TomLS

Bump. The light is still flashing sporadically, but the vehicle is still working fine, nearly a month on. Any ideas?

Hi all, My friend has a 1.4 Lupo, and recently the alternator failed. Off I went to ebay and bought a second hand replacement, and tonight I fitted it (Had to drop the engine on its mounts - good design or what...!). The new unit was a Voleo (or something like that!), and the one I removed was not, but both were 70A and otherwise identical. On restarting the car, I let it idle, pulled a terminal off the battery, and let the car run for 5 minutes, which it did without interruption. The test meter reads a steady 13.8v at idle, and 14.2v after about 1500rpm, and the un-loaded battery was 12.4v, so all fine there. However when I got in the car I noticed that the battery charge light (which with old alt, was constantly on), to be flickering randomly, sometimes fast, sometimes on solidly - at idle,sometimes off altogether, but with no repeating pattern. The voltage it produces is constant under load, it has been driven for 20 minutes with a previously knackered battery, so the alt appears to be working fine, and the 2-pin plug on the back appears to be fitted securely. Anyone got any hints?! Tom.

Ok, I've got a 1.0E X-reg Lupo. Gearbox is noisy on power and overrun, but it's not a whine, it's a chuffing, a bit like a steam train, but still definitely drive-train related (its not a blowing exhaust). It has been getting slowly louder over the last 4k miles or so. The noise goes away when the clutch is depressed. The noise gets more high-pitched, and faster, the faster the car goes. It doesn't change when I change gear, except that it briefly stops when I depress the clutch. (By which I mean whatever the gear, the noise is the same, as long as speed is constant). The gears are still as easy to change as always, no problems there. I assume this means its my output bearings? However if this is the case why doesn't it happen regardless of clutch position as the output is always turning whilst moving? Its not the clutch release baring as there's no rumbling from the depressed pedal, and the baring's only under strain when the pedal is depressed. Still looks like its a new gearbox no matter how you look at it . Will be emailing 1st Gear Transmissions tomorrow

In my quest to find which emulator I need, I really need to know what type of ECU the 1.0l uses - anyone got any idea what type it is? I see OBD and OBD2 bandied about a lot. Cheers

I'm with you, but a lot of people have converted injected vehicles to single point open/closed loop gas systems. I would expect dry-firing the injectors would cause them to fail pretty rapidly and fill my engine with lovliness, no? Having kind of given up on the direct Lupo search route, I have discovered that a bank of emulator resistors and a relay is used. Therefore the signal to the injectors is switched to resistors that are sensed by the ecu to be the same as the injectors, and it has no idea they have been disconnected. The relay opens the gas valve allowing the alternative fuel to flow. The only other thing as far as I can see is the Lambda. I could go for a closed loop system and use the lambda feedback to control the gas flow - but that would require merging the ecu signal to an aftermarket stepper motor - not possible for li'l old me! So it looks like I will have to deal with the 'Engine Check' light when on gas, or hope there's some way to disrupt the lambda system when my new VAG-COM system arrives If anyone does have any ideas, I'm still interested to hear them!

About 45mpg if I rag it. However with LPG giving a conservative 85-90% economy, and slightly more than half the price, that would be equivalent cost of >80mpg at petrol prices. Not sure why you're so disgruntled? Just because it's already cheap doesn't mean it wouldn't be better, cheaper. Does anyone know the answer to my question?

Via the vacuum created by the pistons - just like a carburetted engine, it enters with the air.

As there seem to be NO topics at all on the conversion of a Lupo to run on LPG, I thought this would be the place to ask this question. As I'm old school and anything with electronics angers me, I want to know if there's a simple (read: cheap/free) way to stop the injectors from firing, as the pump keeps running on most vehicles when using LPG. I've no idea how the lambda feedback loop would function on anything other than petrol too, so I guess what I'm really asking is if there's any way to shut down everything other than the coil pack! I'm fairly adept at fitting and tuning single-point LPG kits and have almost everything I need to do the conversion lying in the garage, except an electronic engineering degree! Any help would be much appreciated! (And Megasquirt is too expensive before someone mentions it...)

Sorted it: Thank you to halfords for displaying Haynes manuals out of the plastic for my viewing Turns out the 2000-2002 Polo has a very similar design! 3hrs fighting owned by a little knowledge and a pair of pliers. From starting it was done and test driving within 10min . Apparently you just lift some pin which turns out to be the self-adjusting pin Problem solved!

