We have been driving the punto over the festive period as around town it is much more forgiving than the stilo when it comes to the infamous edinburgh pothole, to that end the stilo has been sat encased in a coating of ice for the past two weeks. Went out last night to scrape the ice off her and ready her for the trip back up the a9. After scraping the ice off i though id better check that she still started. She didnt.

Engine turns over quite easily, but will not start are they symptoms.

Far too cold to do anything about it last night so this morning i have doen the following and my poor feet are frozen solid after spending a few hours taking car to bits!

Went out to halfrauds to get a spark plug adapter as all my tools are up North (10mm btw!) (Fail)

Took coil packs and spark plugs out, and connected them up externaly, turned engine over to see if i am getting a spark at the plugs, we have 4 good sparks, so its not the ignition as such.

Took back seat up to try and hear fuel pump running, hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, fuel pump heard to run satis.

Disconnected fuel pipe at front engine bulkhead and turned ignition on, wooooosh, big spray of fuel.

So, i am getting sparks, i am getting fuel to the engine, so far so good (so why isn't it starting!):bang:

Joined three burger king straws that i found laying about and taped them together, insert into spark plug hole and suck, and spit and suck and spit
lots of black oily fuel in there, think engine has flooded, but is this a secondary symptom or the original fault?

Going to leave it an hour for the unsuckable fuel to evaporate off a bit (although its -1.0 degrees on the dash so its not going to be exactly evaporating quickly!) then try it again.

I will get home tonight by hook or by crook, but more than likely by the punto!:devil:

(Have put battery on charge for the hour just to top it up a bit too.)

OKI DOKI, put the battery back in the car, plugs all nice and dry, reconnected the coil packs, reconnected the fuel line, fingers crossed crank her over.

and over, and over and over.

bugger, still not working.

am i missing something? I have fuel, i have sparks, what else do you need?

Air would be good i guess. OK From the Air Box (front left of engine bay, passenger side if you like) its just inside of the front left wheel for some strange reason!

Tracing it back to the engine it comes up past the inside of the battery box and turns through 90 degrees and through what looks like a butterfly valve actuator and off into the engine. Should probably post a picture of this.

Well this butterfly actuator is making a squealing noise. I disconnected the air pipe from one side and unbolted it from the engine side by undoing the 4 torque/star shaped bolts. keeping it connected electrically i tried to open the valve bu pushing my finger in, it is powered shut fairly strongly to the point i couldn't move it, i electrically disconnected it and then was able to move the butterfly valve by hand, although it is sprung loaded to the closed position so returns to closed when i removed my finger.

reconnecting it to the loom, the squealing noise starts and it seems to be trying to motor closed even though it is closed.

So this valve seems to control the amount of air getting into the engine, is this the throttle body?

So fuel + spark + air should = car starts
and i seem to have fuel + spark and no air hence car not starting, or am i barking up the wrong tree with this?

Anyhow, its too bloody cold outside again so im giving up, and as a train has just derailed between Inverness and Aviemore im not getting the train north and the wife doesn't want me taking the punto, so im stuck till the sun comes up!

[I have got a OBD II adapter which arrived the other week to use with the Fiat ECU Scan software that yani has published on this forum, but so far i havent managed to get it to connect to the ECU, i know thats off thread but just letting you know i am on the case to try and get some fault codes if there are any.]

gearfinger said:

the stilo has been sat encased in a coating of ice for the past two weeks.

Engine turns over quite easily

Click to expand...

gearfinger said:

am i missing something? I have fuel, i have sparks, what else do you need?

Click to expand...

Compression?

Is the 1.6 engine water pump driven by the cambelt? If so the water pump may have frozen solid and stripped the cambelt when you first turned it over.

Just a thought.

Dave.

If you suspect flooding, removing fuse 17 and 21 (near the battery) and starting without fuel injction for a while to clear all fuel, reinstalling the fuses and starting again did the trick for me.

gr J

PS it will create an engine failure but that will go away after a few clean starts.

Thanks for the answers guys. Pretty happy its not a stripped cam belt, very unlikely that all the teeth would go, and if even there was only one left you would hear the belt running uneven, it did prompt me to check the coolent though, and im happy to see that it is all very liquidy!

