Moley54 Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Hi all, This is my first post (Its a bit long I know) if you want to get to the nitty gritty scroll down to the 11th Paragraph. I have been the owner of the above Motorhome since January 2007 I bought it with 12000 miles on the clock and it ran for many years with no problems. Approximately five years ago I decided to have a new Cambelt and pulley kit fitted, despite the fact that that the vehicle had only covered approx 31 thousand miles (I thought I would play it safe). this cost me £600 including the fitting of a new rear brake cylinder I wish I had not bothered. Approximately 4 years ago my children got to that age where they no longer wanted to come with us but were still too young to leave at home alone, as a consequence the Motorhome did little mileage each year. however one thing that happened after the changing of the cambelt was that intermittently the engine management light would come on and the vehicle would lose power for a short time then would suddenly come back to life again. searching forums lead me to believe it was a faulty MAF which I changed but the problem persisted. Last year (the vehicle having stood over winter) I fitted a new battery and started the engine it ran for 5 minutes then started to cough and splutter and then died the engine management light came on and no amount of turning the engine over would get it to fire up. I thought it was an electrical/sensor issue so I changed the camshaft and crankshaft position sensors no joy, I changed the fuel filter, inspected the fuel pressure pump nothing! I called out an animal from AA Home start who was as rough as hell, he tried squirting easy start into the air intake it still refused to fire up. he then ripped out the lower dashboard to try and find the OBD2 Port, I checked on the internet and discovered that only vehicles after 2002 had this port fitted and this vehicle was fitted with a 3 pin ecu reader which required Fiat ECUScan software to read the ECU fault codes. I told the animal this and informed me that they were not equipped with this hardware/software and left. I contacted my usual mechanic/garage who informed me that he had such lead/software and to get the vehicle towed in to him, which I did. The following day. I rang him up and asked him if he had scanned the vehicle he just replied "I haven`t got the lead" he basically did not want to know, so the vehicle was stuck in his yard. I went down with my Wife almost daily trying to fathom out what was wrong with the vehicle, on about the fourth week the mechanic who had been avoiding us, didn`t see us with the vehicle and accidentally bumped into us as we were cranking the engine over. He said "that`s got low compression have you checked your Cambelt?" I opened up the cambelt cover to find the belt loose, apparently the cambelt tensioner had failed and it had jumped several teeth causing Valve damage. If I had not spent weeks cranking it over it may have only jumped 1 tooth and I may have got away with it. The engine management light had come on because the camshaft pulley had moved out of sync with the Crankshaft. I then Contacted an engineering Company in Macclesfied Cheshire who rebuilds engines, he arranged the vehicle to be towed in to local garage who removed the cylinder head with the engine in Situ (Just!) and the engineer rebuilt the head which was then replaced on the block, Hooray I`m finally back on the road! When I got the vehicle back it felt slightly under powered and the turbo sounded slightly different, thinking that this was all in my head, myself and my wife headed off to Welsh Wales. Approximately 70 miles into the journey whilst going through Conwy tunnel 5th gear gave up living (Which I believe is a common fault) we continued our journey regardless and our return I contacted another local garage who had dealt with this situation before and replaced the 5th gear without removing the gearbox (Through the inspection plate at the end of the gearbox) I`m Back on the road again! I told this mechanic that I thought that it felt like it was lacking a bit of power since the rebuild, he test drove it and thought that it seemed OK . (The 2.0 JTD is pretty gutless when fitted to a coachbuilt Motorhome.). Again this year like most motorhomes it is off the road for winter, two months ago I fired it up, it ticked over fine but would not accelerate at all. On tick over it was slightly rough but any input to the throttle made it run rough with no increased revs. I searched High and low on the internet for solutions to this problem there was no engine management light showing a fault. Process of elimination made me come to the conclusion that it was a fault on the accelerator pedal potentiometer or the block connector behind the dashboard leading from the accelerator pedal to the ecu which apparently can also cause problems with the vehicle suddenly/intermittently losing power. I decided to invest in this 3pin lead https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-Pin-OBD2-KKL-VAG-409-1-USB-Fiat-ECU-Scan-Diagnostic-Interface-for-Alfa-Fiat/112628983649?epid=21008784213&hash=item1a3935e761:g:BmsAAOSwICpZ~YG5 And dowloaded the Free Fiat Ecuscan software. I managed to configure my computer with the appropriate software and scanned the ECU approximately 6 different codes showed up including the Accelerator Pedal Potentiomer problem, however this showed last occuring 2 thousand miles ago! I assumed that all other codes listed were from when I was checking sensors etc when trying to find the fault, which eventually turned out to be the cambelt tensioner failure. I decided to clear all the codes and see if when I started the engine it would show a new code.This I did but it still would not accelerate but did not show as a new fault on the ECU scan. My Motorhome appeared to appeared to be Punishing me both financially and mentally for my years of neglect and was appearing to be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. My options appeared to be limited to either trying to get the Motorhome on a Jeremy Kyle show, where it could publicly humiliate me for being a bad owner or just commit suicide. Eventually and here is the crucial bit,after months of investigation, nobody on internet appeared to have the answer to my problem the mechanic who refitted my cylinder head was at a loss and suggested the MAF ( I had a spare one so I fitted it, no Joy!) I asked him if if it had a throttle body he replied "Diesels don`t have a throttle body" Well they have! (of sorts) here lay the fault. This weekend having been banished from the house to sleep in the