Technical 2014 Fiat 500L Thermostat change turned into something bigger?

[EmptyProgrammer9449]

I just bought a 2014 Fiat 500L Trekking with the 1.4L Turbo. Had 99,000 miles, check engine light came on and said it wasn’t heating up quick enough. Also had a nice burning oil smell when you braked hard. So I bought a new thermostat and vacuum pump gasket, took out the battery, turbo heat guard, oil separator and in the middle of removing the separator noticed an ignition coil connection was broke, so replaced that too. Got the thermostat out the first day, came back the next morning and put the new thermostat in, replaced the gasket and put everything back. Started the car and let it warm up so I could burp the cooling system, got in to take it for a spin and… will not shift into gear?

This threw me off quite a bit. I took the battery back out, removed the battery plate and checked the transmission fluid, perfectly fine. All the connections were together, although a few have a nice coat of oil and antifreeze on it.

When you put it in gear and keep the break on, you can hear it trying to go into gear, then the dash says shift to neutral, then back into gear. If you shift into gear and then left off the gas, it slowly goes into gear but doesn’t drive great.

It does now throw a code P1CB1, Shift Actuator, but my mind is still blown that it drove and shifted perfectly fine before doing a simple thermostat change. Am I missing something here?

Has anyone ever heard of something like this? I’m not entirely familiar with double clutch transmissions, and I didn’t know if there was a specific procedure that has to be done when disconnecting and reconnecting the battery or what. The only thing I did when changing everything out was, I had to slightly rotate the vacuum pump when putting it back into place, but I feel like that would have no baring on the transmission.

So my question is, is this something anyone has heard of before, and is there anything i could check before towing it to a dealership?

 

[eeeno]

https://www.cardiag.me/en/obd2-en/p1cb1-fiat/

Newer cars need constant power supply to keep the settings. It's probable that the car has lost some calibrations and the transmission needs to be reset and re-calibrated with a diagnostic tool.

 

[EmptyProgrammer9449]

https://www.cardiag.me/en/obd2-en/p1cb1-fiat/

Newer cars need constant power supply to keep the settings. It's probable that the car has lost some calibrations and the transmission needs to be reset and re-calibrated with a diagnostic tool.

Thank you very much for the reply and the link!

After looking over that video and some others, I decided to have it towed to a dealership and have them take a look at it. And as luck would have it.. it’s working perfectly fine for them.

They called and said they drove it around awhile, check engine light came on for the thermostat again, but said the only thing it needs is a general tune up. New plugs and coils, but outside of that nothing else. I said, so it had no issues shifting? They said nope, they thought I brought it in for something else.

So my gut feeling is, I got liquid on a connector and it finally dried up, given that most of the transmission connections and shift actuator pump is directly under the path of the thermostat.

Anyway, I sure am loving the heck out of this car!