Vauxhall Astra Yellow Engine Light

Hi There

I have a Y Reg Vauxhall Astra 1.6 Automatic with the yellow engine
management light on permanently.

The only symptoms (other than the light) seems to be very poor mileage
(i get about 250 miles with a full tank).

I have done some research on this matter and tried a few things
including:

1) Disconnecting the battery to reset the ECU - This turned off the
light but it then came back on after 10 mins of driving.

2) The paper clip test - In order to get the error code from the ECU I
connected a paper clip to some of the pins, however the diagrams show
on the web page were not similar to mine and the test did nothing
regardless of which pins I used.

3) Scoured the Haynes manual for ECU checks - This seems to point to
the EGR valve however without definate evidence of a fault I am
unwilling to start messing around.

Has anyone come across this or know how to peform a suitable test to
give a specific fault?

Thanks

Longman

 

Hi Longman

Before messing about with the ecu are the following points ok:

Does the car select the gears as normal or are they sluggish
When last was the car serviced and was the service light reset
Is there a lot of smoke out of the exhaust when car is warm
Does the car tick over as normal or does the revs drop occassionally


Regards

Dereck

 

I doubt very much if the paperclip method would work on a Y plate
astra, it certainly doesn't on my X plate Zafira . More or less random
fault finding seldom works on complex modern cars :-/. You need to get
the codes read by an auto electrician, or buy a cheap code reader
( see recent threads on this group), just pissing in the dark
otherwise.

 

Gear selection is smooth but I do get the vague impression that it is
being lazy with the gears and letting the engine slip too much
(although this could be my imagination).

Car was purchased 12 months ago from a garage and was fully serviced
at that point.

The car hs only done approx 20k miles.

The engine is runs/revs fine and their is no noticable smoke.

Thanks

Longman

 

Had this overfuelling problem with a 99 astra but to be honest it was
much worse than yours. engine managment light would go off and on.
sorry to say ended up with a new ecu