Technical 57 Grande Punto Sporting randomly popping up with battery & oil light

[LawF]

Hi people,

First post on here, but long time punto owner.

I got my car booked in for a recall on Friday anyway, so I'm planning on getting them to look at my new problem, but I thought I'd see if anybody had any ideas before I get fobbed off.

Basically, yesterday morning after about 20 minutes of driving to work on country roads my punto felt like it lost power - even though the engine was still running, and steering/lights were working it wouldn't accelerate. Looked at my dashboard and the oil light and battery light were lit up.

Car came to a stop, I turned engine off, turned it back on - it was fine, no more lights. Was fine the rest of the day.

This morning, after 20 minutes of driving country roads into work, battery and oil lights pop up as I'm going around a small roundabout, and engine won't accelerate. So I turn it off, turn it on - perfect again.

I have a feeling it's a sensor thing - but why would it not accelerate?

Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[Ffoxy]

Sounds like the errors being displayed are forcing the car into Limp mode.

Hopefully the ECU will have logged some data your dealer can use for analysis.

 

[LawF]

Cool - thanks for that. I was hoping it was just limiting the engine or something, hopefully it's just a sensor or software bug - just thought I check, make sure it's not a "Don't drive or it will explode!!" job.

 

[D4nny8oy]

Have you bothered to check the oil level?

 

[LawF]

Yeah, checked oil after leaving the car standing for an hour or so - was fine.

Had a similar problem with an 05 punto in the past, but that was when the engine got wet in heavy rain on the motorway it caused an electrical fault and the car lost power for about 10 seconds then came back... but this is a completely different car, and it wasn't raining the last couple of days when the car had the fault, and the oil and battery light was up too... so who knows.

Maybe they ice has done some damage to my engine the last few weeks during the freeze. Car had fault again last night on way home - so that's 3 times in two days. This morning I made it all the way in without a fault which was good.

If the garage figure out the problem on Friday I'll post what they find.

 

[Alyball]

Hiya,

Just joined the forum because I found this post so was hoping someone could help a bit.

We were driving down the motorway last week when the oil light came on quickly followed by the battery light and then the engine cutting out. Phoned aa who came and car started straight away with no error lights on at all. They towed us home and my husband has been working on the car ever since.

He's taken the rocker cover off and the gunge that was underneath was terrible. He's soaked it to let him clean it but the oil holes were covered and completely blocked by this same gunge.

When the aa man started the car he said that the noise coming from the car sounded like a big end noise. To me the noise is just a tapping but hubby says its like a rumbling when it's running...

How did you get on at the dealership LawF???

Anyone got any other suggestions???

Thanks, aly x

 

[LawF]

Hi Aly,

I'd completely forgot to post an update to this - thanks for reminding me.

The garage said they didn't have anything on the computer to indicate any errors. I drove it around for a week or two after that and it happened again so I went back and they checked it over again, still no faults found/logged.

So in the end they thought maybe the system had gotten itself into a funny state - they did a full reset (or something to that effect) and asked me to come back if there were any more faults.

Worked flawlessly from that point - so for me at least it was software problem. They did say that it could have been an odd set of conditions during the freeze we had just before I started getting faults that put it into an odd state, but who knows.

From then on the car was fine though, until I sold it a few months back.

 

[Connord94]

Hey Law,
Apologies if this post was a while ago, but I believe I am having a similar problem and just wanted to see if the full reset fixed the problem and completely and whether this would have to be done at a Fiat dealership?
Thanks