Fast_Blue_Scooby

My wife has had a Fiat Punto from new, just over a year old.

Last night she was in the car with our 2 young daughters when the car suddenly lost all power. No brakes, no power steering, no electrics, everything went. No lights on the dashboard and hardly any control over the car at all.

Luckily she was in a 30mph zone and was only doing 20mph but it was still a scary moment as she had to somehow bring the car to a standstill. Now if this had happened on the motorway, I dread to think!

The AA towed the car back to our house and tried to get the car started.
When you put the key in, there was nothing, the usual lights did not go on, the dashboard was blank. No power at all. The battery was fine, radio worked but anything controlled by the ecu just did not work.

When you turned the key, the car would try and start but obviously the immoboliser would not allow it to start. The key having the transponder in but it was not being recognised.

The AA came round this morning again to take another look and it started first time, the dashboard lit up and the engine turned over!! Typical!!!

However the AA man said that it would be best to take it to a Fiat dealer to find out exactly what had went wrong.

So the car was towed to the nearest Fiat dealer. However they could not find anything wrong. The ecu had no record of any errors. They are going to keep the car for a few days in case it plays up again. But if they don't find anything wrong, what should we do? They have never come across this before and don't know why it happened.

My wife does not want to accept the car as she does not want to drive it again, in case it happens again. She would rather they find something wrong, fix it and then her mind can rest easy.

But knowing what happens in these situations, the garage will not find anything wrong. Now the car is covered by a 3 year warranty so what should my wife do?

Should she accept the car back and take a chance? Where do we stand with the insurance if she is involved in an accident if the car decides to switch off again? Does her acceptance of the car back with no problems found, mean that she will be to liable for anything that may happen if the car cuts out again?

I have told my wife not to accept the car back unless they can tell her exactly what went wrong and have fixed the problem.

If however they cannot find no problem, what should we do?

Sorry for the long post but any thoughts/help on the above would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

BOB.T

From an ex mechanic's point of view, this is so typical, I think cars do it on purpose to annoy us!

It could be so many things, a loose wire, bad connection, a massive ECU failure, the list goes on! Fault codes don't live up to their reutation either, they often aren't recorded and even when they are, often don't point to the actual problem!

If it were me I'd park it outside the garage and leave it there till it's fixed!

Also, I know it's not much of a comfort but, your brakes will still work without the engine working, you just lose the servo effort after about 2 or 3 presse so choose you braking carefully

Good luck

Fast_Blue_Scooby

Thanks Bob

We will not pick the car up unless they have fixed it.

It looks like the ecu thought that they key was not in the on position and just shut everything down while the car was being driven!!!

Then when the car was back on the driveway, turning the key once to turn on the electrics did not work at all. It seemed to not recognise that the key had turned. Whether this is down to the ecu or the ignition system, I just don't know.

We just don't want this to happen again so we don't want the car back if nothing has been done.

I'm no expert on ecu's but does anyone know whether the ecu monitors the position of the key while driving and checks the code on the key at regular intervals. It has got me stumped.

Any technical people out there who may be able to help?

THE M25 FLYER

Had a similar fault with a fiat bravo i attended on the A21 a few weeks back,
It turned out to be nothing more than a poor battery earth lead to gearbox conection (high resistance).
It would very dimly power up the dash illumination and run the radio but when the ignition was turned on everything went down and the under bonnet relays just switched in and out.
The earth lead on this car was secured to the gearbox by using a starter motor fixing bolt,although it looked tight/secure removing and cleaning it sorted the fault.
Ideally it would be nice to catch it in the act so the earth and battery feeds could be voltage drop tested,this problem was quite common on Pug 206's and Citroen Berlingo's where the earth lead was a bit taunt and would pull out of its eyelet terminal alltogether.
May be totally wrong but it pays not to overlook the obvious and try drop test all batt leads where possible when the fault is present.

Leslie

Good advice.

Les