Motorhome by my 17 year old Daughter (who is embarrassed by my mere presence on this earth, she was having her mates round for a sleepover) I woke up the following morning with an eureka moment, I had the heater on all night, believing that my problems may be due to condensation problems in the internal electrics I thought they may have dried out, so I turned the engine over, in anticipation of joy, alas no it still would not rev up, B*****ks! So still not allowed into the house until the friends had all left, I was sat there pondering life when I thought "No throttle body" so what regulates the airflow to the engine me finks??? bonnet up,whats that on the air pipe that goes to the turbo? get screwdriver out, pull off the part, this looks like a Throttle Body however it is in the open position unlike a normal Throttle Body. Further investigation educates me to the fact that a Diesel engine normally needs full airflow for it to function properly, hence why the butterfly valve in this Throttle Body variant is in the normally open position. however to assist in engine braking when you decelerate a valve opens and allows vacuum from the engine to flow to an actuator which closes the butterfly valve thus cutting airflow to the engine. The Solenoid Valve Part no 9635704380 that opens on command from the ECU is siezed in the open position therefore as soon as the engine is started a vacuum goes straight to the Throttle Body actuator which then closes the butterfly valve which restricts airflow to the engine which finally explains why the vehicle won`t accelerate. I pulled the vacuum hose off this Solenoid Valve and the vehicle came back to life and now accelerates normally. I have now ordered a new Solenoid Valve which will be needed to help engine braking. On my vehicle this valve can be found in the engine compartment, just below the windscreen under a Black weather cover secured by two nuts, there are two of them, one opens up the vacuum to the Throttle Body (as I now call it) the other opens up the vacuum to the EGR valve. they look like this on the following ebay link https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Boost-Pressure-Control-Solenoid-Valve-for-Citroen-Relay-/182622361277 Apparently on newer models of vehicles the Throttle body actuator is powered by a electrical servo motor and are not vacuum operated, although I believe these can sometimes suffer from water ingress and corrode leading to siezure of the actuator, causing the same fault. Sorry for the Long thread, but I did it for those who may have suffered the same problems. Regards Moley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euroserv Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Fabulous first thread in my opinion. Well done, and just the right amount of humour. Best of all is that it has a happy ending. What bothers me quite a bit is that nobody but you could figure it out! The engine in your vehicle is used in a myriad of PSA cars and vans including the Fiat derivative of the Peugeot Expert; the Fiat Scudo. I have a 2002 Scudo 2.0JTD and it has no less than 3 identical solenoids that control various functions such as turbo boost and EGR operation. It regularly consumes one of these solenoids and swapping them over normally gives a temporary fix to get the turbo pulling again. The vehicle does about 10,000 miles a year and kills at least one solenoid a year. This January i got so fed up with it that i replaced all 3 in one go at a cost of about £35 each from a local factor who sells them by the bucket-load. The symptoms vary from a lack of go to limp mode or lack of throttle response. Only one of them puts the EML on. The fact is that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of these engines in use and this is a very common and easily diagnosed problem and the AA tech and garage that you use should have gone straight to it (them). Anyway, congrats on your self-diagnosis and welcome aboard. Nick PS. Once your daughter has passed her driving test you will suddenly become cool and interesting again. Particularly when she want to borrow your motorhome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moley54 Posted February 12, 2018 Author Share Posted February 12, 2018 Thank you for the reply, In all fairness to the Gorilla from the AA (Who has hopefully been recaptured by now!) he only attended last year when the cambelt tensioner failed, although he failed to spot that fault. I think the failure/seizure of this Solenoid valve is through lack of use and only occurred coincidentally around the same time as the tensioner failure, which may explain the subsequent slight loss of power before complete seizure, if it was not closing fully. I believe that these Solenoid Valves are a sealed unit, which in mind would rule out condensation ingress. With regards to my Daughter passing her driving test, whilst out learning to drive with her mother last week she put the front end of the car into an embankment, so it might be a while yet! Regards Moley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJay Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Moley54 - 2018-02-12 3:50 PM Thank you for the reply, In all fairness to the Gorilla from the AA (Who has hopefully been recaptured by now!) he only attended last year when the cambelt tensioner failed, although he failed to spot that fault. I think the failure/seizure of this Solenoid valve is through lack of use and only occurred coincidentally around the same time as the tensioner failure, which may explain the subsequent slight loss of power before complete seizure, if it was not closing fully. I believe that these Solenoid Valves are a sealed unit, which in mind would rule out condensation ingress. With regards to my Daughter passing her driving test, whilst out learning to drive with her mother last week she put the front end of the car into an embankment, so it might be a while yet! Regards Moley Never teach your kids to drive! Pay for lessons, much safer, and probably cheaper in the long run. Our daughter was harder to teach than her brothers! , mind you along time ago now PJay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moley54 Posted February 13, 2018 Author Share Posted February 13, 2018 Hi thanks for the reply, my daughter has been having two lessons per week since the beginning of November 2017, my Wife just goes with her for practice as per her Instructors advice, I stay well clear, The Modern driving test is a lot different to what we knew, so I keep my mouth shut. Kind regards Moley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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