General Abarth Misfire

[Neil Barker]

My 2004 Abarth has developed a misfire - symptoms as follows:-

When accelerating reasonably briskly between 1500 and 2500 rpm, it will sometimes judder briefly and then carry on. Get it past 2500-3000 rpm and keep your foot hard down and it will happily rev to the limiter with no problems.

The misfire is only at low-ish revs and only occurs under hard acceleration - if you use a light right foot, it's either not there or unnoticeable. Yesterday was worse than before - rather than just 1 judder, it was clearly missing on at least one cylinder between 2-3000 rpm and caused an 'engine fault' message to come up. That went away once it stopped misfiring.

It'll happily cruise at 90+ on a motorway without a problem - it's just low revs that throw it I also don't seem to notice this problem with a cold engine - just when warm at normal operating temperature.

Any ideas before I drop it into the mercy of a dealer - it's still got 2 months dealer warranty left, so I want to get it sorted out soon !

 

[abarth_ns]

Change sparks.

 

[Big Black Stilo]

or, start it in the dark and get someone to rev it while you look under the bonnet for rogue sparks- had this before on a previous car more than once due to failed leads

 

[Big Black Stilo]

or on these cars, coil pack on one cylinder maybe about to go

 

[Chris@souls]

coil!

 

[Neil Barker]

Cheers guys - I had a suspicion it may be either plugs, leads or a coil.

I had a similar thing on a V6 Mondeo a few years back - HT lead failure was a common thing on those and a new set of leads cured it.

The car's due for its 48k service soon, where plugs will be changed, so it's time for them anyway.

 

[dan-the-man]

does the Abarth have HT leads? I though the coil sat right ontop of the plug?

Coil would be my guess

 

[Shaun86]

does the Abarth have HT leads? I though the coil sat right ontop of the plug?

Coil would be my guess

no HT leads on the abarth, it has the coils over the spark plugs where the voltage is generated. obviously have low voltage cables going to the ignition coils

 

[The Sultan]

defo coil comon as muck

 

[Neil Barker]

Well, the misfire finally became permanent - running on 4 cylinders on Saturday afternoon. Nursed it to my girlfriend's house and then called the AA out to it.

Turned up 1hr later and told him my suspicions, which he agreed with - took the cover off and swapped coils around - no effect, the problem didn't follow the suspect coil, so there was more to it.

He traced it to number 3 cylinder and took the lead from the ECU to the fuel-injector off. Plugged a little gadget with a bulb into it and saw that it barely flickered when the engine was running, whereas the other injector leads all glowed brightly. Hence the problem traces back to either the wiring from the ECU to it, or the ECU itself - more likely.

Relayed me home as there was no way I was going to leave my car outside a Fiat dealer's on the road over the weekend.

This morning(Mon) I rang the two dealers in my area - Sunwin Derby and JCS Kegworth. Sunwin as suspected displayed their usual complete contempt for customers wanting help AFTER a sale with their, "We don't have a tow-truck sir and can't come to fetch you". Told them to stick it and then rang JCS.

"Oh yes sir, we can come and get you no problem - we can be with you in 1hr or so". Great, thinks I.

"There, errr, will be a £75 charge to collect you".

"F**k off", or slightly politer words to that effect - the car's still under bloody warranty

Rang the AA and persuaded them to come and relay the car to JCS - almost the lesser of the two evils. The AA patrol on Sat eve said that they'd do this, although technically it's just one relay journey.

My car got to JCS (without me - too much else to do) around lunchtime and by 5.15PM, I'd heard nothing. Now why does this not surprise me ?

Range them and found out that no, they'd not touched the car and wouldn't be looking at it until tomorrow AM. This despite me including pretty precise directions as to what was wrong, along with the AA patrol's report telling them where to look. I honestly don't think it would have taken them more than 10 minutes to confirm this either.

This now means that they'll look at it tomorrow AM and then find it'll probably need a new ECU - which they won't have in stock, naturally (do Fiat dealers keep anything in stock ? Thus they'll have to order it and that'll take god-knows how long to get.

They promised me they'll ring me tomorrow, but I just know full well that it'll be me having to do the chasing as usual. Just why on earth can Fiat dealers not understand the concept of customer service ????

To say I am seething is an understatement. The totally pathetic aftersales service of Fiat dealers just confirms their lowly position in the annual JD power survey of dealer satisfaction. As nice as the Abarth is when it's working, it's the dire backup that ruins it. I, for one, will NEVER buy another Fiat due to this.

More to follow when I know what's happening....

