Kangarooing Abarth...Any fixes????

Hi Team.

Newby here needing help!

I've got a Stilo Abarth 2.4 on an '02 plate. Had all the symptoms of above, went to the local garage today (not a FIAT dealer) and had the thing plugged into the diognostic system, and it came up with the following:

P0100 - Air flow meter (signal not significant) [not present]

P0220 - Accellerator pedal sensor 2 (signal not significant) [not present]

P0340 - Phase sensor (signal not significant) [not present]

P1653 - Phase variator (signal not significant) [not present]

P1691 - Safety cut-off from controller [present]

Came home, looked at this thread and thought I'd found the soloution!

Brought five new coils, five new plugs, all fitted, just as bad as before.

Please, please, I'm getting to the point where It's going to the tip if I can't get this sorted soon, it's damn dangerous to drive!

Cheers.

SL3

I would look at the phase variator fault, i think problems with the variator are the causes of a lot of kangarooing abarths!

Does it get any better when warmed up?

Right... well I thought I'd feed some information back into this. My Abarth seems to be alot worse now when cold, to the point where it's exactly like what people describe the kangarooing to be like. To the point of being dangerous when cold

So far to date, I've replaced all the sparkplugs to Denso Iridiums and replaced a couple of the coils so that are all Champions. The clutch has been calibrated and an end-of-line service carried out. No errors were present in the Selespeed ECU.

I'll be honest, I don't think the coils are an issue as all seem to be fine with them and I doubt the plugs are an issue either... although, I am going to do some swapping around to see if it helps at all.

I spoke to my Italian car specialist who carried out the last Selespeed work for me and they don't believe that there's any issue in the Selespeed system as no errors were present and the fact that it's sweet when warm. They believe that the issue is more likely to lie more with the Air Flow Meter or a lazy Lambda probe. They say the only way to tell will be to hook it up to Examiner and run a full battery of tests... in the meantime, I'm going to do my own tests with the plugs and coils to rule them out.

Just an update for you all...

Some more feedback on the kangarooing issue... I think i might have fixed mine and it is something that none of us has mentioned before. The variator! I was playing around with my code reader (another story!) and I found the code P1653 in the ECU, which made me think "I wonder if this has anything to do with the kangarooing?". So I did some searching on the internet and found that the variator actuator is often the cause of variator issues and given that the variator alters the timing of the valves and can affect how well the engine runs when cold, I figured, why not?!

I carried out the test detailed below on my variator actuator and guess what? My last two pull aways from cold starts since doing the fix on the variator actuator have been as smooth as butter, just like when it's hot I admit, I need to do more cold start tests to see if it's really fixed but it's looking good so far! Give it a go as it only takes 5 minutes and see how you get on... you never know, it may fix your problems!

"I If you've got a variator in your Stilo and you're wondering if it's got an issue with it, remember, it might not actually be the variator itself, it could be the variator actuator. Both these items fall under the error code P1653, so the fault could lie with either... one is easy to test though, here's how

To rule out the variator actuator as being the fault rahter than the variator itself, take off your engine coil cover and get your trusty multimeter out...

What you're trying to do is to test the variator solenoid, and it's easy to diagnose, just put your multimeter across the 2 terminals of the solenoid (the blobs on the top, not the plug connectors) and check for continuity, if there's none (eg. you've got some resistance there) then undo the 2 philips screws on the top of it and remove the cap (pull it off, don't twist), connect the multimeter to the 2 spikes on the solenoid and check for continuity again, I bet you get it this time. if you do then it's the cap at fault, what you need to do is drop little balls of solder into the 2 holes for the spikes in the cap and then fit it back on, then you should have your continuity back accross the plug terminals.

Once you've done this, then you can be reasonably sure that your actuator should be okay and the problem lies with the variator itself... bad luck

If you didn't have continuity across the cap and the actuator pins, then the actuator is probably at fault and you'll need to get it replaced. At least it's cheaper than the variator though!

I hope this helps anyone who's concerned about their variator "

Still no kangarooing, so looking like the variator fix has cured it! It's so nice just being able to jump in the car and go without looking like you drive using a pogo stick...

Where abouts on the engine is the variator solenoid mate?

If you take the engine cover off, you'll have your 5 coils layed out along the bottom as you look at the top of the engine. Above that, you'll have the oil filler and then the 5 green injectors. Roughly vertically in line with the oil filler, you should see something that looks similar to the coils but is in the same plane as the injectors. That's your variator actuator solenoid

There's a connector that goes into it (push down on the metal bar to pull the plug off), and the cap has two philips screws on the top as well as the two blobs of solder. Put a multimeter across the blobs to test for continuity

Cheers for that. Good description

Mine isn't bad at low rev's but does feel a little juddery when you first pull off when cold, and I'd rather check it over now than wait til it get worse. .

Will check it over the weekend in between downpours!!!

Hey, no worries. I'll just be pleased if this cheap and easy fix is all that's required to cure the kanagrooing that all Selespeed owners encounter at some point in their ownership!

I love my car even more than normal now... going to splash out on some new suspension and having the alloys refurbed