Hey guys, looking for a bit of expertise here on a Stilo 2002 1.2 Active with 66k miles. Had it for over 2 years and its been fine for me until maybe the last 4-5 months. there are 3/4 issues which im 99% sure are all related. Ill go through it in order. This generally happens when im doing some mileage. 45 mins or so in the car and it starts in this order.
1) Fuel gauge randomly bottoms out, computer says 'low fuel' etc etc. This recovers after a couple mins.
2) Fuel gauge and odometer randomly bottom out. again these recover after a min or so, but will continue to flicker and bottom out.
3) 2 happens again, and this time i get a slight shudder in the accelerator. Almost as if the car is trying to stall. Im not doing any insane speeds, standard motorway / dual carriageway speeds.

also as a side note, i normally have the car in 'City' mode on the power steering. I notice that when ever 1-3 occur the car defaults back to the normal setting.

Im guessing that its all related considering the clear escalation of the problem. The last time i did a couple hundred miles in it the 'shudder' became quite severe and i pulled it over once or twice. Theres no warning lights, no overheating i can see.

Brought it to a garage for the yearly service and asked them to check it out, they only found a faulty sensor in the exhaust system. which wasnt the problem. In any case the service seemed to make it go away ( for 3 months) until last week and it started back up.

Anyway, theres my life story... would appreciate it if anybody had some ideas!

Thanks in advance - i love the car and it'd pain me to get rid of it!

Engine 'shudder' could be a coil pack failing. Where's Decks when you need him!

Sounds like a bad earth to me. Not sure which one though.

I'm sure this was covered before and it seems to me like a bad connection in the cluster itself. I'm not sure that if you lose the connection to the cluster you automatically lose all your other settings as well but it would make sense if it would.

I would start by checking the cluster for bad connections, you can do a search on the forum as there are guidelines on how you can do that. Some folks fixed it, some didn't. In any case, this is the point to start. Afterwards, if you have any other errors they will normally come up on the dash.

I'm sure some people may have something more to add, the real smarties are about to reply.

Thanks guys ill check the cluster, my gut was telling me that its a loose connection somewhere because i can never seem to put my finger on a cause. it never seemed to be related to how i was driving, or the weather, or what day of the week it was! driving me mad

Moisture can make the problem worse, so if it was raining, chances are it's gonna disappear on sunrise.

Thanks again guys, went looking far and wide across the forums. Seems most likely to be the D4 connector or the coils, the fact that im getting the engine stutter would imply coils. Apparently as they start to go they tend to send fuel gauges etc a bit mental.

ill clean the D4 and earth connections this week and see if that makes any difference, after that itll be the coils. After that ill try the cluster....

With just the fuel gauge and odometer being affected then I wouldn't be thinking so much of the instrument cluster being at fault. Almost all info to the instrument comes via CAN from the body computer so a lot more systems would be affected, rpm, speed etc

The body computer gets the fuel level from the sender in the fuel tank and sends that info up to the instrument. So you're looking at a fault in the fuel sender circuit.

But how could that affect the engine? Well that's also where the fuel pump is located.

Fuel pump is earthed at earth point C20 through the fuel cut off switch I50

But how is that affecting the steering CITY mode?

There it is again, earth point C20 is used for the steering mode switch


So a poor contact on earth C20 circuit is where I'd go hunting

Dude, you have some amount of knowledge and i tip my hat to you. I shall be going at the little b*gger at some stage this week and will let you know how i get on. Again, many thanks to all you guys. (who needs a haines manual for a Stilo when you have Fiat Forums )

Yes, he's really a miracle worker.

Sorry to drag up an old thread but diid you get to the bottom of this problem in the end as recently I have been experiencing a similar fault.
Cheers Carl

Main culprit for this problem is the coils stmterrace hope this helps you

Checked all the earths and cleaned up contacts.
Checked battery, voltages etc all ok, even tried another battery.
Bit the bullet and fitted new coils.
Touch wood two days on all working ok, no dip on fuel gauge etc, no blip in the throttle either.
Thanks for advice.

Had exactly the same problems...

Battery Checked
Changed Crankcase sensor
Clean throttle body
Clean FuseBox +T9 relay
Check C15+C20 Earths

But the problems solved with a changed ignition coil that was failing...

So I agree with the above post for ignition coils