Meanwhile, here's a pic from Sat eve:-

 

[dan-the-man]

Ahhh good old JCS I had a bit of a run in with the service manager there

Hope you get it sorted and I wouldn't wait for them to ring you because they wont.

 

[minimad99]

that photo is cool, at first glance when scolling up i thought the car was on fire. LOL.
Hope you get it sorted, it looks like a nice example

 

[Neil Barker]

....and here's the latest update

Tuesday morning came and at 10.30am, they rang me to ask permission to put a new coil in. Me - why are you asking - it's under warranty. Oh, they said.

Anyway, I asked them why they were changing the coil when the AA had proved it wasn't a coil and I had enclosed their report telling them that. Service mgr then comes on the phone to tell me that, "When a coil goes, the ECU will shut down the feed to that cylinder's injector to prevent fuel being sent to the cylinder and the ECU would need resetting once a new coil was in place".

Hmmm, sounds vaguely plausible, but I still smelt bull****.

So, surprise surprise, 2hrs later another phone call.

"We tried changing a coil and it's the ECU that is at fault".

Me, "You don't say !!".

"A new ECU will be just under £400 sir".

"Like hell it will - my car is under the 3rd year warranty".

"I don't think that's covered sir".

*By now quietly seething*


"Yes it is. I have the warranty book in front of me and the engine ECU is definitely not listed under any category of exceptions.

"OK sir, I'll put it through and see what happens".

*Clunk whirr*

"Ah yes sir, it's gone through fine. Only problem is that no stock is showing"

"So how long am I expect to wait then ?"

"It could be 2-4 days sir".

"And exactly what do you expect me to drive around in, in the meantime ?"

"We don't have any spare cars sir".

"Ahhh yes, Fiat's renowned 'customer care'. "

So, it's now Wednesday and nothing at all from them today. My car is clearly sat doing sod-all whilst someone lazily thinks about trying to locate a new ECU. It's quite conceivable that I could be waiting now until next week to get my car back.

Back in the days when I ran various Fords, I seem to recall a Vehicle Off Road order (VOR), where when such a fault arose that took the vehicle off road for such a period, they'd bend over backwards to locate the necessary part to get it working again. Now I don't know whether that's still in operation, but Fiat really, really need to get their f**king act together.

Frankly, this sort of thing is simply intolerable and just continues to reinforce my opinion of the worst car manufacturer on this planet for after sales service. I might amuse myself tomorrow by ringing the hell-line (sic) and seeing what they have to say about the matter....

 

[The Sultan]

seems like you have a really **** dealer there

if we don't have any loan cars left we just nick something from sales like a demo car so we always offer a car

and on you point about stocking ecu's can you imagine how expensive it would be to stock engine ecu body computer and various other ecu's for every car in the range no fiat dealer is going to do that it would be utterly stupid

as for the misdiagnosis of the coil this is stupid if I'm going to diagnosis something as faulty I prove it is faulty before ordering anything ie the way the aa man did by swamping it

likely causes for the missdiagnosis

the aa man unplugged the coil therefore logging a fault in the ecu that the dealer would have read and assumed was correct if the coil was not unplugged the ecu would have simply read misfire cylinder 3 meaning the dealer would have had a closer look at the cause

also we have had allot of coil failures on these engines in the past so I can see why they jumped to this conclusion but really they should have looked through it properly

as for there latest diagnosis the ecu i disagree with that aswell

if the aa mans node was flashing but not as bright as the others it sounds more like a wiring harness fault ie. high resistance in the wiring to the injector

or almost an ecu earth fault but I can rule this out as the other four injectors and other ecu functions are working normally

incidentally if a coil was to fail the ecu [highlight]would[/highlight] reduce the amount of time the injector was open for as so to reduce the damage to the catalist and the cylinder it's self

how ether it does this by reducing the time the injector is powered not by altering the voltage in the injector wires there for the node light the aa man used would stay the same brightness no mater how much fuel the ecu was injecting this further supports my theory of a faulty wiring harness

so in the future I sujest you don't let the aa under your bonnet it really makes life difficult for us

if a car has a intermittent fault we can use the examiner to find the last fault recorded vus leading us to the faulty part

but if the aa have unplugged every thing on the car with the engine running or the ignition on we have no chance of finding what the cause of a fault was and have no choice but to send the car out again to re record the fault after clearing all the faults ourselves

another famous aa trick is to use there machine to clear all the faults and again we don't know what caused a problem here either

as far as I'm concerned if you cant make it as a auto technition you go and join the aa and **** about with peoples cars

anyway I'm sure you will be getting a phone call any time now consisting of (it's not the ecu well have to look into it a bit further)

