Fiat Uno idling problems solved in a quite dramatic way part 1

It was time to look a bit more spesifically what might have caused the idling problems and occasional twitching during driving. After removing the air filter box on top of the engine the single point injection is easily accessible. This feels a bit like an old carburetor actually. I've noticed that injection unit was dirty from here and there and decided to clean it a bit.

Fiat Uno Bosch Spi

 It was quite easy to take off. The hardest part was actually to remove the ignition wire. Here's another pic of ignition system:

Bosch Single-point-injection disassembled

The fuel return part I actually didn't manage to open at first. After I continued this operation on a another day it had disassembled itself by the spring that's inside of it. (Above pic that's already removed.) I didn't saw what was the original order of the parts on a fuel return thing so I had to put them by what I thought in a most logical way. Here I made a mistake but we'll get on that later.

After assembling all the parts back and putting ignition unit back in place it was time to try how it works. Well not good. Car didn't start but instead it caught fire. It's a pretty uncanny feeling when you notice the flames coming from the engine compartment. The fire was below the air filter box and I tried to extinguish it by snow (it's pretty snowy here in north at this time of year) but it was real hard. The firemen came and extinguished it absolutely in a proper way, this was an act of assurance because the car was located at that time on a first floor in a building full of people.

That fire was quite a bit of a surprise but after examining the car it didn't cause much damage. Part of the air filter box was melted away and air filter got really dirty. I inhaled a bit of fire gases and felt a bit unwell because of that. Well it was time to take this car to auto repair shop to see what went wrong.

Fiat Uno fuel filter, wiper motor and other minor things

I've done some minor maintenance with Fiat Uno. Like I mentioned last time, there are problems with idling which I decided to start tackling with changing the fuel filter. It is easily changed after depressurising fuel system by taking out fuel pump relay behind the ignition coil (look at the pic below), or fuel pump fuse which is located in the same place (right one on the pic) and then running the engine until it has run out of gas.

Fiat uno fuel-related relays and fuses. Also showing ignition coil on the right

Fuel filter in Fiat uno is located on the other side of the engine compartment and is easily replaceable. Shown here the new one installed and old one installed no more.

After noticing that air intake to cabin is full of old leaves and dirt I decided that proper thing to do would be to clean it. After all Uno's never had any cabin air filters. Here are the view before cleaning:

Old vacuum cleaner was quite handy here

having removed windscreen wiper and plastics beneath it, the wiper motor was also easily accessible:

Fiat Uno wiper motor

It didn't look like a 20-year old so the guess is that it's been replaced. Also note that clever piece of plastic which is tilted upwards on above picture. It's function is to protect the wiper motor. Anyways I still got the feeling that this construction as a whole in Fiat Uno below the windscreen is not really very water-resistant. Well the wiper motor was ok and it was time to assemble the parts back.

After a test drive the idling problem was still there, so we are moving to our next guesses, those being mainly the ignition coil and vacuum advance unit (attached to distributor). I've also been trying to take out the lambda sensor with no luck yet, it's really stuck on exhaust manifold! Someone has forgotten the copper paste...