Sold 2003 Fiat Stilo JTD 128.8k few months MOT £2.75 a ticket

[bramz7]

On previous form that is nearly 3 weeks so only one new car?

Ha! Stuff has a habit of not appearing when I'm actually looking though. Quite keen on the aforementioned Xantia to be fair but I can't force the owner to sell it really.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Well this is now sat on my drive after being delivered today by the absolute gent that is Bramz7. Seems a decent old tank but it's such a miserable cold wet day I just can't face getting too involved with it!!! More news if it ever stops bastard raining!!!! In the meantime here's a gumtree-style living room window shot:

[Dave_Q]

Should be pretty good to drive if not to look at, my wife has an Alfa 147 JTD which is pretty much the same car and engine and it's decent on fuel and handles well too. 

 

Let me know if it gives you electronic grief, these can be diagnosed pretty cheaply with a £5 ebay cable and free software, or for more in depth stuff a £20 cable set and some mildly pirated software will do airbags etc.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I'm hoping my new Delphi thingy will help me get to the bottom of its airbag problems!

[bramz7]

It actually drove nice, especially between the unplanned leg of Nottingham and the M6 Toll. Nice straight (ish) A road round there was dare I say, a bit of a joy.

 

Oh also I left my headphones in the drivers door pocket...

[J-T]

Yeh we had one of these, ‘multiECUscan’ software & a VAGCOM lead could access all of the various systems & reset the airbag light.

 

If it’s clonking at the back, it’ll probably be the rear axle bushes. Just leave them if they’ll still pass an MOT as they’re a twat of a job! The front subframe was getting frilly on ours too and it had only done about 60k.

 

They go well though.

[solid61]

Hope you enjoy it,ive kept mine 8 years and still like it,233k and still gives 55 mpg,pulls really well in 2nd and 3rd gear,a much better car than given credit for and its gonna be a very hard act to follow.P/S my axle bushes have knocked over bumps for years but never been mentioned at mot time.

[bramz7]

Genuinely having driven it 600 or so miles o can agree with the general opinion that it was unfairly panned at the time. It drives fine and the 1.9 JTD 115 has tons of grunt.

 

I would love a 2.4 Abarth 3 door mind.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I'm looking forward to getting involved with it. I intend to drive this £175 car 100 miles/day to work, so i do need to sort some of its foibles but I am optimistic that its gonna be a much nicer car than its dull looks suggest. I wish the weather would sharpen up so i could have a play with it. I cant put it in the garage as its full of Hyundai pony!!

 

I do wish the stilo was an estate mind you, if it wasnt so far away i might have chucked a cheeky one in on this mega cheap parts department special:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/fiat-stilo-dynamic-jdt-1-9d-spares-or-repair/282905470080

 

They are a proper dowdy looking thing though eh. I remember reading some article in CAR magazine years ago about McLaren, some senior manager there had been poached from Fiat where it declared he'd been a programme director on the Stilo project, I though flippin heck thats nowt to make a big deal of - you could tell from launch day that you were looking at some 100% dead-cert futureshite!!! The 5-door looks absolutely rubbish from the outside.

[SierraMikeHotel]

I was living in Italy when these came out and people were genuinely excited about them.

 

It's easy to laugh now, but wouldn't it be nice to have a national manufacturer to be proud of?

[solid61]

Intrestingly a friend of mine worked in the service departement of a fiat main dealer in luton,they had a launch night at the dealership with drinks and party food were arranged for all the potential stilo buyers invited.Not 1 turned up so we did the only decent thing and ate all the grub,drank the drink and pissed off,i think it took them at least a month to sell one after launch,not a popular car at all.

[Datsuncog]

Found this rather down-on-its-luck Michael Schumacher special edition Stilo parked up at the railway station a week or so back... can't be a common thing. 5-pot lump in these, I believe.

 

 

 

 

One to squirrel away, perhaps?

