altea 1.9tdi power loss!

[jingles]

Hi all, i really hope you can help.

I own a seat altea 1.9tdi 05 plate, the other day my orange engine admisions light came on and i started to loss power. I took it to a garage who placed it on a diagnostic machine which came up with this;

17055 shift solenoid e
performance stuck off
p0671

When the man looked up the codes and they were for the glow plugs, which he said would not account for the loss of power. He couldnt understand why it was saying shift solenoid as my seat is not an automatic.

He advised that it may be the MAF sensor, however reading some of the problems others have had i was wondering if the turbo vanes are stuck and it is going into limp mode.

To be honest money is tight and i dont want to go and spend a fortune on a sensor when it could be something else

Any advice/help would be very welcome

Thanks Jingles

 

[Viking]

17055 - P0671 does not tie in with a shift solenoid fault mate. The code for a shift solenoid fault is 17145 - P0761, so has someone been confused?

Anyway, can you just confirm which yellow lamp came on? Was it the engine management, or was it the glow plug?

 

[jingles]

hi, thanks for replying.

The codes came up as iv put them above and i think this is what confused the man!

The light that has come up on my dash is an engine (yellow) and the manual states; fault in the emissions control system.

The man who put it on the machine stated that it could be the MAF sensor as sometimes these dont show as faulty on the diagnostic machine and could account for the loss of power.

He told me to remove the sensor and give the car a run to see if any difference, which there is slightly but im still having trouble

thanks Jingles

 

[Viking]

17055 - p0671 is a glow plug fault code.

17145 - p0761 is a shift solenoid fault code.

See what I mean about getting confused? 761 against 671 in the later part of the code. If someone misread it then that would explain the confusion.

Okay, so it's an engine management light which came on. Now here's where it gets confusing (even more...). A glow plug fault will put on the engine management light, whereas the glow plug light coming on generally means a brake fault (brake lights not working, blown bulbs, faulty switch etc.)

A glow plug fault won't affect the power of the car or cause running issues (although it may be hard starting on cold mornings), but a brake switch fault (and a flashing glow plug light) can cause the ecu to shut down power by limiting the fuelling to the injectors. If you put your foot on the brake pedal while driving then the ecu sees you braking and cuts fuelling.

Anyway, you say you removed the maf? What you need to do is just remove the connector onto the maf and leave it in situ, then the ecu will default to set parameters. If you do this and there's more power then the maf is generally faulty. If there's less power then it could be that the maf is okay.

When you lost power did the stop and restart of the engine make it back to normal?

 

[jingles]

right ok, i think that makes sense!

The glow plug light has never come on it is just the engine management light. Although just before all this happened i had noticed that my car wasnt starting as well as it normally had.

When the MAF was connected the car would be very juddery and i got a lot of black stuff kicking out of the exhause whenever i tried to boot it. Restarting the engine didnt overly improve it

I have disconnected the Maf connector and left in situ, it runs smother (no judder or smoke) but still no power going up hills and unless i change down a gear i have trouble overtaking.

Again thanks for the help

 

[Viking]

If it's smoother running then it's a possibility that the maf is faulty. Two ways to check, first you could buy a new one and see how it goes, or second you could run some live logs with a diagnostic setup and see what the maf specified values are. Dunno how that works meself though.

 

[jingles]

i think that gona be my only two options, reading the forums i just wondered if it could be the turbo being the problem.

Thanks for all your help