Scorpiorefugee

Hi. Sorry to hear about your problem. The tale about the Ford dealer is about the worst I've heard but sadly not unusual. Perhaps a letter to the local press might stir them up a bit. Back to your problem, I have no experience with the petrol Gals but I had a Granada Scorpio for many years and it suffered from the same problem albeit intermittently and that turned out to be a loss of power to the fuel pump. A lot of wire chasing led to the immobiliser and a bit of hard wiring fixed the problem. I should have thought that a similar approach would have solved your problem but it is likely that your wiring is more complex than the old Granny and there is probably some electronic inhibiter on the ignition or throttle system. It is likely that this is way beyond the capabilities of 99% of most mechanics and your best hope is that Fords haven't wrecked things and that you can get the attention of someone with a bit of intelligence and a lot of knowlege. Sorry I can't offer more than to wish you better luck with another garage or hope that someone on here spots your post.

A few days ago on an early morning start the gear stick felt unusually stiff. After a few miles it spontaneously went back to normal. Today, returning from the shops (about 2 miles) half way back it suddenly went stiff again. The effect is like stirring a bowl of thick treacle, no roughness or crunching. Any suggestions please before I wheel it round to the garage. I don't think i've missed a week for several months! :unsure:

There is a sequel to this - only one I hope! They replaced the pump with a recon which actually looked brand new - bright shiny aluminium! It all worked well for a couple of days and then, while going around a corner (probably not relevant) at low speed there was a horrible graunching scraping noise which stopped almost immediately and I assumed i had picked up a bit of rubbish on the road. A few days later I noticed the aircon had stopped again but it wasn't convenient to go back but over the next couple of days we had the noise again briefly for a couple of days and on inspection there was a fine snow of finely milled aluminium coming from the pump area. My guess that we had one of those cheap clone components fitted and the drive had just disintegrated so it all got changed under warranty with much apologising and no charge although I threw in a few quid for being honest and helpful as it was their supplier who was at fault. Just for comparison, the part was costed at £190 + VAT and the whole bill was £340 inc VAT. That brings the yearly total to about £1000 which is more than I have spent on fuel. A bit of guessing and rounding for my motoring costs over 8 months inc. road fund but not insurance is about £2200 and looking at VAT, fuel duty, rates and other overheads suggests that Government and other bodies have taken all bar about £500 of that and a fair proportion of that remainder is parts. It's all gone to pay for the fair and free society we enjoy. :unsure:

Gregers, that Marina is a huge complex and it is very nice. I was trying to work out where the old trams used to run but gave up 'cos it was raining. They're down in Devon somewhere now and still in use. Re the aircon, further checks with a full function interface revealed that there were no faults registered and that the pump was being activated so the only conclusion was faulty clutch solenoid. Proper pressure checks on a Bosch kit confirmed all pressures and content OK. So much for Halfords topup/test kit which showed pressure well over twice normal. Solenoid not servicable so quoted £180 plus VAT for exchange plus £40 clean out & refil and a bit for labour for remove and fit puts it in the low £300s and since I can't get near the price for the pump and even DIY still needs regassing it's a nobrainer. It's still well over £1000 spent on air con in 4 years and all we get is more bl00dy rain! Onwards and upwards..... and poorer. :( :( :( PS, Anyone in North Worcs. got Aircon problems, talk to Adrian on 01299 824668 (Brian Norton in Stourport) It's a refreshing change to to find somone who actually diagnoses problems scientifically. By my reckoning I got a diagnosis, gas check and refil together with labour to change the pump for less that Frauds charge to read the codes.

Alan, Thanks for the input. It all makes sense but I'm having trouble finding time to get into the nooks and crannies at the moment. It hasn't been refilled at all for a couple of years and the top up can couldn't make headway against the high pressure. It was working and failed to start after a break of 10 mins. The VCDs are clear and the pressure switch seems to have reacted as the pump solenoid has stopped and the fan in on. All logical for overpressure. Climate ctl display all normal and can't be sure if the pressure measuring connection makes a good connection on the other side of the system but reads 0. As far a quick fit are concerned I had tyres fitted and they told me the tracking was off. He got underneath hit one track rod with a large spanner and charged the equivalent of £30. Another time I went in with what turned out to be a bearing problem and they diagnosed shock absorbers on the basis of leaking fluid. I later found that they were air filled dampers. I haven't been back since - 25 years. Gregers, We're a bit scattered but our last gathering took over 3 tables at the Toby (I think) in the marina area. I've one cousin living close, Brian Martin, Who set up and ran a drop on facility for recovering druggies for many years. One of my uncles, Ron Loveland RIP, still holds the record for most goals scored in a season for Eastbourne FC as well as playing cricket for the town and county about 55/60 years ago.

