Full engine decoke after 67k?

[tim]

Bad news. My Bravo 1.4 SX has never been particularly reliable, and its last failure seems to be just that... the last it will ever make!

I was driving home after a long weekend and the clutch started to whine every time I changed gear. I managed to limp the last 2 miles home and it stalled as I pulled in to park it.

Now my local Fiat garage has told that there is no compression on cylinder 1, and the engine is heavily coked. Since they're the ones I bought it from 3 years ago, and it's been regularly serviced and maintained there ever since, I'm not happy. It's an N reg and it's done 67,000 miles. They've quoted a price of £840 inc VAT for the decoke. Is a full decoke normal after this amount of mileage, and is this a rip off?

Also this is before they've even looked at the clutch - that will be another £300 to replace.

As it is I now have a laid up car, at the garage, that is beyond economic repair. Anyone got any bright ideas?

 

[gcol]

Tim,
Sorry to hear about you car, don't know whether this stuff is worth a go or not.
www.10kboost.co.uk
Seems strange that your car should develop this problem all of a sudden. Would have thought that you would have noticed a gradual reduction in power for a number of months before you had any problems such as stalling - but I'm no mechanic.
Maybe your problem is something and nothing. Maybe the Fiat dealer you took it to is trying to fleece you - ever think of that? I think I'd get a second opinion from a good independant garage.
Good luck.

 

[rowan skinner]

Re: Re: Full engine decoke after 67k?

My bravo went in a while ago for its servce at fiat desira they sad the engine was coked and charged me in excess of 1k to uncoke it.
I told them where to go. But as i am a student doing aerospace warfare systems i have access to work shops on campus, so i got a load of mates who do automotive engineering to look at it.
In 3 hours they took the engine out and took it apart and found nothing wrong, but as a precaution i ran it on shell opitmax and fuel cleaners every so often.
And since it runs fine, so i recon u just need to run some good petrol in it.
Do u use cheap supermarket petrol, as that can bugger things up!

 

[Jon]

independant garage

Ok, admittedly, I could be talking out of my rear passage on this. However, a mate of mine had a sh*t-box Renault 5 'Campus'. It was nacked. It would not start. I had a look at the sparks, and there was soot and unburned gunk all over them. He had his engine cleaned by an independant garage for something like £80, and some new sparks. Then it worked ok again.

Now, I know Fiats have fuel injection etc; that makes life more complicated - but getting your engine decoked shouldn't be that much, unless your talking about a full engine rebuild level service. An injector clean shouldn't be in that region either.

My advice - as per everyone elses I've ever seen on this site: take it to an independant garage before you start shelling out serious wonga. Then when you find I haven't got a clue about what I'm mepping, post a message telling the world I haven't got a clue.

The shame.

 

[andys]

attn Rowan

Shouldn't that be 'dont use supermarket petrol' mate? For anybody reading this take his advice- cheapo juice is shite and does not provide sufficient combustion and will lead to cack build-up. Its cheap for a reason!