ChefDude

My prospective father in law has an auto astra 1.4 about 2-3 years old.

before christmas the yellow "there's something up with the exhaust mix, your gases may be over the limit" light went on.

I said it might be the Lamda sensor gone and said to get it checked after christmas.

Well he took it to the garage and they replace the ECU for a grand

about 30 miles later the yellow light is back on and now it's mis firing on engine load up inclines.

Is it possible they couldn't work out what it was, sold him a new ecu for a tidy profit and the few miles the yellow light didn't come on the ecu was trying to recalibrate against a faulty lamda sensor and then gave up and the result. the yellow light's back on.

any ideas what it could have been?

Tidgy

get a tech 2 on it and it will tell you any faults on the ecu/sensors, def sounds like a sensor not the ecu.

i'd go back to the garage and have it looked at again, if its only 2-3 years old you should be covered under manufacturers warrenty, so should have paid for the ecu in the first place

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Might be worth getting one of those mobile tuning services out to it to identify which sensor is on the way out, sounds ignition related like the coil pack(s) are on the way out or something like that.

superdan

sounds like EGR valve may be sticking this will cause the svs light(orange car with spanner picture) but not eml light to come on
there is a mod to deactivate EGR all together as it is not required if its a 8v engine hope this helps

johnnyroper

what light is on? is it the one with the spanner or the engine light also is it 16v or 8v engine

dazc2

Astras!! Sacks of scrap. Although they are keeping me in a job at the moment. Got a coupleof 3 year old Astras in for engine rebuilds at the moment.

Common faults on Astras (Astra G) are coil pack failures, EGR valve issues (usually the valve) and crank position sensors.

When the coil pack fails, they will usually run on 3 cylinders. The EGR will just make it run badly and the crank position sensor will usually stop it from running completely.