[Jim Bell]

^think theres one on ebay for many grands. And an Arbarth for one and a half.

[Datsuncog]

Epic lacquer peel, cracked bumper with missing mesh and rust blebs starting... I feel I have valid concerns about its immediate future. Always liked the three-door version... Maybe I should leave a note next time?

[Wingz123]

Beware of the dreaded dashboard failure! I had one and dash went on it therefore nothing displayed and nothing lit up....common on them. Ended up scrapping it not just because of that but because the starter motor was getting iffy and the clutch began to slip....oh and it leaked water so smelt horrible and musty all the time... that was a 1.2 6 speed...

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Had a fiddle with this this evening after the sky brightened up a little.

 

It came with a replacement for the non-functioning heater blower so I thought I would have a go at fitting it:

 

 

 

Its buried under the dash of course but by cable-tying the clutch pedal down and detaching the steering column I managed to wriggle it out (finding in the process that no pollen filter is present). Guess what?

 

 

Ho ho ho!!! The 'new' one has a different 2-wire connector on it and is thus no good.

 

Digging through ebay, all the secondhand units have the two-wire connector. I can find one with the 4-wire connector but its a new one of course costing £60, which is a bit more than I really want to spend on this car before I've even got it on the road. Not sure what to do there though as i consider a heater with fan pretty essential. I put 12v on the red and black connectors of the old blower and got no response, and the internal PCB looks a bit 'flamed' from what I can see so I think it is genuinely buggered. Ho hum!!!

 

Also had a look at the radio. Check the install:

 

 

Radio cable tied in. Looking at it, it looks like the hole in the dash has been enlarged with an axe:

 

 

 

 

Loads of broken tabs, missing screws and spire clips, a real hatchet job. The whole center console is loose too so i ordered a big tray of self-tappers and spire clips to try and tighten everything up! The car came with a facia for fitting a single DIN stareo but its incomplete and the stereo itself is fitted in a placca moulding that doesnt fit the facia so i think a new complete facia at £12 plus a bit of time sorting the broken tabs will solve this.

 

IN other news theres a breakers a few miles away offering a front wing on eBay that looks like its the right colour, so I have taken the tailgate plinth thing off for  a colour guide and i am gonna pop up tomorrow and check if it is the right colour. If so I am gonna get it and lob it on to fix the big dent.

[dollywobbler]

No, you're doing it wrong. To keep the formula of hatchet bodgery alive, you should chop into the top of the dashboard and insert computer fans that aim vaguely at the dashboard. Fit a switch, badly and without label, somewhere inconvenient. Sorted.

[wuvvum]

I'm impressed you managed to get the old blower out - I did have a brief look and it looked a proper twat, even with the clutch pedal out of the way.

 

I thought it might be possible to swap the motors over from one to t'other but if it's the PCB that's gone that might be a non-starter.  Separate switch?

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I dont fancy a separate switch, I think I am just going to do a few other jobs on the Stilo and if they come good then I might splash the 60 on a new blower fan!! or a used one might turn up in the meantime.

 

Went up to Shirebrook salvage bright and early today with my colour-checking tailgate plinth to see about this wing. Helpfully the place was shut, despite their opening hours sign saying they should be open and nowt on their facebook page. Their phone rang non-stop while i was parked outside and a couple of folk came sniffing round but no joy. So no progress on that job either!!! 0/10 for productivity on this car so far.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Alright gang, not been on here much lately due to life getting in the way, but I have been doing a bit on this Stilo recently and I need a bit of guidance from the collective shite mind.

 

I've not got this on the road yet cos I want to sort out its most pressing problems first. No-one wants to drive round staring at an 'AIRBAG SYSTEM FAILURE' warning mesage do they. Anyway, heres what I've done so far:

 

1) Cleaned loads of unnecessary stickers off the arse end

 

2) installed a new heater blower  -paid the 60 for a NOS genuine fiat one in the end. Heater blower now reinstated!!!

