500 (Abarth) 2010 Abarth 500

[Didge3]

But what happened with the Vibration???

Well driveshafts have been replaced, not very cheap but so far so good no more vibration, I've not gone very far in it yet mind so I won't hold my breath.

Still not done more than about 10 miles in it but hasn't reoccurred yet

 

[StevenRB45]

Still not done more than about 10 miles in it but hasn't reoccurred yet

Whoops my brain clearly filed that post under A/C chat

 

[A3jeroen]

Take the complete bumper off. The diffuser can be separated, but with great effort (plastic spotwelds) and only when the bumper is off.

gr J

 

[Didge3]

After a sucessful 500 mile trip the vibration is gone, all is well!
Until I drive it to work the next day of course... went to leave work, ignition on, dash briefly flickers into life and then dies. No crank... excellent. Fortunately the carpark is on a hill so I bump started it, fired up followed by about 50 errors, airbag, power steering, esp, hill hold etc, presumably because none of these things were talking to the ecu when the engine was forced into life.
Cleared everything with OBD and set off, alternator voltage was all over the place ramping up and down from 13.5v to 14.9v. Managed to get home although any sort of dry steering would cause the power steering to cut out. After turning the engine off the voltage immediately dropped to 5v and central locking wouldn't work.
New battery ordered... this car just loves my wallet

 

[The Panda Nut]

The next thing on my list is to deal with the backbox rattling, the outerskin has rusted away (apparently very common?) It doesn't appear to be leaking but whats left of that outerskin is rattling on the top of the backbox. Its quite annoying, over bumps around town you can hear it flapping about. Not sure how best to remove and/or secure it without having to drop the exhaust.
Does the 'diffuser' trim come off? That might give me room to have a better look

I cut my outer off with a Dremel and cutter wheel. It lasted longer than my nerve...

 

[StevenRB45]

New battery ordered... this car just loves my wallet

If it's any consolation I'm chasing down similar deferred maintenance/previous owner being a bit that'll do issues on the Toyota but that doesn't have being an Abarth 500 as an upside.

 

[Didge3]

New battery has solved issues, the old one was a halfords jobby and actually a little undersized.
The remaining issue is really the rattle around 1500-1800rpm, its only present under light or no load and only after the engine has gotten hot, goes away above and below this RPM, really struggling to isolate where it is coming from.

 

[Didge3]

The Abarth hasn't seen heaps of use since the last update due to my dad deciding to give up driving manual and switch to just auto from now on which resulted in him giving me his BMW 320i, it is old and fairly worthless, too good to scrap but too many issues to sell so its now in my possession until I decide what to do with it. Heres a really terrible picture of it, I've not taken many as its very grubby and has actual moss growing on it in places.

Its not in the best condition cosmetically but is a very nice car to drive, my dad has had it some 14 years so I've spent a lot of time in it (when he purchased I was 16 so still getting ferried about for a while), due to this I have a bit of a weird attachment to it as it was the first 'nice' car he owned.

Being a 4 cylinder petrol BMW from this era its been broken a lot of the time and it still has various issues, the biggest being it burns oil pretty badly, I used up a litre in just under 700 miles so its not very wallet friendly in that respect. It is almost certainly valve stem seals, its a known weak point and it only smokes after pulling away when you've been idling.
I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it honestly, I could spend the £800 odd quid to do the valve seals and other weak oil seals whilst they're in there but afterwards the car might be worth £1500 on a good day? Its got 120k on it but it still drives very smoothly, it is the smoothest 4 cylinder I've ever driven. As it is it'd be hard to sell much above scrap value due to the oil burning and other niggles it has.

Anyway back to the Abarth, I decided to take it to work (120 mile round trip, only do this once a week fortunately) as it'd sat for about a month. It was faultless although felt like I was sat on top of it compared to the BMW and the gearchange now feels awful! I hope renewing the bushes in the linkage might solve this, I think I was just used to it, but with the BMW comparison it feels so much more connected to the point I missed a couple of changes in the Abarth with how rubbery it feels. Fortunately the fun factor still massively wins out with how eager it is and feels like it wants to be pushed all the time, with the detriment to the fuel economy (the BMW at least beats it in petrol MPG, much worse in oil MPG...)
The main thing for now is I'm keeping the Abarth off the salty grimey roads, eventually I will have to make a decision on the BMW though.