Technical Broken chain in firefly 1.0 engine

[lunseren]

Hey everybody
The 1.0 litre firefly engine in our 500X is suffering because of a camchain/timingchain gone to long/stretched. Have you heard anything like that regarding said enginefamily? We’ve only driven 48000km since we bought it new, in may 2019, and it has been serviced according to prescriptions every year.

 

[The Panda Nut]

Yes chains are NOT better than belts. We had a Micra with a twin duplex chain and at similar milage it had stretched and required replaccement. The car wouldnt run without a new chain. Annoying as old style chains seemd to go 100,000+ with ease.

 

[eeeno]

Take it to the Fiat. Maybe the chain tensioner has failed prematurely? It was designed to last a lot longer, that's why Fiat should fix it for you at lower cost or no cost at all.

 

[chris3234]

This is the first such failure I've heard about on here so cant say it's common at least not yet


I'd definitely be on to fiat about thiis hopefully you can get some goodwill from then

 

[porta]

Yes chains are NOT better than belts. We had a Micra with a twin duplex chain and at similar milage it had stretched and required replaccement. The car wouldnt run without a new chain. Annoying as old style chains seemd to go 100,000+ with ease.

The same is true of the Navara and it’s a very expensive job if it all goes bang

 

[The Panda Nut]

The same is true of the Navara and it’s a very expensive job if it all goes bang

Yep its extremely annoying andnseems to built-in to provide maintenance work that should be unnecessary with modern materials. Just have to grit your teeth and pay up...

 

[lunseren]

Hey all
Thanks for your replies! I’ve just written to FIAT Denmark/the importer. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Their priority must be to have satisfied and loyal costumers right?!

 

[porta]

Yep its extremely annoying andnseems to built-in to provide maintenance work that should be unnecessary with modern materials. Just have to grit your teeth and pay up...

Seems there’s a fair few Japanese pickups that suffer with belt/chain issues, Nissan, Mitsubishi, mazda/Ford and even the venerable Toyota. We were lucky with our Navara but this and our old L200 were prone to head gasket failures. I avoided this issue by draining and refilling the coolant system twice a year, keeping the radiators free from debris and once replacing the thermostat as soon as I noticed it reached temperature a bit too soon for my liking
I have to state that all of them were much more reliable than the three Land Rovers and the RR Vogue…we even had a Santana LR with a brilliant 2.8 IVECO engine, it only ever suffered from the LR derived bits and the chassis was galvanised from factory

 

[varesecrazy]

Hey all
Thanks for your replies!

This isnt a 'new engine' been in in production since 2014/15

The twinair are probably its closest relative..and those chains seem to last well

As others have said.. get FIAT to investigate.. you may well get fantastic support.

 

[lunseren]

This isnt a 'new engine' been in in production since 2014/15

The twinair are probably its closest relative..and those chains seem to last well

As others have said.. get FIAT to investigate.. you may well get fantastic support.

I’ll try. I’ve just written to FIAT Denmark/importer. Who knows…

 

[Ralf S.]

It's more likely to be a tensioner failure, at that mileage.

The chain would only stretch with physical wear (the "stretch" is not really stretch... it's caused by either the holes in the chain plates becoming elongated, and/or the pins' diameter being reduced... so that the plates are able to move further away from each other.

The tensioner, on the other hand, uses a spring-loaded plunger to press a usually nylon strip against the chain, to keep it at a constant tension. There's more likelihood of that becoming gummed up/jamming than the chain being so badly worn in 48,000km.

Let us know what the cause is.


Ralf S.

 

[lunseren]

Will do

 

[lunseren]

It's more likely to be a tensioner failure, at that mileage.

The chain would only stretch with physical wear (the "stretch" is not really stretch... it's caused by either the holes in the chain plates becoming elongated, and/or the pins' diameter being reduced... so that the plates are able to move further away from each other.

The tensioner, on the other hand, uses a spring-loaded plunger to press a usually nylon strip against the chain, to keep it at a constant tension. There's more likelihood of that becoming gummed up/jamming than the chain being so badly worn in 48,000km.

Let us know what the cause is.


Ralf S.

Hey again
Concerning our 500x and possible broken chain it has all ended rather undramatic. A couple of weeks ago we started driving the car again, because it was actually never proved, that there was something wrong with the engine. Our workshop/dealer only plugged in a tester, that reported a lack of timing on the chain. They obviously didn’t listen to the engine for chainrelated sounds or odd idling etc. Symptoms that I read about later after the testing. I know that the dealer have to take the problem serious, but couldn’t they have acted a bit more pragmatic? The reason why the enginelamp lit up in the first place, was due to a bad start where the engine stalled. I didn’t know that a bad start could result in a lit enginelamp. I haven’t tried it in the ten years driving three different FIAT.

 

[Ralf S.]

"Undramatic" is usually best... I guess once they read the code they didn't want to crank the engine over too much in case they damaged something... usually valve timing going "out" damages the valves.

Mine went moody yesterday when I had the ignition on and started it (using the key, not "bumping" it) while it was rolling down a slight gradient. That threw up a heap of warnings about tyre pressure, hill holder and even cruise control is disabled... so the rolling start obviously confused the computer. It all sorted itself out when it realised it was still actually alive... but I do wonder about how "nervous-Nancy" car sensors and electronics have become. Everyone starts their car when it's rolling down hill, right?


Ralf S.

 

[lunseren]

"Undramatic" is usually best... I guess once they read the code they didn't want to crank the engine over too much in case they damaged something... usually valve timing going "out" damages the valves.

Mine went moody yesterday when I had the ignition on and started it (using the key, not "bumping" it) while it was rolling down a slight gradient. That threw up a heap of warnings about tyre pressure, hill holder and even cruise control is disabled... so the rolling start obviously confused the computer. It all sorted itself out when it realised it was still actually alive... but I do wonder about how "nervous-Nancy" car sensors and electronics have become. Everyone starts their car when it's rolling down hill, right?


Ralf S.

Of course they do… but as far as nervous-Nancy sensors go, I once had the honour of owning a Well maintained 124 Sport Coupé 1974 (see attached pic.) for a couple of years. THAT was a car without sensors; if something was wrong, you could see it, hear it, smell it. Simple!

 

[porta]

Of course they do… but as far as nervous-Nancy sensors go, I once had the honour of owning a Well maintained 124 Sport Coupé 1974 (see attached pic.) for a couple of years. THAT was a car without sensors; if something was wrong, you could see it, hear it, smell it. Simple!

Very nice, always wanted one but never got the chance, had 128 coupe and 3p, X19s and beta coupe, but 124 coupe escaped me

 

[lunseren]

Very nice, always wanted one but never got the chance, had 128 coupe and 3p, X19s and beta coupe, but 124 coupe escaped me

X1/9 must have been fun!

 

[porta]

X1/9 must have been fun!

They were, great handling cars but the cars I miss the most are the 128’s!

 

[lunseren]

They were, great handling cars but the cars I miss the most are the 128’s!

Nice! 128? Is it like the one on the pic I’ve attached?

 

[porta]

Nice! 128? Is it like the one on the pic I’ve attached?

Yup, that’s the coupe, the later 3p had a hatchback, silver car below, and rally, bottom left