 

3) repaired the mutilated dashboard with alloy sheet, spire clips and self tappers. Covered up the axe damage with a new facia panel and installed a Sony CD player with aux connection that I got off FB for £20. Works a treat although there is no switched live which is annoying. Could connect one using a piggy back fuse but I dont think the ignistion switch has an 'ACC' position so probably wont bother. Anyway it sounds great and looks neat enough so thats a WIN.

 

4) Took the wheelarch liner out and smashed the massive dent out the wing with a hammer. Wish I'd done a more careful job with G-clamps and blocks of wood but I couldn't find the clamp, spent an hour looking then gave up. Found it again when I was tidying all my tools up (typical). If you think it looks shit now you should have seen it before!!!

 

Right heres where I need some advice. The car has the airbag light on and an 'Airbag system failure' massage on the instrument panel. I bought a Delphi DS150 clone for diagnosing this. The problem is that i can't get the DS150 to communicate with the airbag system and tell me the problem. I have used the unit to interrogate our lass's Fiesta and also i cleared a load of Engine-related fault codes from the Stilo but when I ask it to connect to the airbag system I get a message like 'vehicle system not responding' on the DS tablet. I have tried it a few times and checked that it is looking for the right interface (I am using a cable connection not bluetooth) which it seems to be.

 

Now then i see with that 'FiatECUscan' set up you have to use a set of OBD port adaptor cables for interrogating the different systems on the car, theres one for airbags, one for ABS etc. Does anyone know if I need those for the DS150 set up? I presume I could download FiatECUscan onto my tablet and have a go with that but I really want to get proficient in the use of this DS150 gizmo so I would like to solve this problem. ANyone have any tips?

 

After that fail I decided to have a look at the car anyway without any fault codes or whatever. Doing some googling seems to suggest that the Occupancy sensor in the passenger set seems to be the no.1 culprit in Stilo airbag problems so I decided to hoik the seat out and have a look. The Fiat forum suggested they sometime wrinkle up if the glue holding them to the seat foam lets go, and can be revived by reinstalling them unwrinkled and upside down!!!:

 

 

The OCS sensor is directly under the passengers arse so you have to partailly dismantle the seat to access it:

 

 

 

To my amazement there simply isnt one fitted!!!! Theres defo only two connector plugs on the seat itself (one for the 'seatbelt buckeld' sensor, and one for the side airbags), whereas there are 3 poking up out of the carpet:

 

 

....and there is no sign of any OCS mat ever being fitted to this seat. Now i can't believe that anyone would dismantle the seat and reassemble it without the OCS mat being present if it was there previously. so perhaps its never had one. I also disconnected 4 different airbag-related multiplugs round the car and cleaned them up with contact cleaner but none of this revived the system. Really I do need a diagnostic tool to tell me whats upsetting the bloody thing. If it is the OCS mat, you can buy an emulator for £30 that will solve the problem safely but i dont want to gamble £30 on it, that was the whole point of buying the DS150 gizmo.

 

Thinking on, I havent actually checked the fuse to the airbag system so thats something I need to check eh!

 

I'm currently driving the Rover 45 V6 something like 450 miles a week commuting, its costing a friggin packet at 31mpg average so i do need to get this thing squared up and on the road. ALL ADVICE WELCOME!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

[Dave_Q]

The adaptors are because some modules communicate on a non-standard pin on the OBD interface.

 

According to the FES website you need adaptor 2, the red one.

 

I reckon in theory the Ds150 would work with the adaptor but can't promise.

 

The adaptors are 11 quid here for the set of 3.

 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F271557602181

 

If it doesn't work you would then need a wire like this to use fiatecuscan anyway.

 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F282271060715

 

The going rate for the wire and adaptors together seems to be £30, so you won't lose out by trying the adaptor with the ds150 first.

