the missing plate on some grande puntos is actualy a very small metal plate about 2" by 2" all it dose is stop your knee diging into the ignition lock as it has a raver pointy edge pointing towards you

ima if you have crashed so servealy that the rack and subsequenly the colom and ignition lock is heading you way then your knees are the least of your wories

at 40 mph this plate makes no diference to the way you are protected and therefore it is still a 5 star car most of the afected cars were amended at bristol and only a few were sold with the missing plate

as for the reasone it was left out it was not simply forgoten as we all know nothing stops production

as for time fitting the part ten minuites if that so you can wait wilst it's done it shouldent inconvienience you much

between you and the lock their is the outer plastic trim then a iner plastic guard bolted to the colom backed with foam and then the plate is riveted to the inside of that inline with the ignition lock so even without this part their is still plenty beetween you and the lock

the part that is replaced is just the hole iner guard a new one is fited with the plate atached

i hope this finally puts this subject to rest

Thank you for the very detailed explanation....

Yeah don't think i'll bother with mine IMO.

i whould if it's free why not and you can have them check other fings wilst your their like airbag updates for the car and ecu remaps hteir has beena few since the car came out wich whould normaly be caried out during servises

My Sporting was built July time as far as I know and I was led to beleive the plate was fitted, but then the recall letter arrived.
Rang the dealers, as usual no problem, salesman is picking up my spare key Wednesday night and will pick up car Thursday am on his way to work.
This helps me a great deal and I didnt know the salesman lived fairly close to me until he offered, what a great help this has been.Some dealers are prepared to make the effort, Iam lucky that I use one of them I suppose.

well if anybody wants to check if their car has it they could take the botom half of the colom shroud off simply by removing 3 i fink philips screws and puling positively downwardstheir the plate should be mountid on the other side of this

it is fairly obviouse were it should be as the foam on the other side hsa an indent for it

I'm same as you Daver.

Car built around June time, registered in September and got recall letter.

Dealer was surprised mine was missing the plate. He thought mine would be okay.

Booked in for next Saturday.

littlepip17 said:

well if anybody wants to check if their car has it they could take the botom half of the colom shroud off simply by removing 3 i fink philips screws

Click to expand...

'Nerd alert'!!....................actually its 7 x 3mm allen key screws mate

T14086 said:

'Nerd alert'!!....................actually its 7 x 3mm allen key screws mate

Click to expand...

ok smart ass i dident actualy fit one yet just saw the guard afterwards and were the plate should be

howether quite along time ago i did take the entire dash out of one

you have to take the doors off to get to 4 long bolts but i dident remember how many their was on the colom

i guest 3 from the 188s

theirs someone working with me that still trys to undo those variouse bolts around the dash with a 6mm you know the ones that are actualy 5.5
i only took 3 hours to do thou not bad atall

Doors off to get dash out? you sure,done quite a few dashboards & never had to do this.

Know about the bolts though,allen keys everywhere

sorry i meant to get the heater unit out you have to take out 2 or 4 bolts from the dash suport across the car their is no way to slip the heater unit out without doing so
their seems to have been a few prolems with them cos the one that came from fiat was a modified design

I've had the plate fitted and got them to check my driver side electric window which was sticking and they also checked the brakes, although I am sure I never asked them to do this lol.

Anyway had it back and am glad I got those thigns sorted, because it all works perfectly now and I don't have those annoying niggles!

their has been a few problems with brakes squeking on these wich is solved by using aluminium grease instead of copper grease or nothing atall mabey they were checking for that

althou if they are the dealer were you bought the car they should know if your brakes have it or not

Thanks for that, Littlepip17 very useful info.

Ah right cheers, maybe they just thought they would need checking then. They are normally pretty good like that at my local garage.

Hopefully won't be back at the garage now until the first service!