Hi all, I have read through most threads resembling my issues but found nothing conclusive. I've followed an article detailing the D4 connector issue but no joy.

Allow me to list some fact rather than babble on. I'll post pics and videos too. I'm in france and garages here are clueless with this issue, I need to fix it myself or end up with a non starter !

- Car is 1.9jtd 115bhp Abarth 2005 with skyroof (doesn't work since 2 yrs)

Recent repairs:
- Replaced damper pulley and aux belt which were both pretty shagged.
- Fuel filer, Oil filter, Oil
- New headlamp on one side as I live in a city of bad parking habits

Issues in past, as yet not tried to fix
- Ventilation only works on windshield at max power, all other exits seem not to work. Clicking sounds from behind panel.
- Skyroof don't work no mo. Annoying but not the end of the world. Must fix at some point. Issue with the panel I believe could even be a fuse.

Current issues :
- Recently car would start as if dead battery, could have been aux belt though. Now recharged and good juice but car not starting so easily. Slow whir then faster ones as if battery and fuel flow were the cause.
- Since a few weeks, power steering will never work and warning light is on until you restart the car. Then it's fine, apart from other error messages.
- Since a while now EBD ABS ASR error messages followed by Loose Connection message. But these vanish if you restart the car at the end of a 30 min drive. As if heat affected the issue.

VIDEO : [ame="https://youtu.be/EUQaiEhD_0Y"]https://youtu.be/EUQaiEhD_0Y[/ame]

The car always starts but with some difficulty even though it always stared well before. Slow whirring then faster with some relay clicking sounds and dashboard flashing.

Any help much appreciated!

This mostly points towards a bad engine earth or bad battery or bad electrical connection.
I would double check the battery connections; you could also try a jump lead from the earth side of the battery to a good earth on the engine and a second lead also from the earth side of the battery to a good earth point on the body.
The clicking you can hear maybe a bad connection making and breaking which will cause the slow fast cranking of the engine and would also cause power steering fault.

Thanks for your help Cris! Bad earth is indeed what it feels like at start up but i've gone over every earth connection and can't see nout wrong. Coul still have missed one as I don't essentially knpw where they are.

I'll try your idea of creating a new temporary earth to see if it comes from that.

Today the car wouldn't start at all. It drained the battery in 1 min with about four 5 second attempts. So either the battery is half dead or something is draining it.

I'll do the earth test with a good battery tomorrow to eliminate those possibilities. I fully expect the power steering to require a restart and other messages plus loose connection to appear though. I haven't seen one thread on FF where someone solved the issue with a new battery and/or earth wire.

Thanks again for the help !

Hi. The one I was mainly thinking of is the main engine to body earth; this would cause all the problems your having. I can’t remember where it is on the stilo it’s the thick cable usually on the back of the gearbox, anyway the jump lead trick should tell you.
The only experience I have had with the loose connection warning turned out to be the crank sensor, the cable for that runs behind the alternator and the sensor is just behind the starter motor if I remember correctly.
Might be worth checking as you have been working in that area previously.
Again the loose connection warning could also be bad engine earth.

Hi again, thanks for sticking with me.

Today this issue may have been solved for good. I had doubts about the battery as mentioned before. I was concerned that replacing was just spending money to advance by elimination, an approach that irritates me.
Realising that the battery was at least 6 years old I bought one anyway, seemed justified given it's age.

As soon as I started the engine, not a single error message appeared. Tried 4 times, nothing. I would never have thought it was possible for something so simple to go undetected by the ECU yet throw up every message under the sun unrelated the actual, painfully basic issue.

I hope my stupidity serves others at least. Lets see if this sticks, will report back in a few days.

thanks !

Hi all, just to give you an update.

I've been driving for a few days now almost every day to and from work, around 50 mins total each day. No errors whatsoever. Amazing.

My conclusion given everything i've read on Stilo error messages plus my experience is that the ECU is not very well designed. A lot of sensors feeding the BUSCAN system but anything on the chain can bring up an error as long as there is one cause.

In my case, the battery (though no errors for low battery ! amazing!) was causing a myriad of messages as mentioned in the title, but in differing orders and not the same list each time.

So always check your earths but also, try jump leads to another battery as a quick test. Either a fresh battery or one from a car with the engine running.