I hope some of my input has helped

maybe you can give your dealer a call and ask if they have pined out the wiring harness if they haven't then get your car back off them don't pay them a penny and take it somewhere else

pinning out a wiring harness to check all the resistances and powers and earth's are correct is the only reliable way to diagnose the ecu as faulty

by the way you can drive the car on 4 cylinders if you want I have never seen it do any harm to the thing as long as your not doing any mega miles or speed we had one customer take a car with a similar fault as yours from Windermere to London and back before having it fixed it hadn't damaged a thing

ps yes we do have a VOR vehicle off road and the parts come at 11pm at night if ordered before 5pm the same day now thats fast if you ask me

they are likely no using this because it is slightly more expensive al thou i cant figure why as your car is under warranty so surely it wouldn't matter

pps please wright back with the final outcome of the fault i would be interested as to what it is

 

[Chris@souls]

And i'll tell you a secret!

IF Fiat have stock of the ECU (@warrington) the Dealer CAN VOR it and not loose any discount!!!!!!

 

[The Sultan]

yea that's true I remember now but if it isn't at Warrington they cant
are but you will lose staff discount if you vor things

I don't know much on the subject of ordering things I'm a tech not a parts boy

 

[Neil Barker]

Thanks for your reply littlepip, very helpful.

In answer to your question, no, I don't expect each dealer to carry stocks of all ECUs etc, but what I do expect is a backup network that enables them to obtain them quickly. To be told "It's got to come from Italy and may take 3-4 days" is totally ridiculous and not satisfactory. As it turns out from what I read, there is a procedure for obtaining parts in stock from Warrington quickly, so I'll be using that to my advantage when I'm told further bulls**t from them....

So here's the latest update

As ever, I needed to keep ringing them - seldom if ever do they ring me. That seems par for the course from JCS, sadly.

As I said previously, they ordered a new ECU and it arrived on Friday morning. They actually phoned me to tell me that and there was a 'but' - namely that the 'wrong' ECU had arrived as this one didn't have cruise control on it, as it should. They were going to fit it and then I'd need to come back again when the correct one arrived.

Terrible service. Not only had they got the wrong part, I'd now need to waste further amounts of my time and money bringing it back for the correct part to be fitted

I collected my car on Friday afternoon and drove it away. Within a matter of a few miles, it became apparent that my car was still misfiring - increase pressure on the accelerator gradually and it'd largely be alright. Put my foot hard down and it's misfire like buggery. By now, they were shut so there was little I could do.

It is perfectly clear that the ECU is not the problem as I have said all along to them and so have you littlepip. More than likely it is the wiring, or something else.

This weekend, it has continued as above and I have just rung JCS again this morning.

I expain my annoyance to the service department to be met by the usual platitudes and can you bring the car back to us.

"We haven't got any cars available for you sir".

Me - "No, that's the wrong answer. Try again".

After going round and round in circles with them, they finally agree to see what they can do and ring me back.

Just had a phone call back from them to say that they've located a loan car that wasn't being used - a Renault Clio (strange for a Fiat dealer - more than likely some trade-in knacker....) and that I can bring my car in to them today.

So, that I'll be doing, along with chewing someone a new arsehole when I get there for this appalling 'service'

 

[The Sultan]

well when you get back to your dealer tell them to check the impedance between the common feed wires to the injectors and just encase they really are solid tell them the common feed wires are all the same colour fti

if there is say 200hm resistance in any place the fault is in the ultrasonic weld breaking up

and I don't see any reason why they cant fit your old ecu back on as that isn't the faulty part

if you like you could have them give me a ring and ill teach the morons how to use a multi meter

after this they have 2 options replace the harness but it may happen again

or my preference trace were in the harness the fault is an repair the thing with good old fashion solder

 

[Neil Barker]

The latest update....

I went to drop my car in again on Monday morning and collected a joyous, stinky Renault Clio - smelt like a wrestler's jockstrap inside....

(No, don't ask me how I know that smell - just imagine, ok !)

Later that day they rang to tell me that they'd received another ECU and it had exactly the same problem - namely that it didn't have cruise control in. Allegedly (and I have no means of confirming this either way) there is a labelling mix-up which caused this.

They became aware of my extreme unhappiness with this situation and I suggested that it was about time that someone took responsibility and ownership for this situation.

To her credit, Jo on the service counter did just that and another ECU arrived within a few hours and I was able to collect my car later that afternoon.

The problem came down to a duff ECU and a duff coil on cylinder 3.

Since the new ECU, everything is as it should be.

Phew.

 

[Jamie]

glad you got it sorted