piaggio poeter breakdown?

.happy new year!! been a while since i was on last, been having some issue's with my piaggio porter, it only seem's to happen when on the motorway, or when i've been driving for a while! but as i'm drivving along without notice my wee porter die's on me,with a totall loss of power, at wich point you have to pull in, it then sit's for a while making a hunting noise, until it clear's and then some progress can be made! for instance when taking my boy's home, on a journey that's 112 miles long! it thankfully only happened the once,but then on the return journey, it happened 17 time's, it causing me a lot of frustration, iv'e noticed that when it does happen if you turn off the ignition and then start it again the problem resolve's, but there's alway's the issue of the steering lock going on!! not good at 60 mph, was wondering if anyone could shed any light on it???.
slippyfish


Posts: 13
Join date: 2012-02-19

Happy new year does it happen on rough bits of road/lots of twisty bits or just when it feels like it?

Hello Slippy fish!

Welcome and sorry for your porter troubles, must be pretty unnerving! You have come to the right place though.

BUT.... I need more information off you:-

What reg/year is it?
Is it a 1.3 - i'd guess so!

Please explain:-

"with a total loss of power" Electrical lights out? Engine still running but powerless? Expand!

"while making a hunting noise, until it clear's" - What do you mean? Revs going up and down? Tooting of horns while you send the beagles out?


I'm sure we can get to the bottom of this!

What are your mechanicing skills like?
Do you have some tools and a little determination and patience?

hi there and thank's for getting back so soon, the porter in question is a 59 plate 1.3 petrol. the sudden loss of power only seem's to be on the engine side, all light's remain on when this happen's as well as ignition light's, when i said hunting yeah the rev's go up and down with no psosible way of making them change, i.e even with my foot on the accelerator there's no improvent in the the sound, and only after sitting for about five min's does it clear and the normal rev range resume, if i have a rough idea of what i'm doing i can generally take on most challenge's, i have some basic tool's and if the worst came to the worst i dare say i could borrow some! hope this help's!!

hi rich! on my day to day journey to and from work there's never been a problem, 24 mile's round trip, it only happens when mostly on longer journey's i.e my journey to and from blairgowrie to kilmarnock!! which is mostly motorway!

slippyfish wrote:the sudden loss of power only seem's to be on the engine side

Does the engine keep running but with no power or completely cut out?

Thanks for the feedback so far.

hi.the engine keep's running, but with no drive,

Does it rev up properly or struggle to get up the rev range?

once it get's going again generally normal service resume's!!!! and it rev's as it should!

You've turned up with a new problem Hijet/porter wise. First one in a while!
This is a pretty odd fault, and one a garage will hate to diagnose because I bet it'll never do it in their company. I think you have some kind of fuel starvation issue, but an intermittent one at that, which is quite rare.

Does the engine warning light come on during any of these troubles?

When you say "but with no drive" what do you mean? Guttless/not enough power to drive it anywhere? How exactly does it have "no drive"

I do have some suspicions, but I'd prefer to get as much info as possible before I jump to conclusions.

hi highly, the engine warning light is a bit sporadic, and comes and go's, yeah the engine just seem's to die although it never cut's out there is no amount of pushing the accelerator will change it,usually when this happen's i dip the clutch and head for the hard shoulder, if you try to drive through it, it go's all jumpy , only way to explain that would be that it's like taking your foot off and on the accelerator peddle, it'll go a foot then dive a go a foot then dive!!

like kangaroo petrol!!

I'm pretty sure this is 100% fueling issue. Electronics, mechanical or blockage is the question.

-The fact that it keeps running says the fuel pump is still running - but it could have something causing the flow to drop - bits of rust from the tank is possible

-Or the fuel filter could be clogged - with same bloody rust from the tank

-Fuel pressure regulator could be sticking, so the fuel rail pressure stops varying with load. My strong gut feeling as present.

I would say the injectors are fine, the wiring to them OK.
Tiny posiibility you could have a faulty tps or map sensor but I wouldn't expect the kangaro/powerless issue so I would focus on other bits first.

Normally I can pin point something, but this needs these components examining as it could be anywhere in that fuel system.

Before I went taking it all apart I would read the error codes from it, as that may give you a clue to the fault. I think for a 2009 model you will need to use a scanner, which plugs in just under the dash board on the drivers side. Got a mate you can borrow one off or get a quick scam job? I'd expect you to be getting an error code like "P.1170 System too lean (Bank 1)" or "P.0170 Lean Exhaust" which would confirm the fuel starvation faults. Anything else would get me thinking outside the box.

I'm quietly confident its one of those three! Loads of help hey.

Fuel filter is an easy swap, so is the Fuel pressure regulator. You could do both of them in 30 minutes together.

Fuel pump inspection and/or replacement means dropping the tank out, that's not the hardest thing in the world but a bit more awkward and time consuming.

I have a spare fuel pressure regulator if you need one.


I'd start with a code scannning and get back to me. If it's an error similar to what I've described then I'd swap the fuel filter, and cut the old one open to see what's inside it. If its clean I'd probably go for the fuel pressure regulator next. If its full of crap than I'd be looking at taking the pump out, draining and cleaning out the tank and the fuel hoses.

thank's for your input, i know my brother has a scanner, so i could prob get the reading from this on saturday coming,just mean's a 112 mile journey to get it!! should be fine though,again many thank's, will keep you up to speed with what that say's!!!!

Call me sad but I quite look forwards to finding out what error codes are on it!