I dont have any way to test compression down here without buying another gauge but im pretty sure that the gaskets are good to go as there are no other signs of blown gasket.

Cheers for the gen on what fuses to pull, i pulled the plug for the fuel pump and ran it that way to dry it, your way is much more simple!

managed to get yanis fiat ecu scan to work, in a fashion at any rate. the 1.6 seems to have a magneti-marelli ECU which yani hasnt updated yet, he only has the bosh ones listed in the program, but another user on the forum noticed that the multipla uses the magneti-marelli and this one is listed in the program, so i hooke up again and ran it, and it connected, happy days, lets see what it throws up fault wise.

P0460 - Fuel Level Sensor
P0136 - O2 Sensor
P0202 - Injector Cylinder 2
P0351 - Injection Coil
P0352 - Injection Coil
P0353 - Injection Coil
P0354 - Injection Coil
P0638 - Throttle Actuator
P1121
P1122

All of the faults are coming up as 'not detected now, stored in memory'
There is a reset facility but as this program does not specifically match my ECU im not going to risk one.

Dont know what P1121 or P1122.

According to various interweb sites P1121 could be 'Throttle Position Sensor A Inconsistent With MAF/MAP Sensor' or 'Throttle Position (TP) Sensor Inconsistent With MAF Sensor High Voltage'

and P1122 could be: 'Throttle Position (TP) Sensor Inconsistent With MAF Sensor Low Voltage'

http://www.peacockandpurvey.co.uk for the OBD OII fault codes

Now most of these faults will have arisen when i was unplugging various sensors, coil packs and throttle actuators.

I need to get the ECU reset properly and see if the faults come back me thinks.

Took back seat up to try and hear fuel pump
running, hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, fuel pump heard to run satis.

Disconnected fuel pipe at front engine bulkhead and turned ignition on, wooooosh, big spray of fuel.

So, i am getting sparks, i am getting fuel to the engine, so far so good (so why isn't it starting!)

But are the injectors working and allowing the fuel into the engine?You have a lot of injector coil fault codes there so I wonder if you have a connector or earth problem at the injectors. Have a look in the Stilo Guides for injector electrical circuit testing

Your throttle body actuator shouldn't be making screaming noisesand your car is spotting a problem there
[FONT=&quot]P1121 Throttle position potentiometer 1 [signal implausible][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]P1121 Throttle potentiometer track 1[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]P1122 Throttle position sensor [signal implausible][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]P1122 Throttle potentiometer track 2[/FONT]


Could be your moving the throttle valve with your fingers but i doubt it, I would guess the cold has somehow made it lose electrical contact on the tracks similar to that congealed grease does on the wiper motors so it's lost where it is and doesn't know where to go next

You should be ok with resetting the ecu.. if a command is not accepted it would be ignored.. and i’ve never gotten any stilo software to work.. so am simply using scantool.net generic OBD2 software and that does a good enough job of resetting and reading codes.. Until you reset and scan afresh the above codes are confusing.. Having said that.. it is most likely (in my humble opinion) to be related to your throttle body.. while power is on (but engine not running) the throttle body should be moving from fully open to fully closed (calibration) and when it is dirty this is the only way to ensure that the car doesn’t stall at the lights (although eventually one has to stop being lazy and clean the flap instead of retraining the actuator every few starts).. So.. going back to the actuator.. that (from memory.. use search to confirm) has a spring that does have a habit of failing.. (and cannot be purchased separately).. so take the intake house off, turn the key to ON and see if it moves through the cycle (although from your description it does not.. there in is the problem.. although it may not be related to the spring.. what you describe sounds similar to a short somewhere or a bad signal from ECU.. it’s a long shot.. but take the ECU and throttle body somewhere warm for a few hours then reinstall and try to start it may work )

12[X] said:

You should be ok with resetting the ecu.. if a command is not accepted it would be ignored.. and i’ve never gotten any stilo software to work.. so am simply using scantool.net generic OBD2 software and that does a good enough job of resetting and reading codes.. Until you reset and scan afresh the above codes are confusing.. Having said that.. it is most likely (in my humble opinion) to be related to your throttle body.. while power is on (but engine not running) the throttle body should be moving from fully open to fully closed (calibration) and when it is dirty this is the only way to ensure that the car doesn’t stall at the lights (although eventually one has to stop being lazy and clean the flap instead of retraining the actuator every few starts).. So.. going back to the actuator.. that (from memory.. use search to confirm) has a spring that does have a habit of failing.. (and cannot be purchased separately).. so take the intake house off, turn the key to ON and see if it moves through the cycle (although from your description it does not.. there in is the problem.. although it may not be related to the spring.. what you describe sounds similar to a short somewhere or a bad signal from ECU.. it’s a long shot.. but take the ECU and throttle body somewhere warm for a few hours then reinstall and try to start it may work )

Click to expand...

Did someone say spring..

PNL said:

Did someone say spring..

Click to expand...

you're da man!

Thanks for the great replies. :worship:

I like the idea of bringing in the ECU and the Throttle body to thaw out a bit, i had the throttle body in to clean the grease of it (although it was all mostly on one side), however it was only in the house for half an hour or so.

Using Yanis Fiat ECU Scan I got a few of the various actuators, relays etc etc to work, and you can hear all 4 injectors clicking open and closed, plus i am getting fuel to the spark plugs as they were nice and wet the other day (too wet actually i had to clean them up a bit) so im happy that the lack of fuel is not the issue (perhaps naively happy!)

I grabbed a copy of Scantool from http://www.scantool.net/scantool/downloads/diagnostic-software/ so will give that a go when it stops snowing outside! Cheers for the heads up, seems to be fairly comprehensive for a shareware product.

When I take the throttle body out i'll check first to see if it fully opens and closes at power on, although im 99.9% sure it didnt, and if it doesnt I think we are onto something, fingers crossed the thawing out of the ECU and Throttle Body works. :idea:

Thanks again guys, will report back in a few hours... :slayer:

For codes P1121& P1122..I got this fro you..


http://ww2.justanswer.com/uploads/baddad1/2009-02-18_181651_Pages_from_ec.pdf

I have a used throttlebody lying around in my garage if you decide yours is broken. Mapsensor too.

gr J

PNL >> Thanks for the .pdflink, thats pretty much the fault finding route i was going down, but its nice to see something on paper! Good find.

A3jeroen said:

I have a used throttlebody lying around in my garage if you decide yours is broken. Mapsensor too.

gr J

Click to expand...

Cheers bud, I may take you up on that in the future, for now though, THE STILO SHE RUNS! MWWWHHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH :devil:

Sorry, bit carried away there.

Refitted the ECU and the Throttle Body which I had brought into the flat and were nice and toasty (read defrosted). Turned the engine over thinking yeah, this'll fix it. But it didnt, same symptoms as before. [insert picture of sad face]

So, took off the throttle body again and went to do some voltage checks, i though of checking pins 3 & 4 for the voltage that they are giving out when the ignition is turned on (from the thread above we are going with the theory that the throttle is meant to fully open and close) so the voltage coming out ofthe pins to the motor should increase then decrease. :idea:

Bugger, cant reach the key to turn on the ignition and reach the multimeter leads to hold them in place! Need two people for this, everyones at work and not back till 6pm tonight, not waiting.

So I crack open the Throttle Body housing






and give it a good spray with electrolube, i also took and emery board to the two motor winding contacts. Put it all back together and put it back on the car, VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM.

The engine started but was reving like a car possessed! Turned off the ignition and gave it another shot, same again but this time a bit less revs. I remembered that the ECU can take a few starts to settle down again so I tried it again and sure enough it started to sound a bit more like the Stilo of old.

The Throttle Body is still squealing when you first turn on the ignition but only for about 4 seconds then stops. So its not all tickety-boo quite yet.

I sat and let the engine warm up for about 15 mins whilst i carved the Stilo out of its block of ice! Once ice free I took her for a quick spin around the block. So far so good. :slayer:

Damn good result I would say ..your pretty much a hands on type of guy..

Good to hear!

gr J