Technical Koalar random thoughts

[Blueboy54123]

Hi koaler success someone had insulated the small thread that fits inside the battery tray with tape presumably to stop it rusting I took the tape off so I could get the bolt off then the gauge instantly went to 3/4 so thanks for your help

 

[ZaphodB]

Hi koaler success someone had insulated the small thread that fits inside the battery tray with tape presumably to stop it rusting I took the tape off so I could get the bolt off then the gauge instantly went to 3/4 so thanks for your help

 

[Blueboy54123]

View attachment 470502

Haha exactly all that pissing about for nothing

 

[koalar]

Earth strap, faulty, replacement or not

Yes I know the pictures aren't great, I borrowed someone to crank the car while I photograph one handed

Do a simple voltage drop testing under load

Can be done with a test light or multimeter makes no difference in this case

Here I am going use a test light, for the last year or so it's been may main electrical diagnostic tool

Yes I have oscilloscopes, fluke meters and multiplexers, but for the majority of car faults a test light is better as it shows some current can pass through a wire rather than just voltage present

Yes this is a Suzuki not a fiat, but the principles are the same

Attach the light to the battery negative

Touch the test light on battery positive, to make sure it's got a good connection and the lamp hasn't blown

Scratch some clean metal and crank or try to

Here the earth strap bolt lights up

But if put the probe on the cable eye and crank the engine it does not light

The problem is the connection between the earth strap and the block not the earth strap itself


Often people say I've measured the ohms and it's okay, no you proved there is continuity not it's able to carry a couple of hundred Amps

Here the same Suzuki before it was fixed

If you are using a multimeter on the volts range. Ideally it should be under 200 millivolts while canking or tying to


There's a video in post 15 of a faulty earth on a panda

 

[koalar]

Rear bush on the front suspension arm is a common failure point, same with a lot of models not just the Panda

There are many symptoms such as

Clunks over speed bumps(also caused by drop links not tightened correctly is very common)
Vibration at the steering wheel
Veering under braking
Veering upon acceleration
Clunk on acceleration
Clunk on braking
Vague steering
Difficulty in maintaining a straight line
Steering goes light, approaching full lock,.parking
Poor straight line stability
Wind/passing cars causing the vehicle to wander
Tendency to follow the grooves in the road
Rubber squeaking noise (also ARB bushes)

Probably missed something out


I normally notice it first when pulling out to overtake and the tyres hit the cats eyes causing a slight input of the steering wheel needed lto correct, you can feel it well before it's a MOT failure

Or on the motorway the need to make many slight corrections to continue in a straight line

There are other causes, but if you have any of these symptoms it's pretty easy to check


In my opinion this is the first part to check

There's several way to diagnose the rear bush

I wiggle the steering, with a light on the bush, you will see the same movement as in the video below an assistant helps, but you can use your phones camera

This also works, better if you leave the wheel on in my opinion, for more leverage, it's basically the same as the first test, except you have to jack the car,


This will find 90% straight off

An alternative method

It's also worth trying to push the arm up and down with a large screwdriver or pry bar

If the sleeve has delaminated from the rubber insert, it will move and stay there, it should always return to the same position, or as in this case it moved easily as the centre has cracked


The bushes are available separately

1.1, 1.2 and 1.3

Or the 100HP

It is not a trivial job to get the old bush out, without a hydraulic press, and usually requires drilling and hammer and chisel to remove


Changing the whole arm, only takes a few minutes though


The arm should be tightened up with the wheels on the ground

4410B40 LOWER WISHBONE (WITH BALLJOINT) OF LEFT OR RIGHT FRONT SUSPENSION (ONE) - R+R -CHECK WHEEL GEOMETRY SEPARATELY - Fiat - PANDA - eLearn - 4CarData

Be carefully with the torque setting for the pinch bolt, some online instructions are wrong too high, and will snap the bolt


Don't try and spin the pinch bolt out. There a good chance it will snap, just undo the nut and drift it out, helps if you have some brass, once it starts to slide you can then put a socket on the bolt head

Couple of failed examples

Here the outer has delaminated, these are easy to change, just collapse the outer shell with a hammer and chisel

And here the inner

Obviously if the bushes test fine, the problems elsewhere, there's no point in changing for changing sake

You need to look elsewhere

 

[koalar]

Regular misfire, easy to hear from the exhaust exit

Granted not the best videos I have ever done

Here running on 3 cylinders

How it should sound

You can hear it in the engine bay but it's easier from the exhaust exit

Running correctly is like prrrprrrprrrrprrrrr
Misfire is much hasher puffpuffpufff type sound

It's more subtle in the video, if you had a good and misfiring side by side it's very obvious

Once you know the sound it's very easy to spot

 

[Baggey]

Ive missed this one. And havent read everything. Fuel rail sensor or blocked injectors. Just a thought

 

[koalar]

Cambelts 1.1 and 1.2 round oil filter

There's more than one way to do this job

As long as the car is running correct beforehand

I make my own marks, for several reasons

1, you don't have to remove the valve cover, replace the gasket and O rings

2.Once you've done one it significantly quicker to do, about 1/2 hour

3.Almost impossible to mess up

4. To don't need an impact gun to undo the T55 bolt which will be very tight

5. There's no need to perform a phonic relearn

6. On cars with the ECU bolted to the engine there's no need to disturbe any of its wiring

7. If something is wrong, it's easier to diagnose, you touched the crank pulley, crack sensor wiring, timing belt and little else

The more you touch the more variables there are add into the mix

The only downside is if the timing is already out, you will copy the same mistake,

If you are replacing the head gasket then you might as well use locking tools, it's not totally fool proof, it possible to have the CAM one tooth advance and still fit the locking tool, the right side of the belt has to be drum tight

