So I have this T-jet Bravo, and recently for the last couple of weeks I had problems with starting the engine in the morning. At first I thought that the problem is LPG. It did arise after a while the car was converted from gasoline to LPG.
Anyway when the engine was “hot” I had no problems starting it, but the next morning, the car did not want to start at first turn of the key. The battery is brand new, ok one month old, the card had no prior problems to LPG conversion. I did get on yellow light on Saturday and I diagnosed it with ELM327 as P1172 = "Mixture 1 strength (multiplicative)" and/or "Self adaptive parameter TRA". I cleared the error and I left the car standing until today when I wanted to go to work. In the morning it was quite warm around 5C and the car did not start the first time, not even the second or the third time. Fourth time was the charm, after a few seconds, it wanted to die…but with pressing the accelerator it gained some rpm and I drove off to work. The weird thing is that total km in my case 82000 numbers were flashing. After around 10km, I got the yellow light, which started blinking. But there was no check engine on the LCD. I stopped the car and tried to connect with the ELM327. I could not connect to the car but there was this funny sound that I cannot describe. The sound was different than before and the car did not want to go anywhere in almost any gear. It felt heavy and sluggish, did not want to accelerate, and I could not hear the turbo doing its thing. The car or the engine started shaking a bit while pressing the accelerator and was gaining speed very slowly I managed to get it going slowly from 50km/h to around 70km/h. I decided that for sure my Bravo sees the Fiat mechanic ASAP; it was on my way to work. After getting there and diagnosing it with computer, the mechanic reported errors P0300 P0304. He said that the car was running on three cylinders and there might be many causes for that. At first I thought that the problem could be in spark plugs, they were changed a few weeks ago and I did around 2000km with them. But since I followed the mechanic that converted the car to LPG I put in the LPG spark plugs from Brisk BR10YS-9 silver racing model I think that should be working with LPG. From the codes he diagnosed that the spark plug number 3 was not working as it should and he said that it could be due to the spark itself or the Ignition Coil. The spark plug was black so he said it must be the Ignition Coil. He changed the Ignition Coil and the car is so far running normally. I hope it keeps on going as well. The BOSCH Ignition Coil (0 221 504 024) was around 50€ and he charged me 33€ for work. So I think my car wanted a new present for Christmas and he got one a bit late

I hope this helps someone... Happy New Year 2014 to all.

First: as far as the starting is concerned there seems to be a general starting issue with the t-jets at certain temperatures -5..+5 degrees Celsius.
This is the second winter since i bought my Bravo, and it always behaves the same at those temperatures. Most of the time it starts well but wants to die for a few seconds. After that it's great.

Second: Did you try to run it on petrol? did it do the same thing?

It is a computer operated LPG system and always starts on gasoline when the car is cold. When I come home I use LPG so when I turn off my car it is running on LPG so in the morning there might be some LPG inside the combustion chamber. But when the car is left over night to cool down, it will start on gasoline. I cannot force it to start on LPG unless the engine temperature would be above 37C.
The LPG itself, the button was on the OFF position in the morning since I was testing the car on Saturday. Also on gasoline. It would not want to start on gasoline in the morning...and all the problems I had were on gasoline. When I turned on the LPG, the engine stopped working.

Hi, I had the same kind of troubles with morning engine start. I want to my car dealer and they re-flashed the engine ECU with new firmware. This seems to be known issue, because there was dedicated update made by fiat. After the update all works fine for more then year.

What year was your Bravo manufactured? Is it a t-jet?

All this talk about software updates made me call the dealer.. I'll post back after they get back to me with a reply.

Hi I have Fiat Bravo Sport T-jet 150 PS year 11/2007. First few years all worked fine, but last winter I had the same issue mentioned above. I can check the fw version in update protocol so I'll post it here later today.

so to keep you guys posted, today I went to the Fiat mechanic that I usually go to and I had a conversation with him regarding my morning startup of the car.
He said that they never update the firmware of the car unless the customer demands so. But he noted that they get weekly updates from the factory regarding news or problems in certain cars. So he sad that he can hook up my car to computer, which than connects back to Torino and updates the onboard computer firmware. Since the garage was full and I did not get my paycheck I did not insist on doing it this week, and I arranged a check up of my car for the next week. All that cold weather in US made the temperatures here in my country much higher for this time of the year and today when we had 13C the car started normally. I will get my car updated and I will report back if possible with which version etc.
My problem with starting the car is a bit different since it has another on board computer from Zavoli that could cause problems and LPG spark plugs. I will see how the update goes and perhaps I will change back the LPG spark plugs to the one from NGK-Fiat.

