Hey guys,

My girlfriend has a Fiat Punto Grande 1.3 diesel, and it has had a catalogue of problems, involving the gearbox, clutch, and diesel pump being replaced!

Unfortunately, the car (we like to call it a dog now!) has developed yet another fault. A few days ago, while driving on a motorway, the car suddenly went into limp mode, and the engine light came on. The breakdown guy reset the cars chip (ecu or something?) stating that it had logged 3 faults, which included something to do with the air intake something or other.

He reset it, and all seemed to be fine again, until this afternoon when the same thing happened.

Do any of you know what the problem might be? If so, is there a well-known fix for it? Apparently, the breakdown guy said that with these chips, it will still expect certain components to operate as if they were still new, so when they get older and maybe don't perform as well as they used to, the chip constantly logs it as a fault, even when it isn't. Could it be this?

Did he give you the error codes at all, or just wipe them.
Wiping the error codes won't fix the fault, and to be fair, it was probably coincidence that the car was running correctly after he cleared the codes.

Regarding the codes.
If your car hiccups or belches, then it may log a code, which could be retained in the ecu, and it may run perfectly for the next 6 months, so what ever is in there may have been irrelevant to the fault you have now.
There's a chance that the ECU will retain the code, even though it was a one off occurrence.

Now that the codes have been cleared, it's pretty safe to assume that what ever code is in there today, will assist in diagnosing the fault.
But you do need the specific code number to stand a chance i'm afraid.

I'm very surprised no one has told you this already.