Alfa Romeo 147 2.0 Twin Spark - Unseen-ish
Discussion
Little bit cold and wet outside tonight so I thought I'd do a simple job like swap the battery now I've fixed the locks to see if it got the central locking working from the remote.
One of the benefits of having kids is having an endless supply of batteries of every type so it should have been a two second job to pop one out and pop one in...Can you guess where this is going?
What sort of ham-fisted, swivel-eyed brute do you have to be to destroy a key battery holder like this?!?
The 2002 keys are different to the 2004 keys and one of them had a four year old receipt for an Oyster card top up instead of a battery? so I couldn't even nick a battery carrier out of the other set and after much squishing with pliers it was more or less back to normal but the pcb is so borked it doesn't work
On the plus side, the chilli and potato gratin the missus made was a very tasty if unorthodox distraction from my woes.
One of the benefits of having kids is having an endless supply of batteries of every type so it should have been a two second job to pop one out and pop one in...Can you guess where this is going?
What sort of ham-fisted, swivel-eyed brute do you have to be to destroy a key battery holder like this?!?
The 2002 keys are different to the 2004 keys and one of them had a four year old receipt for an Oyster card top up instead of a battery? so I couldn't even nick a battery carrier out of the other set and after much squishing with pliers it was more or less back to normal but the pcb is so borked it doesn't work
On the plus side, the chilli and potato gratin the missus made was a very tasty if unorthodox distraction from my woes.
Traced the body computer issue to a failed bulb on the cigarette lighter but bugger me if I could get the thing out to mess with.
It's a case of trying to unplug the lead by lifting the gear gaiter, fumbling around underneath and then lifting out the lighter. Trying to do this type of job when it's freezing outside is not a good idea, my fingers were getting colder and colder and much like Ernest Shackleton toying with a pee outside the tent in the Antarctic, I decided it wasn't worth the risk of frostbite and wussed out to sort it another day.
I got another traction control failure this morning so pretty sure the battery is a bit weak on voltage as it was cold up north today. Although I don't have battery tester to hand, my highly trained eyeballs detect it is crusty as hell so suggest a new one won't hurt. Fortunately the donor has just such a battery and a decent strap too so that's another £50 of value recovered.
With the bonnet up, I had a quick look at the throttle body mounting as the car still lurches/kangaroos a little when off throttle and I haven't got around to cleaning it properly yet.
My intention is to remove and clean the one from the donor car properly and then drop it in to the working car although it seems for no apparent reason on my car someone has already undone one of the bolts for me...
All good fun
It's a case of trying to unplug the lead by lifting the gear gaiter, fumbling around underneath and then lifting out the lighter. Trying to do this type of job when it's freezing outside is not a good idea, my fingers were getting colder and colder and much like Ernest Shackleton toying with a pee outside the tent in the Antarctic, I decided it wasn't worth the risk of frostbite and wussed out to sort it another day.
I got another traction control failure this morning so pretty sure the battery is a bit weak on voltage as it was cold up north today. Although I don't have battery tester to hand, my highly trained eyeballs detect it is crusty as hell so suggest a new one won't hurt. Fortunately the donor has just such a battery and a decent strap too so that's another £50 of value recovered.
With the bonnet up, I had a quick look at the throttle body mounting as the car still lurches/kangaroos a little when off throttle and I haven't got around to cleaning it properly yet.
My intention is to remove and clean the one from the donor car properly and then drop it in to the working car although it seems for no apparent reason on my car someone has already undone one of the bolts for me...
All good fun
I should probably add that previous photo was of the donor car, not my own
I do now understand why Victorian doctors were so beloved of employing grave robbers, it's so much easier before operating on the patient to do a dry run on something you you can chop off limbs and bits and pieces you don't care about to get to what you really need to see.
This was the approach I took to getting at the throttle body to clean it, the other hoses and bits were chucked away so I could see into the butterfly valve and see if there was any of the coking that's supposed to be a problem on these.
A 7mm socket was needed to loosen the clip
Disconnecting the EGR pipe meant I could lift the whole air assembly out of the way to see what I was doing.
A fair bit of coking in there, apparently this stops the valve shutting cleanly and is the cause of the bunny-hopping off throttle I'd been experiencing.
It was a case of poking in my finger to open the valve and then spraying in a ton of carb cleaner and trying to get as much of the lip off before my gloves disintegrated...
After
It is a lot cleaner in there now, there's some corrosion in there where it has been left I guess but the next job was to fire it up and see if it worked.
It took a fair few cranks for the poor Alfa to choke it's way through all the carb cleaner washing around inside but eventually it fired and seemed to idle a fiar bit more smoothly.
A quick blast around my local industrial estate confirmed that coming on and off throttle is lot smoother, it's not perfect, there's still some lumpiness there but it isn't anything like the staccato effect it was doing before - I could only really provoke a stutter when coming from full throttle in 2nd to zero throttle so for the most part it is now eminently driveable...
