Hello there, looking for help here... Just rescued a Punto MK1 1999 1.2 85 16V that my mate wanted to crush after killing it... I will attempt to repair it, as it would be a shame to scrap it. According to him, car started to 'sound funny' and smoke came from under the bonnet, then it stalled. He switched it off, managed to start it again, then it stalled and never started again. The AA guy didn't know what happened, so he decided to scrap it.

This is where I took over from him. Checked the oil, no signs of water, no signs of oil in water either. Timing belt supposedly has been checked and is fine (will double check tomorrow), what surprises me is that the smoke went from under the bonnet, as with head gasket I'd rather expect it from the exhaust, also that he managed to start it again after a while. It turns over fine, no noise involved, quite free. No lights showing on the dash. As far as I've read, there's no OBD2 connector on it, correct me if I'm wrong, as I've still got the interface and could check it.

I know it's as daft as learning martial arts over surface mail, but does anyone have any idea what might be the problem before I'll strip it down? Any sort of hints or similar experiences? Thank you.

PS: I did try to search, couldn't find anything similar, but if there was a post earlier that I've missed, humble apologies. Yes, I've tried Google...

What colour was the "smoke" could of been steam. Check the usual suspects first, plugs, coils, crank position sensor, maf, map sensor, engine temp sensors etc.

I had a mondeo just DIE and the AA couldn't work out why, turned out to be a wire shorting out on the radio. AA said scrap it all because of a dodgey stereo so I take anything the aa say with a pinch of salt.

The cam belt can look fine but if it lost some teeth the timing could be all over the place. It might have backfired and blown a hole in the inlet manifold.

It may also have a blown head gasket. Sometimes they blow a piece out of the water jacket as well as the cylinder seals.

Check compression. too