[Aston Martin]

I once nearly bought a Abarth Selespeed 5 door, only because it was cheap... suspiciously cheap.

[Dave_Q]

Also, just to add, I've found the Ds150 doesn't support everything for every car, ie on my C8 it read the airbag codes but came back with a number with no description that didn't come up anywhere on Google.

 

I ended up getting a Lexia anyway and it came up with the manufacturer code with a description which made more sense.

 

Generally, the drive train modules are more universal in terms of codes used, but all brands seem to use their own odd codes for some stuff, so while the Ds150 is great for most things you will probably find it can't do every thing on every car.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Well I bought the adaptor cables as suggested by Dave Q. Plugged the red one on and it only flippin worked!!! Allowed me to view all the airbag fault codes, of which there were many. I deleted them all bar one which would not go - something about 'curtain airbag value too high'.

 

A bit of gooogling suggested a good bet for that one was cleaning the two multiplugs at either side of the boot. I found them and cleaned them up with contact cleaner, let em dry and re-connected.

 

PLugged the DS back in and tried again to delete the code. Boom! Away it went! Started the car, and no more airbag light. Let it run for a bit and switched off and restarted a couple of times. Did a final re-check for fault codes and none were present. Think this old heap is ready to go back on the road!!!

 

 

[wuvvum]

Excelsior!  Glad to see the old heap getting the attention it deserves - it actually has the potential to be a bloody decent way of getting around once sorted.

[bramz7]

Well done Bo11. Bloody underrated car in my opinion.

[Dave_Q]

Great result.

 

You can just imagine one engineer, 6 lawyers and 2 guys from marketing sitting round a table in about 1996, "right then lads, this new law says we've got to make all our drive train stuff work with a generic OBD reader, how can we make everything else as incompatible as possible so people still have to get their pants pulled down at a FIAT dealer?"

 

On the wife's 147 you have to use one of these adaptors to reset the service counter, protectionist wank.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

WORD, I've not been doing much shiting latey but I did spend 10 FRIGGIN HOURS fettling this Stilo last weekend. Heres what happened.

 

I've been driving this 45 miles/day for a few weeks now and I have to reluctantly admit that its a far better tool for covering ground in than my Rover 45 V6. It uses half the juice and is actually quicker in real-world situations due to not having to cane the engine - the JTD115 really pulls well in 3rd & 4th gear, storming up hils and burning off dawdlers a treat. I'm averaging 54mpg over a tank as well, and no back pain. It might look shit but it is a proper useful tool!!

 

However after getting it on the road it did have one serious problem. The rear axle bushes were F***ED. Clonking and banging on potholes, wobbling about in corners, it was really spoiling the drive. I read up about changing the bushes on various forums and it looked like a serious war, with people going on about machining them down in lathes before installing, removing the axle and taking it to someone with a 20 tonne press, and god knows what else. I could not face paying a garage X hundred pounds to fix my £180 Fiat. So after mulling it over for yonks, a sunny weekend came round and I got stuck in.

 

 

1) Buy two new bushes off ebay for £36. Genuine fiat!!! They have some fluid-filled cavity in em or something. Experience with the Gooners taught me not to fit cheap shit Euro Car Parts efforts on these axle bushes. I must admit that I did give the outer metal tubes a 'polish' with the flap-disc thing in the grinder to help them go in!!! ON the fiat forum they reccomended machining them down by 0.15mm but if these are round to 0.15 mm i'll be amazed so I just gave them a gentle linishing and crossed my fingers.

 

2) Park the Stilo in the sunshine and jack up the arse end. Yes I know my gutters are fa disgrace - theyre asbestos annoyingly so I have to get a contractor to come and remove them (and the soffits FFS)

 

3) disconnect the brake pipes. These are aluminium and were corroded solidly into the fittings of course, so I had to give up the first time round and resume the job when I had some brake pipe to hand for fashioning replacements.

