Technical Vibration

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Technical Vibration

Neil B

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Apr 30, 2003
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Starting to get a lot of vibration when the punto is running idle, or during initial start up. Just had the HT leads done, so ruled that out. It sounds as if the car is going to stall, but manages to recover! anybody else had this problem?

Punto 85SX 1998....

Neil
 
Yeah, there is vibration through the stick. I think the car,when idle, is firing on only three cylinders. Could be sparks or the cable I suppose.
 
Misfiring at a cold start could be sign of a few things, the worst probably being a leaking head gasket. More likely possibilities are faulty plugs, leads or ignition system or a faulty temperature sensor in the injection system. A faulty sensor would probably cause the injection fault light to come on.

Was the fault there before the plug leads were changed? If not it may be related to the cable change. Have you checked the plugs? Pulling the plugs just after the car has been misfiring will probably show at least one of them to be to be wet and/or sooty. If they are all wet and sooty then it may indicate a fault with the injection system (too rich mixture) .
If you pull off one plug lead at time (with insulated pliers) you can determine which cylinder is misfiring. When you pull the lead off the affected cylinder there will be no change. Any of the others will cause the engine to slow down or stop. The Punto uses dual ended coils, so that one coil fires cylinders 1&4, the other cylinders 2&3. If the problem is with a coil then both of the plugs fed from that coil would probably be affected. Only one cylinder then it's probably the spark plug.

You could start off by fitting new spark plugs. Won't do any harm and costs less than a tenner. If that doesn't fix it you'll have to look further.
 
Well the saga continues. Took it into my Fiat dealer, and after two days analysing what was wrong, and changing plugs and leads, they did some tests and found my head gasket was the problem. I am surprised, as the car has only done 63K, and not even driven hard. The car wasn't even over heating, but I apparently have caught the problem early, so hopefully not to much damage has been done.

They have quoted £550 for the repair. Is this a good price, or bloody expensive?

Thanks,

A disappointed Neil.
 
Sorry to hear that the problem is the cylinder head gasket. I don't know what Fiat dealers charge but the Punto engine looks fairly straight forward, I would have thought no more than 3 or 4 hours work unless they have to skim the head. To me £550 seems expensive, but then I would be doing it myself anyway.
 
I'm pretty sure anyone could change a head gasket, get a haynes manual and buy a few tools with the money you save by doing it yourself.
 
Its not the head gasket, they just say that because its an easy job and they can charge a lot for it. So much infact that they will fix the real problem for nothing and make out is was the gasket.
 
Listen to this Evil guy. He's right. If it was a head gasket prob. you should have seen ? some o/h & coolant loss. Worked in electronic service and if you are where the buck stops you charge enough to cover any problem incl. any recalls. Like all Punto victims I've had head gaskets done and never more than 250 Euros (£170) incl head skim ! ST£550 Phew ![8]
P(ay)UNTO death.
 
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