Fiat's 1.2 "fire" engine (compression loss)

[MikeA3]

Hi All,

Wondered if anyone's got an experience with the Fiat 1.2 Fire engine and a loss of compression please?

We bought a 2010 Fiat 500 with the above engine just over 5 months ago now from a small dealers which stalled on the test drive (once), we flagged it to the sales chap but put it down to us being used to diesel's at the time so bought the car.

Since then the problems continued and reached the stage where if you change gear the revs drop off a cliff and the engine can stall. That's not overly ideal at night on say a roundabout, in traffic or at a junction as you also lose headlights & ABS = squeaky bum time.

Assuming it was a simple fix we cleaned the throttle body, changed the plugs, coil pack & leads, air filter and airbox and vacuum pipe.. no success.

Ended up taking it to our normal garage who've advised it's down on compression on cylinder 2 by about 2/3rds compared to the others and it'll either be an engine apart job or maybe a replacement to fix it.

We've now gone back to the supplying dealer and asked them to repair it as it seems to have been like this since we bought it but has anyone got any experience of this please and if so what was the outcome?

Thanks in advance

Mike

[dave01253]

https://www.fiatforum.com/threads/the-incurable-pu...

Is this related?

[MikeA3]

Sadly It doesn't appear to be the same as ours seems to run a bit better when it's properly warmed up and the clutch pedal's been fine.

Thanks for the link though, seems like quite a few owners have had issues.

[andrewcliffe]

A friend has an Alfa Mito which has a related FIRE engine and he had an exhaust valve burn leading to low compression in one cylinder. Relatively easy fix and he did the repairs himself. Special tool for head bolt IIRC.

[arguti]

I have had several Fiat UNO/Puntos with the 1.2 8v FIRE engine, used to be a known issue that had gasket would often blow at around 60-65k, not a big job.

[MikeA3]

Thanks, had our local garage look at the head gasket whilst it was in and that’s fine, the cars on46k now and 44k when we bought it.

Will see if the dealer we got it from will take it back and look at it. So far their attitude over the phone has been underwhelming so we’ve sent them a letter so will have to see where that gets us

[hidetheelephants]

Why would the headlights go out?

[cliffords]

hidetheelephants said:

Why would the headlights go out?

They go out if you stall or turn the engine off, side lights stay on I think .
Start up and they come on again . Ours does it .

[Pereldh]

The smaller Fire engines eat head gaskets, well known since the 80's.