Hi
I bought a W-plate (2000) 1.8gdi equippe auto in August. ABout a month after I bought it I thought I had a puncture. Got out - no puncture. Sound and knocking stayed (sound frequency increased with speed). Figured brakes so took it to kwik-fit for a check. discs worn, quoted £280. I wasn't over impressed with their customer relations techniques so took car to local small mechanic garage who booked me in for 4 days later. 2 days before going to the garage I started having stalls (remember this is an auto) when coming to a standstill. Not everytime mind you but 4 or 5 times in the 3 miles to work - usually at traffic light so a bit of a pain. Garage said they would look at it (btw they fixed the brakes for £30 less tha KF), they adjusted the idle slightly and suggested that if problems continued to go to mitsubishi dealer. Stalling was then fixed. However, next day when I started the engine the engine revved like mad - without my foot on the accelerator. The rpm was jumping up and down between 1500 & 3500. The first 100m down the road was like having kangeroo petrol but it settled down. Fuel economy dropped from 33mpg(town) to 24mpg. This problem continued so I booked into the mitsubishi dealer. They cleaned out the butterfly valve(s) which apparently were dirty which helped matters but didn't solve the surging problem totally. They spent 4 hours looking. The message I got was that to solve the problem would involve the replacement of a £1000 part on the engine. OMG i thought. Took car away to think about its future. the poor idle continues althought the kangerooing has gone. Generally it now sits at about 2500rpm when I start the car in neutral and jumps up and down a bit when I select drive - funnily it behaves a little better if I move off in 1st (low gear selector). Economy is still poor and smells like running rich. Last week I took it to a local rolling road tuning place with an excellent reputation. I told them the symptoms but not that I had been to mitsubishi. Next day I phoned them: electronic management is reporting no faults on laptop, although they couldn't get as much info as they wanted there were no fault codes coming out. The mixture was fine so not a tuning problem. They had been discussing the car for some time (probably 75 years of combined experience) - they had had a similar case with a carisma in teh previous year that had been with the "throttle body arrangement" (btw I am not a mechanic and I cannot do much more on a car than check fluids and change a tyre). Replacement cost -£900 for the part. I pay my £35 tuning fee and drive home dejected. What to do. The car has already cost me £2400, I'll be lucky to get £1500 in px (it has 86500miles on the clock but is in otherwise clean condition (I've already checked with 2 dealers on this).
My options are:
px it but this will give me an older and smaller car for my money;
try and do a private sell - my conscience won't let me do this (although I don't seem to mind px - interesting... );
ditch and walk to work - not really an option with winter coming and being a teacher and having 3 bags to cart back and fore to school every day);
don't fix it and pay a fortune for fuel and risk engine blowing up;
and of course fix it.
This is where hopefull someone on this forum can help:

Is this a problem you know about? Is the throttle body arrangment replacement going to solve the problems? Is there a cheaper solution? Am I going to be throwing good money after bad? If this is fixed will there be another problem in 3 months time?

Your help would be very much appreciated,
Phys :liebe011:

Sorry to hear youve been having so much trouble,I cant really help you out but if you decide to repair maybe try pick the parts up second hand(from a breakers yard or similar) it could reduce your costs.Hope you get it sorted anyway :)

Hi,try out this site,quite useful

http://www.247spares.co.uk/

Sounds likee original garage has just adjusted throttle cable to stop it stalling - not the right way to do it. This explains high revs and poor economy.

Get a decent garage to do a check on your temperature sensors, knock sensors and lambda sensor. If these are not within range or faulty, it will cause some of the problems you describe.

Check all air connections from airflow meter to manifold and make sure no leaks. Also check there are no vacuum leaks on the brake servo hose.

If the throttle body has been cleaned out, I wonder if the sensors on it were reset correctly. I would try disconnecting battery for 10 minutes. Once reconnected, turn ignition on - do not start car, but turn it off within less than a second. This should allow ECU to reset the sensors and ECU.

Fianlly, have you had the engine washed recently ? If so, you'll need to disconnect, spray with WD40 and then reconnect the wiring to the sensors and actuators, as engines should not be steam cleaned or pressure washed. So many electronic devices not designed for that environment.

Colin

Hi
My 2001 Carisma has similar problems after I had the Throttle Body reconditioned, I sent my unit away to be reconditioned (£230) as I was told that it was the cause of my early Rev limiting problems which I have posted on to this forum.

When I received the reconditioned Throttle body back and refitted it to the car it revved like mad and eventually the engine management light came on and then started flashing.

The net result was that the car would start up and rev at 2500rpm but had no power, I ended up being towed in to my local Mitsubishi dealer who diagnosed the problem as being the Throttle Body electric motor and I had to have the unit replaced with a new one at a cost of £1150 fitted and set up (Ouch).

Mitsubishi have now had my car for 2½ weeks and it is running at its normal idle speeds but it still has the problem which I reported on this forum.

Mitsubishi are at a loss as my early Rev limit problems are not coming back with any fault codes.

To be fair to my dealer they are being fantastic, they are keeping costs down by swapping suspect parts on a donor car and they have supplied me with a courtesy car until mine is sorted.

At this stage I don't know when I will get my car back and am not certain they will be able to cure the fault.

From my experience I wouldn't get a Throttle reconditioned but would look for one of a scrap vehicle as it would be the most economical way of doing things.

Hi! I had about the same problem with my 2001 1.8 GDI. I also thinked of lambda sensor, but apparently it wasn't. I took it to the dealership and they found no problem in the engine but the injector was dirty as hell, so they cleaned it... Afterwards the revs are normal even fuel economy was a terrific 7.3l/100km in town, but after few weeks the fuel economy went up to 9-10l/100km but revs nolonger @Swimming@. Maybe that helps... :57:

what was the cost to clean your injectors?