Hi,

Pulling on to a dual carriageway today the auto box in my 1.9 150 was very erratic in selecting gears. At cruising speed I had to push the stick over to hold it in 6th manually at about 70 mph. I dropped it to 5th to overtake someone and after about 30 seconds there was a sudden loss of power and the 'Check Engine' message came up along with the engine management light. It would hold 65 on straight and level, but there was no power and hills and junctions were painfully slow!

I managed to get it home avoiding dual carriageways but noticed that I don't here the turbo spooling up at about 1800 rpm, and it doesn't have the associated power increase.

Any one got any ideas? I do hope I don't need a new turbo. I was thinking of taking a look under the bonnet to check for split or disconnected pipes, so if someone could give me an idea where the turbo is located, that would be appreciated too. I must confess, in 2 years of ownership I've never even taken the engine cover off!

The car was serviced and had the cam belt done 2 weeks ago, at 80,000 miles.

Thanks for any pointers,

Sam

Hi Sam,
Obvious first things to check as it's a diesel you have are the air flow sensor and the egr valve.

Check the airflow sensor by unplugging it and see if it runs better. If that doesn't help blank the egr and see if that helps. If you click on eper at the top it will show you where the bits are.

You can make a simple egr blanking plate using some decent quality tin and drilling a couple of holes to fit the bolts through. Just remove it again once you've seen whether it helps.

Well that was daft of me. I would imagine that mentioning that it was a diesel would be quite import for any diagnosis!

Thanks for the hints of what to look for. I shall try unplugging the sensor tomorrow to check. Am I right in thinking it's the device with a connector and yellow fixings just on the headlamp side of the airbox?

The egr blanking plate may be slightly beyond my skills of fabrication, I fear. That may involve a visit to my local Alfa/Fiat specialist!

I'm not sure about the 16v but it is on my 8v. It should be a simple matter of unplugging it.

The egr valve is a bit more difficult but if you have or can borrow tin snips to cut one into the shape of the gasket - use it as a template - and bolt it in place instead. The check engine message won't go away and you'll get an insufficient reflow error as well.

If you know a sensible mechanic they should be able to do it for you - once you know what to do it only takes a few minutes so your mechanic should9lt charge too much.

Replacement egr's are widely available on ebay and elsewhere for about £100 and take about 30 minutes to fit. There are loads of other posts about them here and elsewhere.

Let us know how you get on and if you need any more help just let us know.

That's brilliant. Thanks for your help - I shall try these out tomorrow. You have made me slightly relieved that it might not be a replacement turbo which is needed, which knowing fiat would cost approx £1m.

It's probably worth downloading ecuscan onto a laptop and getting a VAG KKR cable to check your diagnostics.

You plug the USB cable into your laptop and the interface end into a socket inside the fusebox inside the car, it's behind the removal plastic cover flap thing that's a small pocket held on by a star screw just above your right knee.

It's a great piece of software and with the help of some of the guys on here fingers crossed you'll be back up and running without too much trouble or expense.

There's also a website seekpart24 in Germany that can be a good source of parts and prices. They price in euro but that means they're getting cheaper all the time

Well, today I dismantled the egr valve and cleaned it up. Considering some of the horror stories on here, there was very little soot. Just a light coating which came off with a squirt of wd-40 and a toothbrush. I took the solenoid off ready to dismantle that, but it looked and operated as new. There was no graunching or binding at all and it operated smoothly as did the sprung pin which goes down in to the egr valve.

I also disconected the MAF sensor as suggested, which made no difference. I tried to get it out of the pipe to give that a clean but it seems to be a molded unit, so didn't want to prise it too hard.

Long and the short of it is, whilest everything is now clean, it still pulls like a slug. I haven't tried the cable and ecu scan - I think I shall just leave it to the garage. I'll forward this thread to them so they can see your useful suggestions though.

Thanks again for your help.

Hi Sam,
Whem my egr failed it looked ok as well but the massive improvement I got after blanking it off proved that it needed to be changed.

I don't blame you leaving it to the garage though, fingers crossed it's nothing serious.

I meant to ask in my previous posts but are you sure that the oil change indicator was reset the last time it was done? I'm not sure if you can check going through the menus but check what the service indicator says. If they didn't reset it it can cause problems.

ECUscan will tell you the oil condition based on when it thinks it was last changed. Not every independent can reset it or understands the damage it causes the dpf if they don't.

If your garage has the facility ask them to tell you what the oil condition is and what the mileage is when it was last changed.

Also ask them to check what the dpf clogging is and what the last 5 regen cycles are.

Post the results here as soon as you get them.

Hi, Brian,

I collected the car from the garage today. They said pretty much what you did. On the 'work carried out' section, it reads:

Read fault codes: Faults stored for Air Flow Meter & Air temp circuit, boost pressure too high & inlet flap position.
Erase fault codes - check air pressure sensor - found to be clogged with carbon from inside inlet manifold - re-fit and road test - poor initial acceleration & then turbo over-pressure fault stored when at higher revs.

Suspect air flow meter, MAP sensor or Turbo circuit fault. Also would recommend checking inside inlet manifold and air inlet flap motor etc.

Click to expand...

They recommended starting with the cheapest thing first and working up, so I've ordered a blanking plate from ebay (£3.60) and will fit that when it arrives. If still no luck, I'll get an inlet manifold and get them to fit that. They did say they could clean it but it would probably cost more in labour than getting a brand new one. After that they said it could be the turbo, but we'll address that if everything else fails as it's the most expensive.

Would you (or anyone else?) agree with that course of action?

The way it's going I think I'll end up re-building the whole drive train with individual parts!

Can't see any reason not to fit the swirl mod gasket (you did order the one with holes? - a fully blanked one will throw on another error but makes the engine run even better:devil and fitting it doesn't take long.

The error messages they've reported are different to the ones I've had with my EGR problems so I'm a bit doubtful if it'll cure the problem.

Can't remember if you've tried running it with the air flow sensor disconnected to see if that helps? If not I'd give it a go first. Just unplug it and see if it helps. If it does have a look at the airflow sensor thread that's running just now.

If not I'd have a hunt for turbo overpressure errors (or maybe start a new thread) in case anyone else has had similar issues. It could save a load of time and expense, fingers crossed.

Does anyone else have any other ideas?