I took a look at the flashing report and here are some numbers:
injection ECU: Bosch Motronic Me7.9.10
fw update version: 9.18.0
fw update is solving following problems:
- problems by starting cold engine

BTW It seems fiat has lot of troubles with firmware in more ECUs in this car. Also the odometer starts flashing every once in the while. The climate control unit had strange behavior from time to timer.

So the update on my car is:

Yesterday I had a few problems regarding shaking of the engine and not pulling as it should.Even at idle the car was shaking.
After coming home I left the car and said I will see what the problem is. After an hour I sat into my car and started it. After running it for ten minutes I we got a check engine message.

I took it to the Fiat mechanic and they diagnosed P1172,P0300,P0304.
They checked the engine and they found out that one of the sparks for LPG broke. The spark was inconsistent and hence the problem.
Luckily the part that broke off, did not fell into the engine. Imagine the consequences:bang:

Anyhow what that taught me is, never use Brisk sparks in Fiat. I would not recommend them to anyone unless if he or she wants to damage the car. The LPG mechanic recommended them for LPG. Well he will hear from me a few sentences.

Why do you trust to your LPG mehanic?

Fiat Bravo LPG 90HP

use: http://www.ebay.it/itm/KIT-4-CANDELE-ORIG-71769195-FIAT-BRAVO-I-188A5000-NGK-LPG8-FIAT-IDEA-1-2-16V-/350706099510


But for T-Jet and Multi-air is important to change every 30 000km and use recommended spark plugs.

NOTE: On the attached picture, spark plugs for T-Jet 120 has to be same as for Multiair or T-jet 150

aurick86 said:

All this talk about software updates made me call the dealer.. I'll post back after they get back to me with a reply.

Click to expand...

Ok so .. I went to the Fiat dealer so they could see if there are any updates for the ECU. Short answer is NO...they say it has the most up to date, software available.

According to them there were different versions of the ECUțs and only some of them received updates.


So .. does anybody have any ideas as to why my car starts on the second key..want to stall and die for 1 minute after... and then itțs absolotley fine?
No errors in MES.

Ignition coils or spark plugs.Get them tested.

So does it do this if starting on gasoline if you've ended on gasoline the previous night or only if you've ended on LPG the previous night

There are no other signs to point to the spark plugs or coils .. no errors or misfires.
The spark plugs were replaced 17 k km ago.. and it has been doing this exact thing from the beginning.. i will have a look at them.

What is the correct spark plug gap for the t-jet?
I know they come pre-gaped but would still like to check and compare.

Most Easterly Pandas said:

So does it do this if starting on gasoline if you've ended on gasoline the previous night or only if you've ended on LPG the previous night

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yes it does the same thing regardless of the fuel i use before stoping the car.

Next time, before cranking, turn ignition on and off a few times allowing a second or two in the on position in-between. See if it starts on first crank then, if so it suggests a priming issue.

I actually did that this morning.. and in fact it did not start when i eventually cranked it.
On the second crank it started up.. but again it struggled for a good 30 second..the engine lack the power to get moving.

If i quickly pressed the accelerator peat to the bottom the engine would want to die.
But if i pressed it gently it would rev up normally.

So time to check spark plugs and coils.

Interesting, I think I recall our Stilo doing this, but only when left sar for more than half a week, which wasn't often as its normally used daily, so I never bothered investigating it.

aurick86 said:

I actually did that this morning.. and in fact it did not start when i eventually cranked it.
On the second crank it started up.. but again it struggled for a good 30 second..the engine lack the power to get moving.

If i quickly pressed the accelerator peat to the bottom the engine would want to die.
But if i pressed it gently it would rev up normally.

So time to check spark plugs and coils.

Click to expand...

Hi!
Did you solve your cold starting problem? I have the same with my Stilo...

This is the problem I've been having with my Bravo for a while now.
It's a 1.4 T-jet 120hp. It only does this on cold starts. After it warms up it's fine, as you can see here: ... . No error codes. Fuel pressure is ok....


EDIT: the gas/petrol in the tank had gone bad. it had oxidized or something.

My theory:
It's probably because the car runs on LPG most of the time so the gasoline in the tank goes through an accelerated ageing process and as a result looses some of it's volatility (as most of us know gasoline does not burn- the gasoline vapors do) . So the engine had a hard time starting while cold : basically a lean condition combined with spark plugs getting wet with oily petrol.
When warm the problem went away because the engine heat would cause the gasoline to evaporate quicker...no lean condition ..easier to start and keep going.



Now when the fuel level warning light comes on, I never put more than 10 liters of gasoline in the tank , and i try to use about 10 liters of it in about 400-600 km.
Basically about 10 liters of gasoline for every 60 liters of LPG.