Seicento running on 2 cylinders - help!
Discussion
Hi all,
I think my daily beater Seicento (2000, s mpi version) is dead, but before I send it to the great car park in the sky I thought I'd see if anybody had any ideas on here!
Basically it was fine one day, and then the next the problem occurs:- It was a cold day so I had the heater on full blast, about ½ a mile up the road I turned the heater down and I could then hear that the engine sounding very rough. I stopped at the bottom of the hill and popped the bonnet to have a listen – it didn’t sound happy at all so I decided to coax it home and take my other car to work. It was really struggling and you can hear the engine rattling horribly if it revved too high (~3-4k rpm at a guess).
I checked all the plugs and they seemed fine, I tried starting it with one lead at a time removed, but it won’t start. If you remove the lead from the coil while it’s running, they are all sparking, so I assume the coils are ok too. If you remove a lead from the injectors (mpi), then it will run without the injectors connected from cylinders 3 & 4 (right hand side as you look at the engine from the front), but not with cylinders 1 & 2 – so it is obviously cylinders 3 & 4 which aren’t firing. I had a garage hook it up to diagnostics and they also confirmed that the fault is with the injectors.
I sourced a set of injectors from a breaker, and fitted them (surprisingly easy job!) but the car is running exactly the same. I’ve read on Fiat forums about an ecu issue causing a failed coil, but from what I gather that should affect cylinders 1 & 3, or 2 & 4, not 3 & 4 – plus judging by the sparks coming out my coils are fine!
As an aside, it doesn’t smoke at all from the exhaust.
So now I’m at a loss! Basically I was planning to put the car on the market the week it died anyway (sod’s law hey?!), and it is worth probably £500 in working order. I can get ~£200 if I scrapped it and sold a coupled of bits off it, so bearing in mind having to put 6 months tax on it (I’ve sorn it now), and paying for Autotrader fees if I was to mend it and sell, then I’ve really got an absolute max of £100 to play with mending it to make it worth my effort (I’ve already spent £60 on the injectors and diagnostic). It seems a shame to scrap it as it is overall very clean and only done 38k miles, but at the moment I cannot see a way around it. Any help would be gratefully received!
Cheers
I think my daily beater Seicento (2000, s mpi version) is dead, but before I send it to the great car park in the sky I thought I'd see if anybody had any ideas on here!
Basically it was fine one day, and then the next the problem occurs:- It was a cold day so I had the heater on full blast, about ½ a mile up the road I turned the heater down and I could then hear that the engine sounding very rough. I stopped at the bottom of the hill and popped the bonnet to have a listen – it didn’t sound happy at all so I decided to coax it home and take my other car to work. It was really struggling and you can hear the engine rattling horribly if it revved too high (~3-4k rpm at a guess).
I checked all the plugs and they seemed fine, I tried starting it with one lead at a time removed, but it won’t start. If you remove the lead from the coil while it’s running, they are all sparking, so I assume the coils are ok too. If you remove a lead from the injectors (mpi), then it will run without the injectors connected from cylinders 3 & 4 (right hand side as you look at the engine from the front), but not with cylinders 1 & 2 – so it is obviously cylinders 3 & 4 which aren’t firing. I had a garage hook it up to diagnostics and they also confirmed that the fault is with the injectors.
I sourced a set of injectors from a breaker, and fitted them (surprisingly easy job!) but the car is running exactly the same. I’ve read on Fiat forums about an ecu issue causing a failed coil, but from what I gather that should affect cylinders 1 & 3, or 2 & 4, not 3 & 4 – plus judging by the sparks coming out my coils are fine!
As an aside, it doesn’t smoke at all from the exhaust.
So now I’m at a loss! Basically I was planning to put the car on the market the week it died anyway (sod’s law hey?!), and it is worth probably £500 in working order. I can get ~£200 if I scrapped it and sold a coupled of bits off it, so bearing in mind having to put 6 months tax on it (I’ve sorn it now), and paying for Autotrader fees if I was to mend it and sell, then I’ve really got an absolute max of £100 to play with mending it to make it worth my effort (I’ve already spent £60 on the injectors and diagnostic). It seems a shame to scrap it as it is overall very clean and only done 38k miles, but at the moment I cannot see a way around it. Any help would be gratefully received!
Cheers
Blimey this is a blast from the past!
Unfortunately I never did get the issue resolved so ended up scrapping it. As per my original post, it wasn't worth a lot of money so as it was just a daily runaround that I was about to sell anyway, it sadly didn't make economic sense to keep chasing the problem after I had tried a couple of potential cheap fixes. Still bugs me as it was a very clean and honest little car that I had a suprising amount of fun driving!
Good luck with yours, and if you manage to fix it then do post back with what the issue was
Unfortunately I never did get the issue resolved so ended up scrapping it. As per my original post, it wasn't worth a lot of money so as it was just a daily runaround that I was about to sell anyway, it sadly didn't make economic sense to keep chasing the problem after I had tried a couple of potential cheap fixes. Still bugs me as it was a very clean and honest little car that I had a suprising amount of fun driving!
Good luck with yours, and if you manage to fix it then do post back with what the issue was
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