Help!

[dinoj_611]

Can someone please help, my car has gone !Removed! up on me today and wondering anyone knows what's wrong with it

Just driving along and all of a sudden it was firing on three cylinders, the engine management light came on, drove on to stop at a safe spot, had a look under the bonnet but there was nothing obvious I could see.

Not only that the VSC light came on too and the light for the traction control off switch, and to top it off the light that shows the door is open is on when all the doors are closed.

I'm really scratching my head on this one,

PLEEESE HELP ME

Cheers

Dino

[Exvec]

I'd be looking towards the Battery mate..?is the power steering fault light showing at all.

[dinoj_611]

not at all, being the Battery won't cause it to run on three cylinders

[Druid Boy]

I would be getting a code reader hooked up to read the fault codes or taking it in to a professional for a diagnosis. There are so many things that could go wrong and your symptoms aren't pointing toward something obvious. Good luck.

[dinoj_611]

Had to bite the bullet and took it to the garage and found out it was a burnt out valve,

So in future reference if it happens to anyone else, check the compression

[Druid Boy]

Um, so, cylinder head off then?

[dinoj_611]

yeah, lucky enough no other damage

[Druid Boy]

Has the mechanic recommended a full service of the head or just replacing the valve?

[dinoj_611]

he cleaned the carbon off the other valves, he's not seen anything like this since we had 2 and 4 star petrol

[Druid Boy]

Sorry for late reply - I've been away for a while. Sounds like it is all sorted out now so hopefully you will get many more miles motoring along.

[dinoj_611]

cheers, the worst thing is the car has only done 59k miles

[Druid Boy]

Blimey, that's nothing. Low mileage isn't always a good thing as cars do need to be used to keep them reliable. Probably just a bit of bad luck with your valve. You should get plenty of miles/years out of it now. Might be worth giving it a good blast once in a while, once it is fully warmed up. I have a nice, uphill motorway slip road I use to 'clear the pipes' a bit every so often. You should see the soot it throws out of the exhaust! Clears quickly though.

[Flakmann]

Still don`t understand why all those electrics were affected.

[dinoj_611]

got plenty of hills but no motorways, there's one good thing about living on the isle of man no speed limits, so I do blast it on the mountain road when I've got a clear path in front of me.

as for the electrics Flakmann that's a mystery to me too, all is working fine now, she's running better than ever, but i'm going to start using redex to help clear the excessive carbon from the engine.

[Flakmann]

Some engines suffer from carbon build up under the exhaust valves if consistently used for short journeys. Merc 271 4Cyl engines are prone to this, and once the valve can`t snap shut, they will burn out in no time.

As Druid says, give it some welly now and again.

Still wondering about the electrics.

[dinoj_611]

I think it's a reaction the car has when you have a major fault