I just bought a 2007 GT diesel. On the test drive nothing was showing up on the dash and all seemed good for the money so I purchased the car.
When I got out onto the motorway after 5-6 miles the VDC failure warning came up on the dash. After the car has been turned off and back on again, the VDC warning goes away. But comes back on again after travelling at high speed for about 5-6 miles again!
My problem and confusion lies with the fact I can drive the car around town i.e at lower speeds for as long as I like with no warnings coming on at all, the warning only comes up at higher constant speeds like when on a motorway
Anyone have any ideas/help? Its really disheartening my purchase of the car which I love the look of and always wanted one.
Also on a side note, the car is handling rubbish, it feels like the car is floating on ice almosts and wants to wander, I have bought alot of cars in the past and thought it was down to worns suspension bushes and joints etc and took this into account with the purchase of the car and its price, so Im hoping when I drop it to my mechanic on Friday thats all it is....Anyone else have experiance of issues like this with a GT either?
Any help would be appreciated, new to the Alfa buzz and love the styling of the car!
The VDC warning can be a result of the steering wheel centre position not matching how it was set when last calibrated with diagnostic gear. This difference may come from a hasty adjustment to tracking.
Other aspects of your handling vagueness may originate with worn shocks, tyre brand/pressure, lower wishbone wear.
Oh great, this sounds like it could be the problem , the car had a new driveshaft the day before I bought it and the steering wheel is really crooked as the car evidently had a butcher putting the driveshaft in that didnt care about the tracking again!
Cheers for that, hopefully getting the tracking redone could solve this
I just bought a 2007 GT diesel. On the test drive nothing was showing up on the dash and all seemed good for the money so I purchased the car.
When I got out onto the motorway after 5-6 miles the VDC failure warning came up on the dash. After the car has been turned off and back on again, the VDC warning goes away. But comes back on again after travelling at high speed for about 5-6 miles again!
My problem and confusion lies with the fact I can drive the car around town i.e at lower speeds for as long as I like with no warnings coming on at all, the warning only comes up at higher constant speeds like when on a motorway
Anyone have any ideas/help? Its really disheartening my purchase of the car which I love the look of and always wanted one.
Any help would be appreciated, new to the Alfa buzz and love the styling of the car!
Odd! You shouldn't need to touch the tracking when doing a driveshaft. Sure, get the tie rod out the way, but that's all.
Maybe, they couldn't separate the taper in the hub carrier and split the inner/outer rack ends as a cheat?
I'd be having someone who knows their stuff put the car up in the air, make sure it's physically close by left/right measurements first, the steering wheel indexes on a master spline so should be close to spot-on initially.
Ive no idea mate, I was told he ended up having to take the entire hub off if that would make more sense to you? Im sorry im not very mechanically minded and wouldnt know much about the procedure! I am bringing the car to my mechanic in the morning to give it a good once over underneath and see whats going on with my handling! Will keep you posted how it goes! Cheers!
there was a post a while back where someone with a 3.2 was having issues with the VDC doing all sorts of odd things, what I thnk happened was that the car had been parked up for a while with the steerin at full lock, the battery had run down and then beem replaced with a new one.
in the meantime the steering was still at full lock so what was postulated happened by several people was that the car had incorrectly learned the steering wheel position causing the VDC errors, in the case of the other car after taking out the VDC fuse to confirm it was this that was causing trouble I seem to remember an ECU reset was done and the car parked up with the steering centered.
so try an ecu reset, procedure is easy to find, just do a forum search..remember with the derv it will not reset the throttle becuase it doesn't have one but it does as far as I am aware clear all learned parameters and allows you to start from scratch.
it does sound like you have a couple of underlying other issues as well but thus might be a good place to start to eliminate something ''silly''
Well after a visit to my mechanic we found that there was some wear to some of the front wishbone parts (not all), so I decided to purchase a full front wishbone kit off Ebay which was fitted!
The Rear lower control arms had some damage to 1 and were all quite perished looking so I also replaced the 4 of these while I was at it!
Couple all this with 4 Wheel Laser alignment and now the car is driving and handling like a dream! :wavey::wavey:
THE VDC FAILURE HAS ALSO DISAPPEARED AFTER ALL THIS WORK, IM PRESUMING THE WHEEL ALIGNMENT WAS WAY OFF AND THIS WAS AFFECTING THE TRACTION CONTROL SYSTEM TO SHOW UP A FAULT!!! HAPPY RESULT!!!!
You obviously didn't do a search on here first or you wouldn't have .. usually poor quality parts which will need to be replaced again in a few months.
Normally there would be obvious signs the front wishbones are on the way..clunking,knocks,squeaks etc etc..surprised they got bad enough to throw the VDC out without being picked up by an MOT tester or a mechanic..!
Glad its sorted for you though,always nice to see a positive outcome..
To be honest im not surprised at all. Ive bought quite a few cars in the UK and I find the MOT quite sub standard. The Irish equivalent (NCT Test) is a hell of alot more strict and thorough (often to my annoyance haha) I have had UK cars before with a full 12 month MOT and when its imported into Ireland and re-registered we need to put it through an NCT test as the UK one is void. Ive had cars come out with 4-5 significant enough issues which should have been picked up in an MOT but werent.
Either way Im glad its sorted now, the wishbones I had an idea about, but had no idea about the LCA's which were the main fault for the "fish-tail" handling
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