Technical Seicento sporting ECU fail.

Currently reading:
Technical Seicento sporting ECU fail.

Joined
Jul 28, 2020
Messages
35
Points
85
Location
Kastoria
I have a 1999 Seicento sporting bought new. The car has 289.000 km and it drives on its second engine replaced at 237.000 km.
It started showing some minor hiccups (engine light coming on and losing power) even before the engine replacement, but I thought they were crankshaft position sensor related.
One morning, early this year, when I tried to start it up, the engine started like it was operating with two cylinders. First I thought that an ignition coil might have gone bad but it worked the same even when I replaced both with a used spare set that I had laying around. Second though was the battery, because the battery light was on. I replaced the battery with the working battery from my Cinquecento but with no luck. If I gave it a lot of gas, it sounded more healthy but the engine light came on. The Iawscan2 showed both coil errors so I thought that the coils I used may not be good. The one thing I also noticed was that, in the parameters tab of Iawscan2, battery showed zero volts. The car was transported to a car electrician to check the electric system and he also contacted a mechanic to check the timing in case the camshaft belt have skipped a tooth.
I told him about the ECU not showing voltage but he discarded that as a reason for not working properly since the most obvious reason were the coils.
Well after trying a new set of coils, new map sensor, checking the timing and compression, the verdict was that the ECU had failed. He replaced it with a used one that had the immobiliser deleted. The car runs fine and if the crankshaft position problem doesn't show up again it will mean that it was an early symptom of the ECU dying.
I just want to share this here in case someone else encounters similar problems where all the obvious solutions don't work. I have read that these ECUs are quite bulletproof but 24 years of every day driving are a lot, even for electronics. Saying that I start to worry about my, soon to be 30 year old, Cinquecento.
 
Glad you were able to get back on the road again.
Generally I would have said the ECU was the last thing I would suspect unless water had got into it, although when cars first went to ECUs everyone blamed them for every single breakdown usually wrongly.:)
 
If I'm not mistaken you should have an iaw59f. Those ECUs are prone to fail, causing malfunctioning ignition coils.
 
I've never seen a seicento sporting with a 16f ECU. Are you sure it's not 899?
 
Back
Top