I only changed the belt and tensioner pulley, if the water pump lets go latter I know it's a quick fix, I had 4 fire engine fiats 3 very high mile ones none have failed, but your milage might be different

However if I was pay someone to change the belt I would get the water pump done as well, you don't want to pay for the labour twice

 

[koalar]

It easy to confuse battery charge state, with battery health, the two aren't directly linked

Charts like this look very convincing

Measuring 12.6V across the terminals and all is good
Measure 12.4V change the battery

No

And regardless of what the internet this test says proves very little

First of the voltage is different slightly with make of battery and outside temperature

It's winter now in the UK 5-10C fully charged is 12.4V which is 70-80% if you were still using the first chart and measured 12.4v you would assume the battery or alternator was faulty

That's not to say this test is useless, if you take it for and I've and the alternator is pumping out 14.1 and the battery is measuring 11.5V, you know there probably a dead cell


Second it doesn't tell you anything about the amount of energy it can store

Here my car with a faulty battery

Starts at a healthy 12.6V, fully charged, but drops to below 7v on cranking

A new battery stays above 10V but I wouldn't be worried at 8.5V

The voltage sag while cranking is the best way I have for a home DIY tinkering type person, but it's not 100% accurate, you can't measure it with a multimeter, the display is just not fast enough to register it

The equipment fiat use is around £4000 which is beyond most people

On here the car has gone to a garage to have the battery tested and have been incorrectly told it's fine when it was not, and sent them down blind rabbit holes, there at least 1 case if someone changing the electric power steering for a reconditioned one, needlessly, and someone suffered two years of intermittent power steering at the beginning of the journey every winter, because the battery was tested fine


substitution for unknown good is the only 100%

 

[AnthonyH]

You can buy a battery health tester for less than £30. Mine is very accurate, it also tests the alternator, does a startup test, and a few other bits and pieces.

You can desulphate lead acid batteries, the kit i bought cost £40 IIRC. I've had batteries at 20% health and got them back to 100%. It all depends on how long they've been discharged, the longer it is the less close to 100% you'll get.

I haven't read the above post closely but it appears you don't have a) a battery health tester and b) a battery charger with "repair" function. Both of these are essential home car DIY items in my opinion, and essential for Fiat cars....

 

[koalar]

You can buy a battery health tester for less than £30. Mine is very accurate, it also tests the alternator, does a startup test, and a few other bits and pieces.

You can desulphate lead acid batteries, the kit i bought cost £40 IIRC. I've had batteries at 20% health and got them back to 100%. It all depends on how long they've been discharged, the longer it is the less close to 100% you'll get.

I haven't read the above post closely but it appears you don't have a) a battery health tester and b) a battery charger with "repair" function. Both of these are essential home car DIY items in my opinion, and essential for Fiat cars....

The above report is from a 13 page thread and two years of messing around with a power steering fault because when the battery was tested with a £1,000 Midtronics Cpx-900 or similar by the RAC it "says" it's okay, in fact they almost sold the car because of it

It's not the only case, also on here someone went to a garage and had the battery checked as then went on to fitted a reconditioned EPS from Western Power Steering only to find it the same and it was the battery that was faulty

A physical stress test, it can't lie, it may be more baulky than a digital tester, and get hot.

Using the starter motor as I have shown above puts roughly 200A locked rotor current load through the battery, which can be read with a £5 elm327 and a smart phone

Digital tester is small fast, easy to read, handy, shows more parameter, but will give occasional give you a false good

 

[AnthonyH]

I didn't have this context with your first post on the topic, so i understand the situation better.

The method you've used is more reliable/better than an electronic tester kit - and more interesting.

The story as described above - my thought is that the humans that operated the expensive RAC kit made a mistake or the kit was faulty. Its quite possible that these days they just use the small cheap electronic tester that i do!

It wouldn't surprise me if Halfords send out battery health testers to their stores that say all batteries that aren't perfect should be replaced

Theres a battery scam been going on for years, likely since the lead acid batteries got sealed up. Many repairable batteries are just thrown away these days.

 

[koalar]

Cranking peaks at over 200 amps

The power steering is still normally 7-40ish amps but can spike to around 100 amps

Which is why EPS often fail in winter or at the start of a journey (lights on, colder temperatures, heaters and so on)

Digital handheld battery testers use algorithms to estimate a result and is only an approximation of the high-load performance, sulfation or loss of active material may not be fully captured by its internal resistance measurement, leading to leading to an overly optimistic calculated result when the real world performance under heavy load is actually poor.

Some garages use both, they perform a digital handheld test first, followed by a load test, if both pass it's almost certain the battery is fine

 

[koalar]

Reading the codes can point you in the right direction

But it's not be-all and end-all

Take c1002

Electric power steering torque sensor

Yes it could be a faulty sensor, it will nearly always start failing in one direction only, feel different turn left compairt right or the wheel will vibrate while the car is stationary

But if it receive the wrong voltage or reference earth, it will also give the wrong information and flag the same error

It is a known issue

Attached at the bottom is a pdf with some of fiats diagnostics

As you can see, some of the test carried out, happen as a by-product of changing the column

So, I changed the column and it fixed the problem, maybe correct

But unless you carry out the tests first, there no way to know if the new column was the cure or if it was fixed by accident

They do fail, but thankfully very rarely, even then the rarely need more than a new sensor

 

[Herts Hillhopper]

…Running correctly is like prrrprrrprrrrprrrrr
Misfire is much hasher puffpuffpufff type sound

I got the mick taken in an old thread (for the previous model Panda) for describing the clearing of the scuttle drains as being like milking a goat. I think we have a rival post now: brilliant description of the sound

I am though slightly surprised that three cylinder running doesn’t show the engine fault light?

[edit: this reply is to a different thread, but one where this one has been linked in. I’ll find my own way out…]