Spanner Light - What's your Guess

**bobby_rstevens** · 12th March 2008, 20:45

Evenings.

Right - well the spanner light has finally hit me!.

Came on and statyed on Monday morning after a 600 mile drive the day before. Tried driving the car but completley dead - limp home type thing..... Switched ign off and back on and spanner light went out.

Now it has been okay with no real problems but this morning - Spanner stayed again - swtiched off and back on and it cleared.

Surely has to be something sticking.... car does not feel as quick since Monday. I am taking it for a diagnostics test Friday to find what the code refers to but what is your guess?

Car is a 55 plate Elite 1.9Cdti (150) done 64K.

What's you guess? why would it clear so easy with just a restart?

Kind rgs

Bobby

**Woodsta** · 12th March 2008, 20:54

Ok, im going to guess its a intermittant MAF sensor fault?

Woodsta

**bobby_rstevens** · 12th March 2008, 22:45

Could well be.....

What are the symptons of the failing EGR or Swirl pot thingy... annoying thing is the car is not 3 yrs old until April but it has done 64K so no warrenty cover and the warrenty that came with the car does not cover electrics!! that will teach me!

Rgs

Bobby

**nutron** · 12th March 2008, 22:57

loss of power, increased fuel consumption...

**bobby_rstevens** · 13th March 2008, 00:19

Thanks man - is that for failing EGR, Swirl or both/either?

Apprecaited - just trying to sort the bduget for repair...

Rgs

Bobby

**Matty H** · 13th March 2008, 01:06

Had the dreaded spanner light four times on my current veccy. Every single time it has been a faulty sensor. Good luck

**djr69uk** · 13th March 2008, 01:11

not sure if this helps but my mate has a calibra 2 litre red top and has been having loads of probs with it recently. finally the EML came on and the fault was present. he disconnected and reconnected the battery and the fault went away completely. few mins into a drive it returned and the spanner light came back on. basically proved that it was an electrical or sensor fault and not something more sinister.

might help... might not.

**Woodsta** · 13th March 2008, 07:18

Originally Posted by bobby_rstevens

Could well be.....

What are the symptons of the failing EGR or Swirl pot thingy... annoying thing is the car is not 3 yrs old until April but it has done 64K so no warrenty cover and the warrenty that came with the car does not cover electrics!! that will teach me!

Rgs

Bobby

My car had done over the 60k warranty limit, i asked the vx garage to ask vx HQ to cover some of the cost as i knew i had a common fault. (swirl valve actuator)

They agreed and split the cost almost 50/50.

Worth a try.

Woodsta

**wickedwillie** · 13th March 2008, 07:52

hi Bobby R. Just three weeks ago I had my first bout of 2 spanner and limp mode episodes over a period of 2 days. Mine is Vectra SRI CDTi (150). Both times, a switch off and on cured the limp mode. I have read on this forum on more than one occasion of people going to dealers to get the car diagnosed on the Tech2 machine only to find 'no fault found' (at approx £45 per shot if out of warrenty). I therefore invested £32 in a U480 scanner via ebay. Checked my car to find 'no fault found'. This unit did clear the spanner light and does detect faults as I disconnected one of connectors and a fault was logged, which I subsequently cleared using the scanner once the connector was re-connected. My car has run faultless since the last limp episode. Good luck with yours.
This scanner does only check the engine sensors but £32 is not a large sum for something I think may get rather a lot of use during my ownership of this vehicle.

**bobby_rstevens** · 13th March 2008, 11:33

U480 - sounds good to me.

Dealer that I bought the car from has agreed to give the car the diagnostics for free for me - though the warrenty given with the car does not cover engine mgmt - Great!.

I will look into one of these code readers - as you say - if it saves one visit to the stealers for diag checks then it is work it.

Reset the battery this morning as spanner was on and car cut out and would not start again. Reset and is now running okay'ish.

In the stealers for the first MOT next week and bigger service. I am wondering now about the DPF thing. Reason being when I bought the car it was serviced by the trader/dealer but I know now that the dpf based motors need 5/30 or oil FS - doubt this was used. Have never seen a emissions light come on but if the Dpf was clogged due to crap oil would this report a spanner?

Can you force a re-gen on the Dpf with a U480 thing or is this just read only on the Ecu memory?

Apprecaite your input.

Rgs

Bobby