Seicento running on 2 cylinders - help!

Seicento running on 2 cylinders - help!

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TimS2000

Original Poster:

452 posts

206 months

Tuesday 1st March 2011
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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 smile

Liquid Knight

15,754 posts

182 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2011
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38,000 miles? could you be getting coolant in the pots (head gasket)?

TimS2000

Original Poster:

452 posts

206 months

Thursday 3rd March 2011
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There is no sign of mayo on the oil filler cap, no white smoke out of the exhaust and the head gasket was replaced ~5000 miles ago, so I had struck that one off the list - are there any other clues that it may have gone? smile

Liquid Knight

15,754 posts

182 months

Thursday 3rd March 2011
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If the Ht side of things has been illiminated is the crank sensor okay? Failing that it could be ecu or something silly like a knackered key tripping the immobiliser into action.

erosalfa

1 posts

104 months

Wednesday 1st July 2015
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Hi there....I was reading your topic on the seicento running on 2 cylinders. I was wondering if you got the problem resolved, as my little seiciento came over the exact same symptoms last week.

Regards,


Colin

Tonsko

6,299 posts

214 months

Wednesday 1st July 2015
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Kind of miss the days when you could clean the crud from the dizzy terminals.

JeffreyLebowski

Original Poster:

452 posts

206 months

Thursday 2nd July 2015
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Blimey this is a blast from the past! smile
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 smile

Tonsko

6,299 posts

214 months

Thursday 2nd July 2015
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Crikey, didn't notice the OP date!