What an ass-about-face piece of crap design they are! Right, having tackled many a set of drum brakes before, I offered to have a look at my friends Lupo which she was complaining was pulling to the right and grinding at the back on braking. Seemed to be the LH rear drum to me, especially as I bled the whole system for her a few months back. Pulled it all off, no problems. Checked cylinder function, but having an inexperienced person in the driving seat meant she floored the pedal, and the horizontal plate which transfers the handbrake force between both shoes promptly fell out. After 3 hrs of grunting, sweating, and swearing, we went back outside to look at the brakes again I finally got it repositioned and back to how it started. As there was nothing actually wrong, I went to put the drum back on. No. Why are the shoes now ~1mm to far apart to fit in the drum? After 5 hrs this has really peed me off, and I can't seem to find a solution anywhere. And yes before you say it: the drums have formed a small lip around the outside from wear, but it came off ok!! Cheers all Tom.

Ok cool. I've had the pads out and there's no stone, so looks like it's a bearing. Never mind, at least it's a relatively cheap and easy job! Cheers.

OK, so I did a search and checked the archives but I can't see that anyone has put up a topic about this. My clutch is getting slippy under power if I'm hoofing it (and 'power' must be taken with a pinch of salt - it's a 1.0l!) I know roughly what I'm doing, but I'm just wondering if there are any major problems / pitfalls associated with removing a Lupo engine? - Is the gearbox separately mounted so it can be left in-situ, or do I have to pull both in order to get them lined back up as it's a transverse engine mounting? - How many different connections are there to the engine to remove? I have a feeling that because it's all so tight under there that I need to remove the front of the grille / bumper. Is it too much work to be arsed with, 'cos I can't really afford £200, nor will my car go very far without a clutch. You see my dilemma! Cheers guys.

I don't know how to stop it, but mine gets it and I think its specks of tar from the road too. I've got some stuff called 'conserver' it costs a fair bit but you only need a tiny bit on a rag and it will get rid of pretty much anything you can't get off - it even closes up slight scratches. I'd say it's like a professional car cleaners version of t-cut, but you wouldn't use it all over or as often!

Cheers Mike. No it never does it at idle, or if I rev it when stationary. It only happens when moving, seemingly above 15 but under 40 (either that or the road noise drowns it out!). Sometimes it isn't constant and squeaks in relation to wheel rpm.

But they were designed not to have servo assist - these aren't! Somehow I spotted this thread laaaate! Any way, I just checked mine and it seems to be fine. What were the perished hoses made of? Mine appears to be a hard plastic hose, not a rubberised one. I assume this is the hose under scrutiny?

The noise is intermittent, and seems to be coming from the front offside wheel. It appears to happen more after 15 mins of driving or so, and can be bought on by cornering. The only thing I can think of is wheel bearings but they normally rumble. The car drives fine, just an annoying sound. Anyone got any suggestions as to what it might be? Tom.

I'm trying to find out if the ignition is dependant on the fuel supply, or if it's just controlled by the throttle position. I want to gas my lupo but I'm worried that if I cut off the fuel supply + power to the injectors, the ECU will throw a wobbler. I know the IAT can be very easily fooled and wondered if there's a way round this with the injectors. Cheers Tom.

age = 20 points = 0 Claims = 0 Standard Lupo 1.0MPI Insurer = Bell £750 per year fully comp, living in a nice area, can drive anything (even my pa's Scooby 2.5XT )

Copied from another forum I frequent... Any admins reading this - could I request a sticky?

True! Just saying if you're expecting a hughe idfference in handling you're probably going to be disappointed.

The thing about removing the breather is that even if you can route it somewhere that the fumes won't bother you, the loss of strong negative pressure in the crank case can cause a previously dry engine to start leaking oil. As far as performance goes - unless you have some bad blow-by I promise you'll never notice the difference. The expulsion of hot oil vapour is a few cc's a second, in the same time the engine draws 1000's of cc's of air.

I asked a similar question a while ago and during my searching discovered that strut braces, particularly rear ones would make no difference to anything but a balls-out car, and barely any on something as small as a Lupo. I know 130bhp is a lot in a small car, but I think they're so small that there will be barely any flex in it any way? They fit by removing the rear carpet and plastic trim from the side wall sof the boot area and drill / bolt in between the rear struts. An hours work tops.

Thanks for the comments. I say have a go at your own. For £14 the pair they're almost perfect it just takes some time and care (and many hot glue sticks!)

The rears are... ready... 7". Nothing in that size that's not megabucks that I could see so I had to make some mdf spacers to take 6.5" as there's loads of choice in that size; and I had to modify the trim cards. Running the rear wiring is easy, just down over the passenger footwell and tuck ut up under the trim on the edge of the car. It's completely invisible then and I don't have interferance problems. Pics in this thread: http://forums.clublupo.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=40785

Why? I always hear this and as far as I can tell its just a dislike of the brand, not their products. I can't talk about their subs, but I've got a sony HU. Not only was it the best sounding unit for the money by a LONG SHOT, it was the best on paper too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a chavvy nob-end that loves crappy body kits, wheelspins between road bumps, and driving round council estates at 2am playing loud music, but I think is the brush Sony (and their users) have been tarred with in the ICE world.