Hi, I've just bought a 2008 Panda 1.1 Active and she's a bit spluttery. I've been looking into servicing and am totally bewildered by it all. There are so many different options, but most of them are packages containing loads of things that have already been done like brakes, battery, tyres, lights and stuff. I just want to get her running right and safely. Really lost on what to do

Welcome to the forum


Are there any warning lights on the dashboard? Servicing is regular maintenance, but what you're talking about sounds more like repairing something outside of the normal maintenance cycle.


If there are any warning lights, then you need to get a diagnostic done to identify what the cause of the spluttering/rough running is. If there are not, then we'll need some more info to try and identify the fault.

Agree with the above post.


Unless its the spark plug there's nothing in a service that could fix a spluttery Panda

I agree it must be spark plugs

When you look at garage pricing for a service a lot of it is there to make the list look impressive.

Most of it is 'look and see'. Tyre check? yup its got 4 and they have tread. If you are really lucky they may check and adjust the pressures, but I doubt it.

Brakes too are a visual check, then they'll tell you that you need new brakes and give you a ridiculous quote.

Battery?, yup, got one and it starts the car, tick.

Does the car have a service history?

Anyway, back to the problem.

Is there a management light on?

If so, get the codes read.

D

Hi abbysmum and welcome to the forum. The Panda is a very simple beast, and all the better for it. However, like most modern cars they do have a fair selection of electronics controlling how things work.

That's good because things go wrong less often than they did once upon a time. That's bad because you can no longer cure a fault by hitting it with a hammer.

If you don't want to work on the car yourself, or have a friend who's a mechanic, or mechanically minded, it might be an idea to post your general location on here and see if anyone can recommend a good, competent local mechanic/garage who can help you out.

I've used the same garage for the last 10 years or so on Panda MJ, Alfa 156 and Giulietta MA and while not the cheapest, the work is always done well and on time and they don't recommend work you won't need doing for a few years in order to bump up their turnover.

The small back street garages usually do the best work. They don't advertise so need to keep their customers happy. The bloke may be wearing greasy overalls but if he's busy that's a good sign.

If you have any interest in how the car works (I'm not suggesting you should or should not) then a free copy of MultiECUscan software and a Fiat OBD diagnostic cable will let you read the car's fault codes and do a lot of other stuff with just a Windows laptop computer.

http://www.multiecuscan.net/