Old Clio 197 not running right...any help please?

[PaulM70]

Hi everyone,

I’ve had my Clio 197 a few years now and never had any problems with it until now. It’s driving me crazy tbh. It’s on a 06 plate.

I’ll set the scene for you. I was driving home from work a few weeks ago and the car suddenly lost power and went into limp mode. I pulled over and waited a few minutes then went to pull away and heard a few pops and bangs (unburnt fuel?). These pops and bangs continued but I managed to crawl home which was only about 5 minutes away. Here’s a list of what I’ve changed thus far;

New spark plugs
New air filter
New set of coil packs (4)
New camshaft sensor
New dephaser solenoid sensor (genuine)
Lambda sensor (both)
Exhaust (middle section, I had a spare one I bought years ago)
I’ve cable tied the MAP sensor

I’ve had a local guy come out and run diagnostics on it and it came up with two faults :-

Camshaft senor
Dephaser solenoid sensor

After this the car runs ok for around 3 miles then goes back into limp mode with popping and banging again. The car starts first time and seems to rev ok. No warning lights coming up on dashboard. No strange noises coming from the engine but the problem does seem to happen when I start to exceed 3-4000 rpm??

Any advise/help would be really appreciated. It’s got me stumped.

Great site btw

 

[Foxspeed]

what have you done over the 2 sensor faults???

as the cam sensor being faulty will cause eml to come on and in theory go in limp as will a possible cam phaser ie the ecu does not know where the cam is or vvt is!

 

[PaulM70]

Thanks for the quick reply mate. I've changed both sensors with new ones.

I've also used an obdII reader with torque and it's displaying no faults after these were replaced. It's a strange one as it will let me drive it for say 15-20 mins fine then goes into limp mode.

 

[FishFart]

I had similar issues. Not exactly same but, had problem with unstable and/or choking idle and overall loss of power. Changed spark plugs and replaced throttle body (which i used from a friend for test purpose) and the car now runs fine.

Hope it helps to just try checking out TB.