Hi

Well the first part has been painless.
I have booked the car into the dealer. The mechanic will come to my house next Tuesday to listen to the car start up. From there we will discuss the way forward ie next steps and book it into the workshop for what they decide.
I assume it will be a full oil pressure check before deciding what to do.

We'll wait and see

Ah well - that didn't last long.

After coming and checking the car at my house, the technician left to say he would be in touch with Fiat and call me back.

Never happened. :bang:So I visited them yesterday and the car is now booked in for an oil pressure check on Thursday. They wanted it all day but in the end it's only the afternoon it's going in for.

Will keep you posted.

ok , but if you dont leave the car for a day I think you will not see the pressure problem ?

The pressure problem has been witnessed by the technician when he visited. The fact that he puts a gauge on it when cold will show no more than them listening to it when it starts up and rattles.
I can't see how the pressure test will isolate what the actual problem is? For example, will it show it being the pump or a worn bearing or a blockage somewhere?

Ok perfect, excuse me I misunderstand. If he has seen the pressure problem, it's alright for the diagnostic.

Do you know which values he has read and what they should be ?

Hi hennabm,

I thought my bearings would be destroyed by my oil pressure issues, but no. Once the issues had been fixed, bearings sound perfectly fine.

Well readings aside, I guess sooner or later they just have to drop the oil pan to have a visual inspection of what's going on inside.

By the way, check out the factory gasket sealant on the oil pan when they remove the pan. Mine was pretty horrible with excess sealant all over the place. If one of those pieces fall off and gets lodged in those oil ways or tubes, it can be pretty disastrous too.

Hi all

I've been to the dealer today and they conducted a pressure check. Based on the figures from eper of 4.2bar @ 4000rpm, the figures weren't encouraging.

The best my car could manage were 2.9/3.0bar @4000rpm.
Idle pressure was OK at around 0.9bar.

The dealer is now contacting Fiat to see what happens next

Quite low :/

Hope they can fix this quickly.
Do you hear the engine make a strange noise ? Or nothing visible, apart the oil light at start ?

Hi Mkala

Yes on start up when left for several days the bearings are dry and the engine rattles and knocks. The oil light takes 2 - 5 seconds to go out as well.
If left for only a day or less then there is no problem.

hi hennabm,

Thanks for your reply.
Okay it is not possible to not realize if we have this problem...

Hi All,

Few days back I went back to my workshop for a chit chat, and managed to take a photo of how the o-ring and the entire oil pick up tube look like.

Just thought I'd update the thread;

The car has been in the dealer seberal times now for various checks including on the last visit dropping the sump and checking the bearings and end float. The end float was Ok but to me the bearings looked more worn than they should for a mere 7k miles.

Anyway the car was left at the dealer until Friday when a field engineer visited and witnessed the problem. He then spoke about either changing all the bottom end bearings and oil pump or giving the car a new complete engine.

I was told to contact the dealer later on the day to find out the decision. When I did I was told the engine is "normal and no repair is necessary. WTF.:bang:

So now I have to contact Fiat customer services and go from there.

Seems to me Fiat are telling me they can't build an engine with sufficient tolerance to hold oil pressure for more than a day - yeah right. If that's the case the tolerances on the production must be absolutely s***
I can see this gong on for some time yet.

In the meantime I have brought the car home away from the forecourt. I don't want it damaged as a new 500L was a couple of weeks ago when someone tried setting fire to it on the forecourt.

Any further update on this? My 2012 1.2 Easy does this rather regularly, especially if it's not used for a few days. Bought it as a pre-registered car in the summer with 4 miles on the clock, now done 6000 miles, but this has been going on for quite a few months. Still under warranty luckily, so should probably get it checked soon!

Hi
The only update so far is that all is still well with the car . It has now done 9400 miles. Since I brought it away from the garage after my last post, I have left it for a matter of days and then a week or more and the problem seems to have disappeared - something it clearly can't do.

I've not yet had chance to get back to the dealer and ask them what went on in the 4 hours I was absent from the car after the technical, chap from Fiat had gone.....

Thanks for the reply. That's an interesting one, good to see it's not just my dealer that can make problems go away and say there never was a problem I'll see if they can work their magic!