out on a blind bend and, although it would start, all the lights would go out, the wipers stopped and it cut out again every time she put her foot on the brake. Enough was enough!

£350.00 later, Fiat told me that they'd checked everything and had found a bad earth and a bad live connection to the ignition switch, either of which would have been enough to cause the problem. They informed me that they'd never seen this before (?) and that Fiat themselves didn't have this logged as a regular fault. The car is now fine and hasn't missed a beat since.

I'm a real cynic and personally I think that they MUST have been aware of this problem, did a 10 minute fix and charged me the "big strip down" fee. I'm no mug and have been fixing cars myself for over 30 years and can't help feeling like I've had my pants pulled down and been shafted big time!

Anyway, if this helps you and saves you money, worry and hair loss I'm over the moon, if not at least I got this off of my chest. It's ironic because if I'd changed the ignition lock (as the auto electrician suspected)I'd have saved time and money and would have had a new lock as well. I hope that this helps and wish you the very best of luck !!
Regards,

Russ

yes it often does cause this problem, not obviously in your case though.


Fiat told you nothing, the dealership/garage did.