Hello Gregers. Good to see you're still a full timer here. I'm hoping to get back to Eastbourne soon for a gathering of the cousins and was last there about a year ago. Didn't recognise the old place and I'd have been in deep trouble if it hadn't been for my old Tom Tom. Re Quick Fit, based on past experience I'd put them a few places lower than Ford but they were down right scoundrels as opposed to just incompetent. To be fair, I gave up on both of them many years ago. Add to that I'm probably just plain stubborn as just about every problem I've had with this cantankerous lump of engineering I've had to diagnose myself with the help of the good folks on this site, so I'm still hoping for a bit of scientific diagnosis instead of the usual 'keep spending until we get lucky or you run out of money' approach. Nevertheless, I shall still probably end up going back to a very good and honest local chap who has fixed the aircon properly 3 times already but it has given me an excuse to get back and have a good rummage around this site.

Thanks Alan. I've spent most of my working life (50 yrs) repairing electrical/electronic devices and seldom found any that couldn't be diagnosed with knowledge of what they were supposed to do, a few observations and minimal electrical tests but it all got much more difficult when designers and software engineers started treating us all like idiots. Back to the plot. With a pressure reading approx twice normal and no added gas the only thing that makes sense is a fully closed expansion valve together with something that is stopping the pressure leaking backwards. I wish I knew more about how these things are put together. B) Then again, even if I could work it out I'd still have to take it to the young chap that has all the gear and knows how to use it. Fortunately I do know one but he's not cheap. Perhaps I should just settle for a bath chair and a nice young nurse to push me around. :blush:

Minor correction and update.... The Rad fan does run when set to AUTO but the pump solenoid does not activate. The pump can be turned by hand but I can't as yet get the damned plug off to check supply and I have a 5am start tomorrow :-( . Fuses 16 21 & 22 are OK. It would be helpful to know how the normal control algorithm was put together.

I think my age is catching up with me 'cos the grey matter keeps returning 'file not found'. My gal has been relatively trouble free for some time but now the air con has died, just in time for the warm weather. I used it a couple of days ago on a 60 mile trip. It came on for a while and I switched it off and noticed a faint smell of gas. I switched it back on a while later and it worked with no smell but the smell came back when I switched it off again. Next time it failed to blow cold. Probably empty I thought but later when I restarted the display didn't flash but it still didn't work. I did notice the lights dimmed briefly when I switched it to AUTO but that was it. Next morning I tried it from cold but there was no click from the solenoid and no fan near the rad. I got a Halfords top up can from a few years ago but that wouldn't put anything in and the pressure gauge was in the red, i.e. over pressure. (With the can disconnected) I remember having a bit of a problem a while ago and resetting the climate control box fixed it and one other fact, it came back from the garage about a year ago and the air con wasn't working. Made a change 'cos it usually comes back with crushed cills. It started working again a couple of days later and remained that way until now. Q1.Can anyone remind me how to reset the control.? Q2. given the diatribe above can anyone remind my feeble brain where I should start? Maybe I should start by resetting my brain. Bashing against a wall used to work.

I'm a bit puzzled. If the pads are not seated correctly then the pad surface will wear unevenly not the discs. I'm surprised you're not getting brake judder. Does your handbrake work and is it releasing properly? Uneven wear on discs usually means buckled discs and judder but on the back you may not notice it. I recently had a strange problem where when driving normally at 40/50 mph I would get an effect rather like driving over a rumble strip. It turned out to be siezed brake cables which were preventing the offside pads releasing properly and the pad was oscillating against the disk. Most confusing, but you may be suffering from a similar problem.

