Search the Community

Just thought i would share a fault with a fiat 500 that i had sold around a month ago explain the fix and see if any of you guys have cures for faults which at first seem tricky/expensive but are actually easy fixes. The Fiat 500 was a Twinair in lounge spec, full service history, 2012 with only 27,000 miles. I gave the buyer who was older lady but as nice a customer as you could expect, 3 months self warranty and said any problems just give me a call. Expected no calls from her as the car was mint in every way. She rang though after owning it for 2 weeks to say that it had not started twice on a couple of mornings and that now she had a steering wheel light on the dash. Looking into the issue it could have been the main engine ecu, the steering column motor/torque sensor and i was thinking that my decent profit was going to vanish on this one. However on the net some have said 'just change the battery,problem solved' for the steering to be fixed. Swapped out the battery for a brand new one and problem solved! Apparently the steering ecu expects a certain voltage and when a battery starts to get flakey the voltage isnt enough for the steering motor so it shows a fault,probably same for the starting/ecu faults. The battery was a stop/start one so cost me nearly a ton but much better than swapping out steering columns etc. Had also heard that the main battery earths and engine to chassis earths can give issues on the 500's so cleaned them all up and even added another engine to chassis earth so grounding will NOT be an issue in future. And yes she was a nice lady and the batteries are a consumable item, BUT even though she knew it was a brand new battery there was no offer to pay for it!