Technical 95 Tipo 1.6 cuts out, dies, bad idle/starting

[xenium]

Hi everyone,

im in Sao Paulo, Brasil right now and a friend of mine is havin some really heavy problems with his Tipo and im trying to help him get things straight again.
He told me that since some time the car would just die once in a while. When we took it for a ride today things turned really bad, it only fired up on the 3rd try, and had idle speed was sawing up and down between 700 and 1000 ... after a while it kept steady at 800, sounded good to me. what kinda stumbled me was that the fuel gage was goin really mad, flippin between reserve/empty and the middle all the time.. mileage gage was normal, tho i never saw it back up all the way when driving down a hill and stepping off the pedal, im used to this from all my previous cars, isnt the fiat supposed to do this fuel-cut-out ?
anyways, so the car just started missing on all 4 like mad all out of sudden, died, and crankin and steppin on the gas just gave this sound what i would describe as a very very low spark not enough to get her to fire up.
so well, i took a look under the hood and well i didnt quite get this engine.
it has this weird air filter box which is supposed to have a snorkel on the left side going up (it was missing, as well as the rear wall of the filter box just behind the throttle body) the intake/snorkel thing on the front was there tho, just the hose which is supposed to go on the nipple on the elbow wasnt there and i also didnt get to see where it should go. i strongly guess that the air filter box is not supposed to be open on the end, but i dont know fiat that well yet , any idea why this would be missing??
so well i disconnected the lambda probe and i got the car to fire up, which kinda puzzles me cos i thought this would be a ignition problem.... then it ran nice for some time (like a car with a disconnected lambda probe, kinda different but not too bad) but after some time the same **** happened again and it just died off really bad and i wasnt able to get it to run again with or without the lambda probe connected, after waiting 10 minutes, crankin the car up and holding it up at 3000 i managed to get back home.. left the car there and took the bus..
so well here are some questions...
is there any common problem related to my symptoms with this model?
it should be a 4cyl, 1.6 liter fuel injected engine, i thought i could make out the following things, 2-valve OHC, timing belt driven, contact-free ignition,
catalysator, lambda probe.
i wasnt able to see any AFM,MAF tho, and the throttle looked kinda carburator-style... didnt see any EFI like that before, just the kind with a fuel rail and 4/6 injectors...
does it just rely on IAT (intake air temparature) for fuel mixture then? wasnt able to make out a MAP either...
any other useful hints?

here goes my theories...
dirt/crap/rust in the tank chunkin up the fuel pump.... (strange behaviour of fuel gage, but then again mileage gage goin all the way to the right contraindicates fuel system malfunction)
ignition problems (plugs, wires?)
electrical problems (common ground points bad?)
plugged up exhaust system due to catalysator broken to pieces (okay thats kinda far-fetched, but roads are REALLY bad here...)

im really lost on this one...
i did search myself a little through the board, and i did see the repair manual, but i thought id ask you guys first cos im on dialup and it takes long to download this whole manual...

thanks in advance fellow fiat drivers!

byebye

simon

 

[fixit]

It could be that your electrical grounding is poor.... especially with the symptom of the fuel guage going on/off... that would be the first place I would check...

good luck...

 

[xenium]

thanks so far!!

so far ive checked this :

fuel pump seems to be running (atleast it makes a buzzing sound when trying to start), ignition wires seem to be ok, they are not cut or broken anywhere.. didnt have a ohmmeter at hand to check tho. gonna take a look at the plugs tomorrow, if there is a fuel problem they should stay bright after cranking for a while, if its a ignition problem they should turn black, or am i wrong?
so well i didnt see any real "ground" points, but i did check the cable from the alternator that seems to go into the wiring harness behind the firewall and the wire that goes from the battery to the transmission.. everything seemed good.
after checking the plugs im thinking about pulling the fuel pump and checking it out, also the fuel tank for dirt, cos this erratic fuel gauge behaviour kinda makes me think theres a whole load of crap inside...
i also checked the fuel lines and they are not crooked or broken anywhere...
any more ideas?

greets

simon

 

[frans]

I found out that when there are a lot of different problems at the same time, but not constantly, that very often the main connector on the ECU is the cause.
Have you checked this? Disconnect it, clean it (spray) and try. You'll notice very quickly if this changes anything. Once I had to replace the connector because cleaning wouldn't help (enough) -although there was no dirt visible. If this is the problem (and solution), it's best to reset the ECU after you've cleaned the connections.

good luck!
f.

 

[xenium]

thanks for the hint! ill check it out. where is the ecu on this car? in the false bulkhead behind the firewall or somewhere inside the car where the fusebox is? used to all kind of strange places to find ECUs thanks to my Saab (under the drivers seat)

i think i already found the culprit, cylinder 3 ignition cable looked weird, havent been able to check out the plugs due to lack of tools (what a shame) so i had to do improvise something funny to check out the ignition cables and hooray cable of cyl3 is not passing on any current im gonna replace the whole set and see how it goes, fuel pump is probably not the problem cos it made a noise like it was running when i was cranking and after.
kinda looked like an ignition problem to me right from the beginning!! hope thats it keep you guys updated

bye

simon

 

[frans]

ECU is located either underneath the glove-compartment inside the car, or otherwise, when you stand in front of the engine, on your left hand side directly behind the headlight (underneath a black-plastic cover). This is in the version where the steering-wheel is where Fiat intended it to be...

