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MG MGF Technical - Flashing Engine Indicator warnig light

Whilst driving my mgtf 160 to work this morning I noticed a flashing warning light so pulled over. It was the Engine Indicator. Turned engine off and had a look through grill (checking coolant as well) and could see nothing obviously amiss.

Looked in the handbook and it says

"Illumination when driving indicates and engine fault
- If car drives normally arrange a service appointment
- If light flashes and/or car does not drive normally, avoid high speeds and seek immediate assistance"

Well the car is driving normally and on rerstarting the engine no light. Seeking immediate assistance is going to be difficult until early next week, so looking for advice as to possible faults this could indicate and potential damage to contine to use carefully.
David M

Arrange a service appointment - and have the error codes read off MEMS. I suspect that the Lambda outputs went out of synch, but could be any number of potential faults.

Arrange the service sooner rather than later - MEMS has a limited memory for recording the fault codes, and will over-write if left too long (I can't remember how long?)
Rob Bell

Thanks Rob,
That reflects my thoughts really, it's just I can't get it booked in until after the weekend and we are running short of cars in the household at the moment.

It was the fact it was flashing that worried me most
David M

I have the idea MEMS stores fault codes for 30 cycles (ignition on/off) - but I don't know where I got that information from so I may be wrong!

Tim.
Tim Jenner

flashing enginge managment lamp normally means the mems has detected a catalyst damaging misfire of some description
will need t4 diagnostic to confirm fault code and if read in freeze frame data can exactly determine when and under what conditions the fault occured
my advice would be not to drive if eml is flashing as you could possibly make the situation worse
sorry its not good news but i just thought i ought to let you know
best regards andy
zs andy

Just been called by the garage, they have found 9 faults registered. He read tehm out far too quickly to note them down and said they wanted to keep the car until tomorrow to investigate further.

A couple I sort of noted down

MIL circuit fault
Stepper motor
oil input temp
misfire

Now a bit worried as I suffered HGF in April/May this year and the car has been off the road due to that and a shunt, so that very few miles since then. Hope this is not expensive and/or terminal.
David Mills

There may be a few faults registered but there's no indication of how long any of them have been there is there? Most of them could have been there for ages and may have been just "transients"? do you think?Might not be much to worry unduly about.
Pete

Suggestion is that 8 of them may be to do with the HGF and not cleared at teh time as they are all overheat errors. The last is a mis-fire which the suggestion is to do with arcing HT leads.

Now thats reasonable, but is very poor that the diagnostics were not cleared and checked at HGF fix for a start. However, it is posible that the overheat is causing teh misfire and HT lead breakdown. So still not sure.

Have to replace the HT leads anyway so will try to get some magnecor fitted rather the the rubbish OEM leads.

Problem is Moto-build don't seem to be answering their phone and the web-site is gone so are they still trading. It's just they are the nearest stockist as far as i know.
David M

Motobuild have never been all that great at answering calls, so I wouldn't be too worried by that. But the absence of their website is odd? :o(
Rob Bell

It's certainly a shame that the error logging systems are a bit primitive (and not just MEMS - my 2001 VW is the same), recording the first and last instances of each error would be extremely helpful.

A misfire due to poor spark would explain the ECU response, if it suspects unburnt fuel is reaching the cat.

I did overhear someone saying that MotoBuild seemed to have dropped out of the running, mail order from B&G maybe, or I'm sure Techspeed would be able to help.

Mike Hankin

Just spoke to Moto-build and he was very helpful.
I had just been beaten to it by the garage :lol:
Unfortunately the garage is saying it has short leads on it and are not the same as the MGF VVC. I was pretty surprised as I was unaware that the HT leads had been changed.

Anybody know different?
David Mills

This thread was discussed between 21/10/2005 and 26/10/2005

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