A little late maybe but I had a similar problem a few years ago. Sounds like an old taxi and drives like one. Fault codes indicated injection timing advanced. I went round in circles for a while and eventually, with the aid of a dual beam scope, diagnosed the needle lift injector which feeds back the timing to the ECU was sticking. (No 2 or 3 depending which end you count from. It has a wire connected to it. I fluked a repair by accidentally putting 5 litres of unleaded in one morning at 5:00 am when still half asleep. 200 miles later the fault cleared and never came back. Out of interest, in my case, if I switched the ign off and on while moving and not disengaging drive the fault cleared for a while. This one had all of the 'experts' scratching their heads and threatening all sorts of expensive try and see options. The injector alone was £400 plus. Hope this helps.

Hi Seatkid. It's been a while since I've been on here so it's a bit of a shock to find you've been in the wars with dealers. The problem with the sills is a right sickener. Mine were done in the early days, about 6 months after I got the current Gal. (2005) but It wasn't too bad and they were otherwise a good bunch compared to our Ford dealer who seemed to think that it was OK to sell a Gal with 70K and it's original cam belt. Unfortunately, about a year ago I went down a 9" step in a car park in pitch dark while turning blind and did more damage to the sills so I paid a few hundred to get them done along with some work on the front end which was showing signs of it's 140K. 2 days later I took it into the garage for an oil change and it came back with the sills crushed flat. Bad enough but not as bad as seeing it done to a motor you've had from new.

Yesterday, I spoke too soon. It happened 7 times in 2 miles this morning so I took the throttle sensor out. Not as bad as it looked, 3 screws and a plug. 5 screws to take the lid off, one of which has a dab of black paint as it is an adjustment seal and It all looked clean but I gave it a good rub over with a clean thumb :-) and after deciding not to rub the tracks over with a soft lead pencil (an old noisy volume control trick) put it back. The tracks are quite low resistance (250 ohms ish) and looked unmarked by the wipers so it would be quite possible for the slightest trace of anything to upset it. 20 miles and no problems and it actually seems smoother to control at low revs, although that could be psychological. I'll report back if it goes again but I checked with the local VW dealer using the 'D' part no. and a new one is special order for £62 + VAT.

This happened to me yesterday morning. Loss of power and throttle control - tickover a bit fast about 1200 and a quick restart puts it all back to normal. I immediately remembered Seatkid's post of about 5 years ago and a quick go with the VAGCOM confirmed throttle sensor (P1369 I think) so I'm not going to worry too much unless it happens again. When this was first reported we had a longish discussion on the loonacy of this particular programmed response and there was a lot of bad press for Toyota for a very similar problem resulting in several fatal accidents but that's progress.

I bought some Millars Injector cleaner 'cos it was all the garage had but it didn't do any good. My recent problem was down to a loose plug on the injector. I really don't know about smoke problems 'cos I've never had one and hope that it stays that way. If you're getting no power loss, how's the fuel consumption. The ECU should monitor exhaust gasses and adjust accordingly. Have you got any error codes? Are you using oil? a quick power check is 50 to 70 in 5th on a level road - shoud do it comfortably in 10 secs. Black smoke suggests fuel inbalance - could be air filter really bad, exhaust sensor or any of a number of problems with the Turbo system but I'm afraid it's guesswork without popping a VAG-COM on it and even then it may not help. I'm off for a few days now so I hope someone more knowledgeable can help. Ron.

Just a quick note on this to express thanks and bring it back out of history. This topic has solved my problem and proved the value of this site yet again. It took me a while to take the rocker cover off to get at the wiring loom. Not because of the difficulty, that bit was easy, it was just that it has been more than 25 years since I last took one off - an ancient Talbot Horizon. Also, every time it tested the wiring from the external plug it all read fine and yet the fault was permanent. Once off, a waggle of the connector on No.1 revealed very loose connections and an intermittent reading. A quick squeeze of the connector without removing the cover and all was tight and reliable - hopefully. repeated on the other 3 which were of varying tightness and I now have a 4 cylinder motor again. I cannot see any value in replacing the loom because this type of connector is renowned for going slack and usually responds to a but of a squeeze. So, now off to fill up ready for a 500 mile round trip tomorrow which I was dreading in my wife's Picasso. Thanks fellers. Ron.

