Rosstbeef
New member
My first post and a bit of a bad news.
It looks like the first fiat I've ever owned has gone and dropped its head gasket and I'm only 2.5k miles into ownership! When I bought it I noticed the coolant was on the low side but as it was owned by a 70 year old lady I thought that might be down to a slight lack of maintenance between services.
I did an MOT history check before buying the car and noticed the EML had been on during an MOT previously but it could be unrelated to this issue. I haven't had it come on since I've owned the car.
Anyway here are the symtoms:
For a month or so now I've noticed it occasionally fire on three cylinders from cold. Blip the throttle a bit and it clears and runs smoothly after for the whole journey and may not appear again for several more cold starts.
I've been having to top the coolant up on a bi-weekly basis so I knew something was up but cannot see any signs of external leakage.
Lots of sloshing in the dashboard/heater matrix especially at start up when revved.
The firing on three has got worse over the last week, i.e. on most cold starts and during one journey also. On the return from work today there was a definite, large plume of white smoke when I first started it as the throttle was depressed to clear the firing on three and it continued for about 100m of road after, then stopped.
I changed the spark plugs a couple of weeks ago and noticed the old plug on no.4 cylinder looked a bit wet and possibly steam cleaned. I took the new plug out again last weekend and compared it to that on No.1 cylinder and again it looked wet and steam cleaned in comparison.
So what I'm guessing is that the HG has gone and the coolant is leaking slowly into cylinder No.4 while parked up. I can't think of any other explanation.
There isn't any mayo in the oil. I changed it last weekend and couldn't see any. The coolant remains nice and pink.
I'm planning to run a compression test to see if there's any difference for No.4. I might even rig something up to my compressor to see if I can get bubbles out of the expansion tank. Or maybe I've diagnosed it enough and just crack on with it!
Basically this post is just to seek confirmation from others please . Also it will hopefully help out others diagnose their HG failures in the future if they get the same symptoms. I'm planning to do the work myself as I've done several HGs in the past. I'll post up the outcome when I get to the bottom of the problem.
It looks like the first fiat I've ever owned has gone and dropped its head gasket and I'm only 2.5k miles into ownership! When I bought it I noticed the coolant was on the low side but as it was owned by a 70 year old lady I thought that might be down to a slight lack of maintenance between services.
I did an MOT history check before buying the car and noticed the EML had been on during an MOT previously but it could be unrelated to this issue. I haven't had it come on since I've owned the car.
Anyway here are the symtoms:
For a month or so now I've noticed it occasionally fire on three cylinders from cold. Blip the throttle a bit and it clears and runs smoothly after for the whole journey and may not appear again for several more cold starts.
I've been having to top the coolant up on a bi-weekly basis so I knew something was up but cannot see any signs of external leakage.
Lots of sloshing in the dashboard/heater matrix especially at start up when revved.
The firing on three has got worse over the last week, i.e. on most cold starts and during one journey also. On the return from work today there was a definite, large plume of white smoke when I first started it as the throttle was depressed to clear the firing on three and it continued for about 100m of road after, then stopped.
I changed the spark plugs a couple of weeks ago and noticed the old plug on no.4 cylinder looked a bit wet and possibly steam cleaned. I took the new plug out again last weekend and compared it to that on No.1 cylinder and again it looked wet and steam cleaned in comparison.
So what I'm guessing is that the HG has gone and the coolant is leaking slowly into cylinder No.4 while parked up. I can't think of any other explanation.
There isn't any mayo in the oil. I changed it last weekend and couldn't see any. The coolant remains nice and pink.
I'm planning to run a compression test to see if there's any difference for No.4. I might even rig something up to my compressor to see if I can get bubbles out of the expansion tank. Or maybe I've diagnosed it enough and just crack on with it!
Basically this post is just to seek confirmation from others please . Also it will hopefully help out others diagnose their HG failures in the future if they get the same symptoms. I'm planning to do the work myself as I've done several HGs in the past. I'll post up the outcome when I get to the bottom of the problem.