Bronstig Hert
New member
- Joined
- May 14, 2018
- Messages
- 6
- Points
- 2
Hello everyone,
Attached is a photo of Fifi the Fiat, and she's my first love.
Me and the wife have had her for many years now. Our first car with too many epic memories to recollect. Always taken good care of it, had it checked regularly. But this time I am just losing hope. I'm no expert in any way, we're completely dependent on our garage.
A few months ago, this weird light came on (also attached a few jpg's of this) and the engine lost all power. I immediately stopped the car. Was able to ignite the engine, but it would shut off the moment I tried to actually press the gas pedal and rev it. It also made a strange, deeper sound, and it felt like it was vibrating harder. I ended up pushing her home (luckily this occured when we were like 200 meters away from there) while the wife steered her.
I couldn't find anything about this light anywhere. Not even in the manual. I found maybe 1 or 2 topics on the entire internet about it. Wrote down the stuff mentioned in there for my garage to check. We eventually had it taken away to our garage. They checked everything and also replaced almost everything. There was new stuff with the brakes, something was replaced within the starting motor thing, all kinds of filters were cleaned, electric cables replaced, the battery was replaced and more. To my surprise, they admitted they had done a lousy job checking her the last few times, which led to so many parts being crap. They apologized for that and gave us a big discount.
Today I picked her up again. Took her through the car wash. Cleaned the inside. Fueled her up. Checked oils, tire pressure etc. Ready to rock again. Because after all those fixes, the problem HAS to be gone, right? Well, I took her for a test drive on the motorway and after 30 minutes of testing it at 130 - 140 km/h without any issue, I was almost back home, pumped that Fifi was working great again. The weird light did come back up a few times, but went away again a few seconds later, so I didn't think much of it. Until literally 1.5 kms from my home it came back up for a while longer and I felt the engine losing power once more. The deeper engine sound was back. It didn't lose power entirely this time, though. Completely flooring it, I was able to keep driving at 100 - 115 km/h. This happened right at the highway's exit so I was freaking lucky again. I had to press the pedal like 75% down to drive 70 km/h. Then I had to shift down to 4th gear to take a turn at ~30 km/h and suddenly the light turned off and I felt that the engine had full power again. 50 was the speed limit for the remainder of the drive, it had no issue despite the light coming on and off like crazy. I felt power loss for half a second once, until it abruptly returned to full power.
As I said I'm no expert, and still getting this crap after spending so much money on it and replacing so many parts is just heart breaking. I want to fix keep her badly, but the wife is so done with this crap that she's actually thinking of shipping her off to the junkyard. The thought of that makes me cringe, guys, I may be melancholic and overly attached to my first car like so many people are but I don't care. This stupid crap just makes me want to weep. Man I hate that I can't do this.
Do you guys have any idea what this light may mean? Do you think I should try a different garage because they might have missed something stupid again? Is there anything I could try myself with some easy guidance? Is she saveable..? What should I do? I am completely hopeless and clueless...
Attached is a photo of Fifi the Fiat, and she's my first love.
Me and the wife have had her for many years now. Our first car with too many epic memories to recollect. Always taken good care of it, had it checked regularly. But this time I am just losing hope. I'm no expert in any way, we're completely dependent on our garage.
A few months ago, this weird light came on (also attached a few jpg's of this) and the engine lost all power. I immediately stopped the car. Was able to ignite the engine, but it would shut off the moment I tried to actually press the gas pedal and rev it. It also made a strange, deeper sound, and it felt like it was vibrating harder. I ended up pushing her home (luckily this occured when we were like 200 meters away from there) while the wife steered her.
I couldn't find anything about this light anywhere. Not even in the manual. I found maybe 1 or 2 topics on the entire internet about it. Wrote down the stuff mentioned in there for my garage to check. We eventually had it taken away to our garage. They checked everything and also replaced almost everything. There was new stuff with the brakes, something was replaced within the starting motor thing, all kinds of filters were cleaned, electric cables replaced, the battery was replaced and more. To my surprise, they admitted they had done a lousy job checking her the last few times, which led to so many parts being crap. They apologized for that and gave us a big discount.
Today I picked her up again. Took her through the car wash. Cleaned the inside. Fueled her up. Checked oils, tire pressure etc. Ready to rock again. Because after all those fixes, the problem HAS to be gone, right? Well, I took her for a test drive on the motorway and after 30 minutes of testing it at 130 - 140 km/h without any issue, I was almost back home, pumped that Fifi was working great again. The weird light did come back up a few times, but went away again a few seconds later, so I didn't think much of it. Until literally 1.5 kms from my home it came back up for a while longer and I felt the engine losing power once more. The deeper engine sound was back. It didn't lose power entirely this time, though. Completely flooring it, I was able to keep driving at 100 - 115 km/h. This happened right at the highway's exit so I was freaking lucky again. I had to press the pedal like 75% down to drive 70 km/h. Then I had to shift down to 4th gear to take a turn at ~30 km/h and suddenly the light turned off and I felt that the engine had full power again. 50 was the speed limit for the remainder of the drive, it had no issue despite the light coming on and off like crazy. I felt power loss for half a second once, until it abruptly returned to full power.
As I said I'm no expert, and still getting this crap after spending so much money on it and replacing so many parts is just heart breaking. I want to fix keep her badly, but the wife is so done with this crap that she's actually thinking of shipping her off to the junkyard. The thought of that makes me cringe, guys, I may be melancholic and overly attached to my first car like so many people are but I don't care. This stupid crap just makes me want to weep. Man I hate that I can't do this.
Do you guys have any idea what this light may mean? Do you think I should try a different garage because they might have missed something stupid again? Is there anything I could try myself with some easy guidance? Is she saveable..? What should I do? I am completely hopeless and clueless...