Forget glow plugs. These motors don't use them unless the temperature drops below current temperatures and even then they are fine without them apart from needing an extra second or two to get them started below freezing. Mine ran for two years without any feed to them and I didn't even realise I had a problem. I think you should consider a good dose of injector cleaner and a SEATKID Italian tune up. He has posted a full description on a similar topic within the last week.

That is exactly what I meant. Don't dip the clutch, just make sure you have no-one behind you and you are on a straight stretch of road - don't want the steering lock coming into play. :o I plead insanity. :lol: Incidentally, I had bubbles in my fuel line as well but never worked out why. It may have started when I let it get down to 1/4 tank and left it ticking over nose down on my 1 in 4 drive. All of the fuel runs to the front of the tank, out of reach of the output pipe. It took me nearly a week to get it started again. Maybe there's a clue there.

About 3 years ago I had a severe exhaust blowing type noise which the garage eventually pinned down to the EGR valve but couldn't actually see where it was coming from. I took what seemed to be the easy (cheap) way out and bought a straight through replacement for about

Total lack of progress apart from now having 2 working VAG coms. I've put in a max strength dose of cleaner and tried a few of Seatkid's Italian tune ups. No smoke and no change. In fact, it was reluctant to even get to red line in 3rd. I have now read the codes and initially there was one which warned of an intermittent electrical fault with injector no. 1 but, when I cleared that one, it didn't return but was replace by a warning that the security system had inhibited engine start??????? It is definitely one short of a full set and struggling to better 20 mpg so I suppose it's time to get up close and personal with the injector wiring loom. The problem with both VAG coms was that I had to select com 3 on the set up screen so I now have a spare. Question - how many of the functions are available with the 'Lite' version of the software?

I haven't read every post on this but I can say from experience that the reluctant hot start is a common problem. Mine had it for about 50K before it died of neglect at about 250K. I could never remember when it started to behave like that but the conversations about it went on and on with several other sufferers and no-one ever claimed a cure. Logic supports the idea that it is a fuel problem because these thing start easily without the aid of glow-plugs almost down to zero and the only other possible cause is loss of compression which may support the start of the problem being associated with high mileage. I just put up with it and stopped noticing it. Re the loss of power, has anyone mentioned the limp-home mode which can be initiated by a whole load of things such as intermittent water level sensor. I'm sure that, if you asked nicely, Seatkid could come up with a long list of possibilities. Of course, with this, it can be reset by just restarting the engine. I had a similar problem which was due to a totally different cause and got by for some time by just leaving the car running and just switching off and on again without slowing or dipping the clutch. I'm sure that someone will warn that doing this can be very dangerous but it worked for me. :lol:

I don't know which air con controller you have on that one but if it is the full climate control the display flashes for about 5 seconds after switch on to indicate loss of refrigerant.

It sounds like you don't have much to worry about. The only time I did see a bit of smoke from my old Gal was a couple of times when I accelerated hard after a bit of overrun when there would have been nothing coming out of the exhaust and nothing to drive the turbo. About a couple of seconds lag to get the turbo up to speed, just a wee bit of black haze and done. It may well have been something odd with all of the clever plumbing but it always went well, started on the button, even in winter with no glow plugs. (This was a problem I didn't know that I had until I found out that it was linked to something else that had always been odd but not enough to worry about.- faulty temperature sender causing the fan to come on after switching off)

Sounds like an improvement on seaweed. :lol:

The old money used to be on - Black smoke = fuel, Blue smoke = oil. Smoke from oil usually comes in at high revs and overrun so my guess is fuel. If you are new to these motors you will have no idea what they are capable of but I never needed to floor my old 98 110bhp in low gears and it would return 45mpg almost permanently. It could be that you are expecting too much or you have a problem. As a guide, mine would do 50 to 70 in fifth in around 10 seconds with no smoke (that I could see anyway) and it never used any oil right up to 250,000 miles. Try clean oil, as Greggers has said, run it low and fill up with good fuel, shell and not supermarket stuff and drive it gently. You should get 550 to 650 miles before the fuel light comes on on a run. They do get thirsty over 70. If the performance isn't there you could have a Turbo problem (that could explain the smoke) or a duff MAF (Look in the FAQs). If you can give a bit more info based on the above it would help to make sense of any advice.