 

[xenium]

Thanks alot so far,

well it seems there are lots of faults at the same time with this car.
first of all the cyl. 2 ignition cable seems to be either a special ultra-high resistance version... in other words, just broken. i still wonder how this car could have been running almost normal (for a 1.6 liter machine) as i felt with the ignition cable showing resistance out of range on my multimeter in the 2000k Ohm range... :S all the other cables showed normal resistance as written on the terminals 5K+1K+x all in between 6.2 and 6.5 kOhms. Then this huge injector, note thats my first time messing around with throttle body injection, doesnt inject any gasoline, but gas arrives there with pressure (disconnected feed hose and checked). so now i dont know if it might be just too few pressure or i have no idea why this injector wouldnt be working. this car has a semi-working aftermarket alarm, hope it doesnt have some kind of immobilizer causing this, but i usually just know imobilizers cutting of the fuel pump, which is not the case. maybe the injector nozzle is dirty and should be cleaned? thats the next thing i will try if i get a hold of one of those damn torx bits. then the whole airbox is open, the metal tube going back from the air filter up to somewhere is missing and the airbox is just open, the top wall is missing ?!?! (i will close that) this is probably also the cause why the spark plugs were all sooted black with lots of dirt deposits. i dont even wanna know how this engine looks from the inside, i just hope it still works
then some smaller problems : the second nozzle on the front of the throttle plate is just tapped, what for is this used? and there is something with a nozzle near the airfilter which is disconnected as well as something which looks like some kind of intake air temperature sensor (red) in the airbox (disconnected too) any hints on where these things should go? do i need them to make the car run/are they very important? smog laws/MOT practically dont exist here...
wellll guys i guess im gonna replace the broken ignition cable first and give it a try again when the battery is recharged, and with a closed (fixed and glued) airbox and cleaned plugs
keep you guys updated and thanks so far.
had to fix another friends brasilia (really nice car google it up "vw brasilia"), but that was just a small thing, a spring for the carburator was missing

 

[xenium]

some news, well i replaced the ignition wires, which probably was a good thing anyways, but didnt help. i had gas arriving at the throttle body (disconnected hose) with high pressure so filter/pump shouldnt be a problem, but the injector was not spraying at all (no mist/smell of gas in the throttle body) so i checked the connecter arriving to the terminal (2white and 2black wires) and i had something arriving at my multimeter and something else when i had a 2nd person trying to start the engine. weird values between 0 and 1 VDC, does that seem right? (i guess so as the injector is probably just pulse-activated)
so what i did after that was open that f*!#(%n Torx screw on top of the injector and wriggle the damn thing out. suprisingly not much to see, seems i just was able to remove some kind of "injector cap". any idea how to check the injector?

greets

simon

 

[xenium]

now i pinpointed the problem some more, the injector seems to be fine, but the connector (with the cap that connects to the injector and to the wiring harness on the other side) is kinda weird. it doesnt pass any current from the cap side to the harness side on the pins 1 and 4 (outer pins) the inner pins worked fine. i then checked from the harness side to the end of the cable where it goes inside the cap and had high resistance (~80 ohms) so i thought this whole piece is shot. i cut the thing in half and wired the two black cables together and the two white cables together. then i had current passing from the injector terminal to pin 1+2 and 3+4. battery was kinda empty tho and couldnt really get the car to start, but the injector was definitively opening (gas splurt and smell). so i tried to jump-start the car by letting it roll down the street and putting in 2nd.
the injector then kinda flooded everything, and didnt stop injecting until i removed the key. was my idea of connecting each of the two wires together wrong? why does this car have 4 wires if the injector has just two connectors, can someone help me on that one?

greets

simon

 

[frans]

Two wires go to the injector, two wires to the air-temp-sensor that is mounted on top of it.
Take a look at http://www.injetronic.com.br/dicas/dica.php?dica=23
did you check the sensor de rotaçao (don't know the english word...)?

grtz
f.

 

[xenium]

i checked the crankshaft sensor, it seems to working, as well as the signal from the ECU to the valve. i changed a blocked fuel filter, cleaned the tank which was full of dirt too. that just leaves me with the fuel pump itself and the valve as source for errors. now i really got kinda tired of the car, because a brake line is broken as well and it also threw all of the steering servo fluid yesterday all out of a sudden (line disconnected?, gotta check that..) and besides that the engine spit clouds when i put some drops of gas in the throttle body and cranking from between the block and head on the 4th cylinder in the direction of the battery and the water hose. oh well that means atleast a new headgasket to me, so im gonna pull the head tomorrow and keep you guys updated

 

[Trancendental]

May sound daft but if you have one, have you replaced the Distributor Cap?

 

[mimouni4ever]

how can i chexk the grounding thing that you tell . i'm not very good in car's.
please help me i have the same prob