Had a really good set of results after a few jobs on my 169 Cross today, and it seems worth documenting the journey. It's a bit of a wordy post, but maybe some of this will help someone down the line.
It's a 2010 1.3 diesel, 132,000 miles.
The little car was off the road for a few months last autumn, just due to not being needed, and after that had a lot of gremlins, which I put down to condensation / damp.
Those gremlins were: intermittent but frequent failure of the power steering, with the relay clicking like morse code; occassional ELD/hill start/traction failure lights (and those services being disabled); and lots of failing bulbs in the dash including, one by one, all the lighting for the info display. (Also, for reference, the right-hand indicator, and the rear fog lamp, and the sidelights.) It was all markedly worse when the weather was cold, or wet.
I know a lot of online folk have said change the battery for power steering issues. My regular FIAT-specialist garage laughed out loud at that suggestion. But... I noticed that after they'd had the battery off when changing the clutch, the steering was slightly more reliable. I found that a really strong connection at the battery terminals really made a difference. Coated it in petroleum jelly and tightened it up a lot, and the fault was much less common.
And then... one time, my foot knocked the fuses tucked away behind the opening fuse panel next to the driver's door. The ones that you can only access by lying in the footwell. When I did that, one of the dash info panel lights came back.
So I sprayed everything in there with electrical contact cleaner and wiggled everything. Some lights came back, and the intermittent fault was a bit less frequent.
But then today, I changed the battery. The old one was an unknown quantity, at least 5 years old. It worked, but I'd noticed starting was taking a bit longer than usual, which is what prompted me to finally change it.
Changed the battery... and EVERYTHING works again, perfectly. All the bulbs are back, all the time. No click-fest in the relays.
I also changed the glow plugs, at the same time, since I'd had a warning light for them (though starting happened fine even in the depths of winter) and wow, there is suddenly ZERO smoke on start up.
A happy little car now
It's a 2010 1.3 diesel, 132,000 miles.
The little car was off the road for a few months last autumn, just due to not being needed, and after that had a lot of gremlins, which I put down to condensation / damp.
Those gremlins were: intermittent but frequent failure of the power steering, with the relay clicking like morse code; occassional ELD/hill start/traction failure lights (and those services being disabled); and lots of failing bulbs in the dash including, one by one, all the lighting for the info display. (Also, for reference, the right-hand indicator, and the rear fog lamp, and the sidelights.) It was all markedly worse when the weather was cold, or wet.
I know a lot of online folk have said change the battery for power steering issues. My regular FIAT-specialist garage laughed out loud at that suggestion. But... I noticed that after they'd had the battery off when changing the clutch, the steering was slightly more reliable. I found that a really strong connection at the battery terminals really made a difference. Coated it in petroleum jelly and tightened it up a lot, and the fault was much less common.
And then... one time, my foot knocked the fuses tucked away behind the opening fuse panel next to the driver's door. The ones that you can only access by lying in the footwell. When I did that, one of the dash info panel lights came back.
So I sprayed everything in there with electrical contact cleaner and wiggled everything. Some lights came back, and the intermittent fault was a bit less frequent.
But then today, I changed the battery. The old one was an unknown quantity, at least 5 years old. It worked, but I'd noticed starting was taking a bit longer than usual, which is what prompted me to finally change it.
Changed the battery... and EVERYTHING works again, perfectly. All the bulbs are back, all the time. No click-fest in the relays.
I also changed the glow plugs, at the same time, since I'd had a warning light for them (though starting happened fine even in the depths of winter) and wow, there is suddenly ZERO smoke on start up.
A happy little car now
- Model
- Panda Cross 1.3
- Year
- 2010
- Mileage
- 132000
