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!! HELP !! My Emissions Light ?? is on!!!


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QUOTE(tdwindustries)
excellent, yet again my friendly dealer has astounded me.  they are going to diagnose it tomorrow morning for free smile.gif style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Nice! Try and get the printout, or at least the fault code and whether or not it's intermittent - that way we can look it up and suggest some possible causes, rather than relying on the dealer's diagnosis.

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QUOTE(snoopstah)
Try and get the printout, or at least the fault code and whether or not it's intermittent - that way we can look it up and suggest some possible causes, rather than relying on the dealer's diagnosis.

cool thanks snoop will do

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QUOTE(gargoil)
You can do most things with the freeware version!

Good point. The main reason I registered was that you can't read above block 20 or so with the freeware version, and the higher blocks are vital for diagnosing knackered 1.8T cars, one of which I had at the time.

Although I think you can't set all the central locking options with the freeware version either (doesn't let you go high enough with the adaptation settings).

Will read fault codes fine though.

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Took it in and they diagnosed it.... doesnt sound too healthy. In fact its started running funny - tick over isnt smooth and very slight `mis-firing`..... oh dear.

Here are the error codes:

P1425 / 17935

P0010 / 17833

P1527 / 16394

The garage bloke said they are all related... any ideas?

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QUOTE(tdwindustries)

P1425 / 17935

P0010 / 17833

P1527 / 16394

17935 = Intake Camshaft Contr.Circ.,Bank1 Short to Ground

17833 = Tank Vent.Valve Short to Ground

16394 = -A- Camshaft Pos. Actuator Circ. Bank 1 Malfunction

Sounds like fun. Shorting to ground can sometimes indicate a duff connection or problem somewhere in the wiring. The fact that more than one thing is showing 'shorted to ground' means that they might all get their power from the same point, which means that it might be something as simple as a knackered relay or even a blown fuse. Alternatively, could be a whole lot worse sad.gif style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />

Wiring in some way (duff wiring, loose connections or power supply issues) would be my first guess. Did they say if they were intermittant or not - intermittent faults would definately point to a loose connection.

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Worst case `wiring-wise` is that you've got water ingress into the loom somewhere, which could take hours to diagnose and require most of the loom ripping out. This was the problem I had with my Ibiza Cupra, which caused it to break down with different faults every 2 weeks for 6 months - eventually rejected it through the finance company!

Worst case otherwise is that the parts listed are actually faulty, in which case you need to replace them, which sounds like it would be an expensive job, `labour-wise`.

But the chances of either of those being the case with you are very slim, so don't worry. The fact that two of those codes relate to one part of the car and one of them to another means that the chances that either of the parts actually having failed are pretty unlikely (you're very unlikely to get two unrelated problems at the same time). Which means that the common wiring is the most likely cause, and that means a loose connection is probably the problem. Just a matter of finding it, now.

Be aware that your car will probably not run properly until you have both fixed the problem *and* cleared the fault codes. This means that it's a lot harder to diagnose when it's fixed, as (most likely) it won't suddenly start running right.

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QUOTE(snoopstah)
This means that it's a lot harder to diagnose when it's fixed, as (most likely) it won't suddenly start running right.

thanks for this snoop - confused what you mean by the last sentence though? Are you a VW mechanic?

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Not even close! I've just had rather too much experience of this kind of thing, unfortunately. What generally happens is that the car will adapt to the problems caused by the fault, by (for instance) running too rich or too lean (this would cause rough idle and misfiring). This process is far from instantaneous, though.

In turn, this means that when you solve the problem, the car will not instantly readapt back to the proper settings, but will continue to run badly for a long time. Also, the fault codes do not clear themselves, even when the fault is fixed, and it's quite possible that the ECU has engaged safe mode because of them, which will also cause the engine to run badly.

When you clear the fault codes (either by laptop or VW dealer tool) the ECU will stop running in safe mode. The process of clearing the faults also resets the ECU's engine adaptation settings back to the defaults, which means it will reset the lean/rich correction, for example. So it's only when the fault codes are cleared that the car starts working fully again, *not* when the faults are actually fixed.

As an example of this, I had a fault code on my car for approximately three months, caused by disconnecting the battery one day. Despite this only having happened once three months ago, the fault code persisted until I cleared it. Fortunately a fault like that did not cause any degradation in performance (or cause the check engine light to come on) so I only noticed it when I scanned my car at a later date.

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Hope it gets sorted. Unfortunately, wiring problems are almost impossible to `self-diagnose` without the wiring diagrams. Shame it wasn't a simple knackered sensor or something - those are easy to fix!

For the record, you can look up fault code descriptions here.

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Hi

I have had this problem on 3 lupo gti's now and they can not find the problem .

I put it down to me driving round in the red on fuel and making the cat kick out crap emmisions causing the lambor sensor to pick this up and turn on the light .

Also it does not seem to effect the permormance in anyway that u talk off.

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The engine check light can come on for a huge number of reasons - unless you have the same fault codes as someone else, it's very unlikely that you had the same problem.

You need the `Key-USB` adaptor for your laptop. Alternatively, you could get a `USB-Serial` convertor, but many of them are rumoured not to work properly with `VAG-COM` (due to the signal timing being very important) sad.gif style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />

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