...and yes, I checked, and no it didn't affect the 4.5k limit but I have started taking the ecu out of the donor to get things ready and cracking over Christmas.
I've taken enough parts off the other one now that it won't be starting again so I'm going to be getting on stripping it down and flogging the bits I odn't need now.
I do now understand why Victorian doctors were so beloved of employing grave robbers, it's so much easier before operating on the patient to do a dry run on something you you can chop off limbs and bits and pieces you don't care about to get to what you really need to see.
This was the approach I took to getting at the throttle body to clean it, the other hoses and bits were chucked away so I could see into the butterfly valve and see if there was any of the coking that's supposed to be a problem on these.
A 7mm socket was needed to loosen the clip
Disconnecting the EGR pipe meant I could lift the whole air assembly out of the way to see what I was doing.
A fair bit of coking in there, apparently this stops the valve shutting cleanly and is the cause of the bunny-hopping off throttle I'd been experiencing.
It was a case of poking in my finger to open the valve and then spraying in a ton of carb cleaner and trying to get as much of the lip off before my gloves disintegrated...
After
It is a lot cleaner in there now, there's some corrosion in there where it has been left I guess but the next job was to fire it up and see if it worked.
It took a fair few cranks for the poor Alfa to choke it's way through all the carb cleaner washing around inside but eventually it fired and seemed to idle a fiar bit more smoothly.
A quick blast around my local industrial estate confirmed that coming on and off throttle is lot smoother, it's not perfect, there's still some lumpiness there but it isn't anything like the staccato effect it was doing before - I could only really provoke a stutter when coming from full throttle in 2nd to zero throttle so for the most part it is now eminently driveable...
...and yes, I checked, and no it didn't affect the 4.5k limit but I have started taking the ecu out of the donor to get things ready and cracking over Christmas.
I've taken enough parts off the other one now that it won't be starting again so I'm going to be getting on stripping it down and flogging the bits I odn't need now.
bearman68 said:
PM me if you need a man to swap over your ECU's. I can't put his name on a public website,but would be quite happy toshare is contact details. We've used him lot's and he'snot the cheapest,but the units do work OK after. Cheers
Thanks, the new car came with two keys and it isn't proving too hard to remove the bits so I'm up for a crack at it myself over Christmas before I shell out on it.As it's for my own use until it dies, I'll probably swap the ignition barrel over too so I can use the keys from the donor without any transponder fiddling from one key to the other.
Depending how arsed I am, I'll take the door locks over too or at least take them out and use my old keys to unlock and the new ones for driving for a bit.
Will keep the offer in mind though
Take the column lock barrel, central locking receiver and ignition transponder box over with the ecu. Not sure about the 147, but on the 156 the door locks are near impossible to transfer over (without ruining them) so keep the original key incase you ever need to unlock them without the central locking.
davebem said:
Take the column lock barrel, central locking receiver and ignition transponder box over with the ecu. Not sure about the 147, but on the 156 the door locks are near impossible to transfer over (without ruining them) so keep the original key incase you ever need to unlock them without the central locking.
Ha ha, it's such a heap of electrical junk I've had to unlock via the door since I got it I'll definitely be keeping the original key to get in and out...
Just asking out loud as this would be a very quick check since I've pulled the donor ecu already.
A rummage in my fuse box suggests there may have been some creative wiring to bypass an immobiliser but I'm not 100% sure. I think the best way to check this would be to just swap the two ecu's over and see if it started without changing the locks/transponders.
Presumably if I'm wrong it'll just crank away and refuse to fire and then I could pop the old one back on and carry on like nothing happened or will bad things happen to me and my ecu?
It would take 10 minutes top to do is all so I'm itching to try it
Answers on a postcard please...
A rummage in my fuse box suggests there may have been some creative wiring to bypass an immobiliser but I'm not 100% sure. I think the best way to check this would be to just swap the two ecu's over and see if it started without changing the locks/transponders.
Presumably if I'm wrong it'll just crank away and refuse to fire and then I could pop the old one back on and carry on like nothing happened or will bad things happen to me and my ecu?
It would take 10 minutes top to do is all so I'm itching to try it
Answers on a postcard please...
In a vain attempt to escape the monotony of a evening with the wife moaning about a possible hernia (for which she has a scan on Monday and is in agony from) and in no way fuelled by a few rather well filled glasses of Rioja, I decided to do some mild fettling on the Alfa, or at least poke about a bit.
Some new dash bulbs had come so I wanted to fix the cigarette lighter and see if the damn body computer would (insert Italian for stop f
king flashing) once and for all.
Popping in the new bulb was a doddle, i do need a blob of superglue as the cigarette light collar has come loose but I now have a fully pornstar red illuminated interior just as the factory intended.
However, the body computer was still flashing away so I figured the ecu needed a swap, as clearly the continued absence of an automatic gearbox is upsetting things.
Since the battery and ecu bolt are both 10mm, I decided for once to remove the battery negative before ripping something off the car.