 

4) The bolt holding the axle on should just undo and come out. It did on one side but on the other was stuck inside the inner tube of the bush. Took 2 HOURS of mucking about turning it back and forth, tapping it with hammers and glugging WD everywhere before it came out.

 

5) Heres the bolt, the inner tube of the bushes is aluminium so they were well welded together. Anyway it was a nice sunny day though eh.

 

6) OK Heres the culprit! Looks pretty knackered eh.

 

7) I started by using a hacksaw to chop the middle out of the bush.

 

Eeeeewww!!!!

 

 

9) I'm not sure how these bushes are constructed but by chiselling out 2 metal rings inside each one you are left with just the outer tube

 

10) Heres the rubber bit!!!

 

11) Next I used the hacksaw to saw through the outer tube, trying hard not to saw the axle at all. I was about 90% successful, got the tube out after about 15 mins sawing, with a bit of low-level damage to the bore!!! Now we're getting somewhere though.

 

12) Flapwheel in the drill:

 

13) Used it with loads of WD to polish up the bore, cleaned up quite well

 

14) Noticed at this point that the back box is almost dead

 

15) Get the new bush out the freezer where it has been stored overnight on top of my tofu & edamame beans y0!

 

16) Splatter a few paint dots on so that the orientation is half-right!!! Also applied plenty of 'police lubricant' after taking this picture.

 

17) I spent £20 on this 'Y THO' brand "Fiat axle bush installation tool" from some random internet site. I expected it to be made of chinesium but it was pretty good to be fair. As you can see its basically a big bolt and two cups sized to pull the bush in. The bolt has a 19mm head and a 22mm nut - the nut has an integral thrust bearing and you are supposed to tighten the nut but I didnt have a 22mm ring spanner so had to tighten the bolt instead, which sounds like nowt but made the job about 10 times harder as theres so much friction - I nerly gave myself a friggin hernia. The bearing is key to the puller working properly!

 

 

18 Heres the bush going in. I heated the bore with a blowtorch beforehand (no pics as i was too 'on it') and the bush was still cold from the freezer. Despite all this it was a proper friggin war to get it in. I am amazed the tool did not break, but fair play to it - it did get both bushed properly installed without any damage!!!

 

19) Had to make 2 new short brake pipes. I cant massively reccomend this sealey pipe flarer, but it does work if you are patient!!!

 

20) Heres the suspension all reassembled. ONe of the bleed nipples was not too clever, with some heat on it I got it turning 90deg at best which was about enough to bleed it through!!!

 

All told it was about 4 hours for one side and probably about 5-6 for the other (mainly due to getting those big bolts out!!!!) I havent done any serious shiting for a while so it was quite satisfying to be able to complete this job.

 

 

To drive, the Stilo is TRANSFORMED. Flippin heck I could not believe the difference!!!!! No clonking at all, and it drives much sharper now, its a completely different car. Its actually got a very good ride quality, with big well-padded seats too and despite the 16" wheels it flumps over the potholes very well. I have to admit its a far better car than I expected it to be (mainly based on its shite looks admittedly). Now my commute is no hardship at all and sometimes I even take the longer more scenic route home!!!! The only thing really letting it down now is the non-functioning aircon, I am gonna get it pressure tested/regassed I think and see what happens.

 

PS. if anyone wants to use this tool (think it works on pretty much all medium-small Fiat products of this era) give me a shout!!! You'll defo need a 22mm ring spanner though!!

[solid61]

Back box looking rough is more than likely the outer skin falling off,nowt to worry about,mine fell off a good few years ago and the exhaust is still serviceable.Pleased you are enjoying it,the jtd stilo really does punch well above its weight.

[cort16]

Good result with the airbag. Trying to resolve airbag issues is normally like pissing into the wind without diagnostics.

 

Ive seen a couple of ka’s with a similar Bush setup that have been cut with the grinder , old bush pulled out , new one pushed in then migged back up. Probably not recommended .