My daughter has a 4 year old Punto 1.3. It's done around 35,000 miles. In past few months, it's stalled about once per fortnight when the engine is warm, and she's slowed down and stopped in traffic. Worse it was quite hard to restart she says, not firing for some 30-40 seconds (I assume not because it was flooding, but that is possible).
Took it to a maintsream Fiat dealer to be checked, and they said that a "sniffer test" had shown some evidence of oil in the engine coolant, therefore meaning the head-gasket was on it's way out - though they added the contaminaton was not bad at this point. They charged me £35 for the diagnosis, and quoted nearly £500 to fix this, and claimed that would be the problem.
I then asked another local garage, who felt uncertain that such a problem would cause stalling, and offered to check it for me, as well as check the idle jet was clean.
They confirmed the sniffer test result, and said that was NOT marginal, so it needed doing in a few weeks. They kindly charged us £75+ for this test and jet clean (they said it that was OK though), so we've now spent £110 on two diagnosis's :-(
Their quote was £350 to replace the head gasket, including skimming the head and doing a pressure test afterwards, but said they'd give us some kind of credit towards the £75 spent.
Not really sure we've gone about this in the best way; and really don't know how best to proceed now. My daughter is loathe to spend up to £350, but then now feels nervous about using the car in case it seizes. Is that likely? Is this likely to be the cause of the irregular stalling? Is there a better solution that anyone could suggest?
Thanks Neil