My wife's Felicia 1.6 petrol has occassional loss of power, when she has to drop to a low gear to get revs to build up. Will happen several times in succession and then be OK for several weeks. When it haoppened yesterday she noticed that the alternator light flashed momentarily.

Any ideas????

Frank

yes alternator light would be a possible side effect of the engine having actually stopped completely momentariliy along with the oil pressure light coming on maybe too..

 

my gut instinct would say it's an electrical fault rather than mechanical, possibly the hall effect switch inside the distributor is getting tired, you can replace the hall effect switch but it is quite a fiddly job, sometimes easier to just stick a different distributor on there instead.

Hi Teflon Tom

Thanks for this info. Sounds like I need a new Hall Effect sensor.

Any idea where the best place to get such a sensor?

I spoke to my local Skoda dealer and he was talking £80 - would like to get for much less than that if possible.

Thanks again

Frank

I seem to remember the distributor is sold only as a complete assembly on the 1.6 engine, from skoda they are on exchange basis too so you give them back your old one in return.

 

I would have a look around some scrapyards for it, the polo uses the same distributor too, there 2 types however, the bosch type which the 1.6 engine has, and the magneti-marelli type which some 1.0 and 1.4 polos have, it will interchange easily so long as you get the matching rotor arm and cap with it, the bosch have an orange dizzy cap, the magnetti ones have a black dizzy cap, its an identical fitment on both but the arm and cap are specific to them. hope that makes sense?

 

the hall effect switch is inside the distributor and has a 3 pin plug on it, it can be accessed by lifiting the little black circular cover out under the distributor cap, its also worth checking inside there for moisture and/or engine oil seepage too because that play havoc with it.