The problem as far as I can understand sound familiar to me. I had a similar problem with a 993cc. It was starting and driving fine but sometimes on the highway the engine power was gone and I was "bumping" forward. Standing stil for 15minutes solved the problem but often it was hell and verry dangerous getting home.
A friend of mine (car mechanic) changed the spark plugs and the problem was solved. He told me because they were old they were getting to hot what caused the problem.

sound's like a cheap resolve to the problem could well be a good starting point, cheer's mate!!

Thing is, if the plugs were breaking down thus arcing not where they should, the vehicle wouldn't sit and tick over fine, it would be lumpy and misfiring. I wouldn't bet against it though as these things can always surprise me.

If you unplugged one spark lead on a 4 cylinder vehicle you could still drive the vehicle, it would be a bit down on power but you could still drive, and it wouldn't kangaroo. The chances of multiple plugs breaking down simultaneously is unlikely, and again if you had spark failure on a cylinder or two it would be idling like a dog.

Your piaggio porter will be a late model one with 4x individual coil packs, so the spark systems are fully independent of each other for each cylinder. On a 3 cylinder oldschool type distributor system, if one plug was completely grounding itself it may discharge the coil too quickly thus killing the spark to the next cylinder. It could also effect the igniter too. With only 3 cylinders to run off, if you lose 2 sparks they barely even tickover.

wow!!! kinda get what your saying their!!! bringing it back to fuel prob's?

Scanned it yet?

was a change of plan not heading down until tomorow!!

just had my porter scanned, now it turn's out there's two , first one is p1510, and the other is p0500, hope this may help shed some light!!!! will check with you guy's soon!! cheer's neil.

P0500 shows in my book as Vehicle Speed Sensor A Malfunction
No listing for P1510?

p1510 means trouble starting https://hijet.forumotion.com/t889-hijet-1300-fault-code-p1510

"54 P1510 Starter motor relay - circuit malfunction Wiring, starter motor relay, ECM"

and the

P0500 is vehicle speed sensor, which I'm not sure where it is because an early hijet has a cable driven speedo so it might be build into the speedo gauge on the dash like many crude vehicles do. Yours being a super late new one might not have a speedo cable and the speedo gauge might be electric straight off a sensor on the gear box.

"52 P0500 Vehicle speed sensor (VSS) - circuit Wiring malfunction, VSS, ECM"

Which neither of these is going to cause your power loss situation.

p1510 will have been recorded on it the last time the battery went flat or if the starter motor didn't catch right I would guess.

And the VSS error is pretty easy to diagnose by plugging a scanner in with live data read out. If you get the speed on the scanner screen as you drive then its working, if not then there is a fault.

I would just note down those codes and reset it and see what comes back. Probably just the VSS error I would guess.

ANYWAY this really doesn't help pin down your running fault, so I'd go back to the van, swap the fuel filter for a new one and cut open the old one to see if that gives you any major clues like full of rust etc. If its clean put the new one straight in its place and do some more investigations.

I had exactly the same issue with my 1.3 Porter which only started when the speedo packed up so it could well be related to the speed sensor, once the speedo was replaced the problem disapeared.

Oh my god, that's a great bit of information!

Great first post Ian, that might save Slippyfish a small fortune in the wild goose chase.

Try speeding up to 60ish, let speed drop to 40ish, if its the speed sensor engine management light should come on. Try driving, with light on, normally.If this "cures" fault leave it alone. Drove my Wreg 1.3 for 3years like this.Good luck.

2 new posters today, each with a top tip. Welcome, guys.

Yes its great to have some new corking input! This is a real good turn out with these other experiences and it might be another one of those major problems that's so easy to solve when you know what the crack is.

I had this thought earlier, surely if the speed sensor is causing the power loss, then if you un-plugged the speedo cable from the greatbox (which is really easy to access) and tried to drive it and it did the whole kangaroo thing then that would give you a load of confidence that the VSS in the dash is totally the fault.

I originally said earlier in this post that the speed sensor would not cause this fault because in lots of other cars I've worked on you can unplug it from the gearbox and the car will still drive perfectly. Honda civics, toyota yaris, mitsubishi FTO, all drive fine with no VSS although you do get the warning light. Although a vtec civic will not "come on vtec" with the vss unplugged as it will only engage vtec after about 15mph.

Now Ian said:-

IanM71 wrote:I had exactly the same issue with my 1.3 Porter which only started when the speedo packed up so it could well be related to the speed sensor, once the speedo was replaced the problem disappeared.

Where i bet his is a late model version the same as slippyfish (e.g. after about 2002** see edit at bottom) which had a completely different engine management system than the early ones like mine. I can drive my van with the dashboard completely missing (when I was messing with the fuel gauge and back lights) without a problem, no power loss or anything.

The late model EFi system might have a bit of programming which monitors road speed to manage the fuelling/load/demand in order to clean up the emission and improve fuel economy. Now if you try and drive it forwards while the ECU thinks there is no motion then it might get it's self in a right pickle e.g. cutting out causing the kangaroo type symptom.

I would definitely give unplugging the speedo cable a try as it might 100% prove the fault is caused by the dash board. There's nothing to lose and its very easy to do. The speedo cable connects to the gearbox right near the prop shaft end on the drivers side, and it screws on and off.

Am I making sense here?


** EDIT: Not 100% sure when the later efi system kicked in but according to http://www.outilsobdfacile.com/vehicle-list-compatible-obd2.php?brand=piaggio it was possibly about 2004