156 1.8 TS engine troubles

Hi everyone. I'm looking for ideas as to what might be wrong with my wife's 1.8 TS. It's a 1999 car coming up to about 90,000 miles. it's on its original cat, airflow meter, lambda sensor etc. I changed the coil packs at about 60,000 miles for a set from a scrap car to sort out a slight misfire, but other than that (and plugs), I've replaced nothing else.

The car is now running a bit worse than usual. There are what I'd call "hesitations", rather than misfires, occasionally. The exhaust smells odd - a sort of chemically eye-watering smell, not unlike rotten eggs. On occasions my wife complains about it "kangarooing". I've not managed to get it to do that as yet. It seems to have as much power as it ever did, the hesitations are only at light throttle openings. Occasionally the idle speed fluctuates wildly and it has stalled once or twice. I've tried disconnecting the airflow meter and it doesn't make any difference.

I was wondering about changing the lambda sensor first...

I've heard about "Alfadiag" and I have access to a laptop. Would it work on a 1999 car?

AlfaDiag will work .. it was written for the early models ... you'll also need a VAG/COM KKL interface cable (cheap from HK on ebay!)

As for the rotten eggs smell .. that's usually the cat not getting up to temperature.

Get hold of AlfaDiag and find out what is wrong, You can clear the ECU parameters so it starts to relearn how you drive and also reset the idle speed motor, which is often the cause for the "kangarooing"

A simple trick is to turn on the ignition for 90 secs, turn it off for same, then start the car and leave to idle for a few mins. Don't touch or use the accelerator while doing this ... the sequence resets the throttle. You may have to try a couple of times.

90000 on all the same Bosch electrics is probably one for the "Guinness Book of Records" ... the lamdba will probably have started to fail by now ... they have a life of about 60K. MAFs don't usually last that long either and are harder to diagnose as they don't give a error code until they have failed completely .. when the management light will also come on.

Does it have plenty of oil in it? Ever been run low?

Thanks Garry, I'll have a look at getting the Alfadiag stuff together. I'm also reading the Kangarooing thread with interest!

Yes, the oil level is fine and the car has never been run low on oil since we've had it (which was about 2 years old). Interestingly, it never used to burn a drop of oil until it snapped its cam belt. I did the work to fix that myself and ever since then, it has used oil like (errrm) an Alfa!

Run some redex through the fuel and use a couple of tanks of the good stuff, V-power has good detergents in, if the cats smelling of rotten eggs then it's dead, it's been contaminated (she hasn't been using lead additive has she?