Hi guys, I went to look at a friend's Punto today. He was driving on the motorway and started to lose power, said the throttle was making a strange noise and eventually it cut out completely. He said is also overheated a bit too.

Coolant level was below minimum, but didn't seem to have any oil in, no water in the oil either from what I could see.

It struggled to turn over on the starter until I turned it over with the plugs out, and now it turns over pretty much as normal, but it won't start up. There is a spark at each of the plugs and it definitely smells like fuel is getting through. Voltage at the battery was 12.2 volts, so should be plenty to provide a good spark.

There appears to be a oil leak around the 2nd cylinder and there was oil basically drowning the throttle body. When you opened the butterfly you could see a pond almost of oil sitting in the intake. Is this common on these engines? Could that be causing the problem? Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Tom.

overheating - Oil smuthered throttle body sandwhich, wont start

First of all
get the fluids to the correct levels - Oil to max
coolant topped up

Clean the oily-ness out from the throttle body now before it causes sticky throttle

Then get a compression check done

Either
A the throttle body has never been cleaned in its life!
B - There is excessive crankcase pressure and its venting alot of oil vapour out

Ziggy

Thanks for that. I've topped up the coolant, what grade oil do you use in these engines?

I'll look into getting a compression test done. What should the results be on a healthy engine? What could be causing excess crankcase pressure?

10w-40 semi
or 5w-30 semi

and comoression figures i did on my past 2 engies were different
200psi on the good cylinders but they did have alot of carbon in them
the replacement i fitted had 160psi across the board

as long as they are close and dont vary when done wet (dribble of oil in them) the compression.is okay

what causes excessive crank case pressure
- worn bores that allow combustion gasses oast the piston (blow by)
- worn piston rings allowing blow by
- the piston rings are out of alignment ir fitted badly. the need the little gap seperating 120degs.apart but i really really dont think its this

Ziggy