General Losing acceleration

[pantalaimon]

hya, i'm having a problem with my Panda fizz at the moment. I've just taken it in for a full service and it needed a few things doing but now I have it back everything is fine except it seems to have lost a bit of acceleration. The most annoying thing though is that when i have my foot on the accelerator there is no power for 4 or so seconds, sometimes I have to take my foot off the accelerator and apply pressurre again to get any acceleration. Any ideas what the problem is? I took it back to the garage and they said it was fine.

 

[John H]

Get the cooling pressure tested at another garage - they might not have fixed the head gasket problem:
water leakage confuses engine management.
(is it (still) losing water??)

Possibly, they haven't reconnected your MAP sensor properly:
thin semi-rigid pipe from inlet manifold to left hand suspension turret.

 

[pantalaimon]

Get the cooling pressure tested at another garage - they might not have fixed the head gasket problem:
water leakage confuses engine management.
(is it (still) losing water??)

Possibly, they haven't reconnected your MAP sensor properly:
thin semi-rigid pipe from inlet manifold to left hand suspension turret.

I haven't looked properly yet but i don't think there is any water leak, it wasn't starting properly so I took it back to the garage and they plugged it in and made some adjustments, the acceleration seems to be getting better but its still not 100% correct though, you think it will get better with time or should it really be looked at? The Head Gasket has been completely replaced by the garage, I need to take it in this week to have a cover put onto the fan belt fitted. You think i'd get any luck by mentioning the MAP sensor connection?

thanks for your help,

 

[pandafan]

Sounds something like the classic vacuum advance problem.

I spent ages last year trying to solve a similar problem in the dog-car. Eventually I swapped carbs and the problem vanished.

 

[Panda_Boy2]

i'd say give it s few 100miles 2 let the ecu settle down for a bit.

Rich

 

[John H]

Sounds something like the classic vacuum advance problem.

This Panda is one of the later injected ones - hence the comment about the MAP sensor (which does much the same job as the vacuum advance unit).

If it's improving significantly, Panda_Boy2 may well be right about the ECU re-learning it's settings.

There is a way of speeding the process up a bit - something like this...

1, warm up until the fan cuts in.
2, Disconnect ECU or battery for some minutes.
3, Restore connection.
3, Start engine and without touching accelerator, allow to run until cooling fan cuts in.
4, Test drive, attempting to simulate all normal driving conditions (including winding it up a bit in second or third - pretend you're Italian ).
5, This should re-program the ECU, adjusting the carburation to suit the age and wear of the engine.
6, This procedure serves to stabilize the settings and to minimize the time required to return to normal tick over speed on the release of the accelerator