I could lie and say swapping the existing was as simple as a four bolts and two plugs but I decided to put them next to each other for this side by side shot...
...and promptly forgot which was the old and new ecu.
Obviously, I got it wrong the first time and put the old one back on
A few twizzles of a spanner later and the donor ecu was on - I hadn't swapped anything else as I was really testing whether they'd bypassed all the immobiliser or not, so I hopped back in and...
Guess I'll be swapping the fuse box over too.
As ever, the temperamental little thing that it is, my swapping and reseapping the ecu (or maybe just a lot of bonnet slamming) has got my headlight levelling to reappear on the dash lights. However changing the setting has no noticeable effect of the headlight level that I can tell from inside the car
Some new dash bulbs had come so I wanted to fix the cigarette lighter and see if the damn body computer would (insert Italian for stop f
king flashing) once and for all.Popping in the new bulb was a doddle, i do need a blob of superglue as the cigarette light collar has come loose but I now have a fully pornstar red illuminated interior just as the factory intended.
However, the body computer was still flashing away so I figured the ecu needed a swap, as clearly the continued absence of an automatic gearbox is upsetting things.
Since the battery and ecu bolt are both 10mm, I decided for once to remove the battery negative before ripping something off the car.
I could lie and say swapping the existing was as simple as a four bolts and two plugs but I decided to put them next to each other for this side by side shot...
...and promptly forgot which was the old and new ecu.
Obviously, I got it wrong the first time and put the old one back on
A few twizzles of a spanner later and the donor ecu was on - I hadn't swapped anything else as I was really testing whether they'd bypassed all the immobiliser or not, so I hopped back in and...
Guess I'll be swapping the fuse box over too.
As ever, the temperamental little thing that it is, my swapping and reseapping the ecu (or maybe just a lot of bonnet slamming) has got my headlight levelling to reappear on the dash lights. However changing the setting has no noticeable effect of the headlight level that I can tell from inside the car
Edited by stewjohnst on Wednesday 22 November 23:46
Edited by stewjohnst on Wednesday 22 November 23:46
On the 156 it is simple - not sure if the 147 is the same. I have this on my 2.4 SW - one ECU is remapped, the other isn't. First stage fault diagnosis is to take the mapped one out and see if that solves the problem.
So you need: ECU, code box (suspect this is part of the fuse box in the 147) and the transponder chip out of the key. This is not the electronic gubbins to open the doors, this is a little magnetic widget that talks to the induction loop in the steering column.
Split the keys of the donor car, extract the little black magnet thing. Split your current key and replace the little black thing with the one from the first key - don't get them confused....
With the ECU and the code box from the donor, the engine should then start, and the remote door locks should work as well.
So you need: ECU, code box (suspect this is part of the fuse box in the 147) and the transponder chip out of the key. This is not the electronic gubbins to open the doors, this is a little magnetic widget that talks to the induction loop in the steering column.
Split the keys of the donor car, extract the little black magnet thing. Split your current key and replace the little black thing with the one from the first key - don't get them confused....
With the ECU and the code box from the donor, the engine should then start, and the remote door locks should work as well.
Finally changed over the rear tyres, pretty much the maximum wear as one could consider legal, to the point I've been using the Outlander for the last few days...
To look side by side you'd swear they were different profiles but they're not
Unsurprisingly, even though they're budget tyres that have gone on, the presence of tread on the rear has had a significant difference to the handling.
It now feels like it is interested in changing direction, on the old tyres it was like trying to ride a horse with tranquillised rear legs.
I haven't swapped the interiors over yet but did give the grey one a spruce up in situ.
In doing so, I also found the rear seats on the grey leather have a centre arm rest and the middle seat belt is bust. It's also broken on the other car so presumably is a common fault.
It's locked tight in the reel so it may be that unbolting it allows me to feed some back in and free it. If not, then it's probably the reel mechanism has imploded.
I've no immediate need of it but it is one more minor item for the fettle list.
I noticed there was moisture in the footwell again (forgot to check the as a first job - doh) as I was finishing up so I do need to sort the drainage out tomorrow to stop any rot developing.
To look side by side you'd swear they were different profiles but they're not
Unsurprisingly, even though they're budget tyres that have gone on, the presence of tread on the rear has had a significant difference to the handling.
It now feels like it is interested in changing direction, on the old tyres it was like trying to ride a horse with tranquillised rear legs.
I haven't swapped the interiors over yet but did give the grey one a spruce up in situ.
In doing so, I also found the rear seats on the grey leather have a centre arm rest and the middle seat belt is bust. It's also broken on the other car so presumably is a common fault.
It's locked tight in the reel so it may be that unbolting it allows me to feed some back in and free it. If not, then it's probably the reel mechanism has imploded.
I've no immediate need of it but it is one more minor item for the fettle list.
I noticed there was moisture in the footwell again (forgot to check the as a first job - doh) as I was finishing up so I do need to sort the drainage out tomorrow to stop any rot developing.
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