I have just obtained a very low mileage 2006 Fabia 1.9tdi Elegance estate for my daughter to replace her older but trusty high mileage Fabia 1.9tdi estate.

I’m checking the car over, servicing, timing belt/water pump replacement etc and generally going through it making sure it’s as good as it can be.

I’ve scanned the car (admittedly not with vcds) and the only code coming up is “01596 - Motor for Outside/Recirculated Air Flap (V154) - Open or Short to Positive”

I’ve pulled the glove box and operated the Recirculation button and watched as the recirculation motor operated, opening and closing the ‘door’ as the button was pressed (and lit up as it should). So it seemed to work absolutely fine.

As a further check I unplugged the electrical connector and plugged it into a known good recirc motor – it too operated exactly as the one fitted to the car. But it too came up with the same fault code. I’ve cleared the code multiple times (on both the original and known good motor) but the same fault code comes back.

The air con etc works fine – so I’m puzzled. I’ve had recirc motors fail before with that code but they had stopped working so swapping them out with a good motor allowed the fault code to be erased.

Anyone had similar issues – with an apparently working V154 recirc motor that shows this code?

Does the code suggest a calibration issue that needs vcds to resolve?

Or as I'm tempted to do, given that everything seems to work OK, is just leave it as is?

Thanks

25 minutes ago, gelertd said:

just leave it as is

 

This is the best course of action. 

Thanks Wino - appreciated.

I can guarantee if you scanned 10 MK1 Fabias, 9 of them would have that fault logged in the A/C ECU.

 

Most of them it will work but then turn itself off (default to open) after a period of time.

 

Sometimes a basic setting procedure will help, but normally it's a new motor. Just have to be 100% sure both flaps are aligned correctly with the master teeth on the gear or it jumps and that can cause setting faults.

Thank you - that's interesting to know.

 

I'm inclined to leave things well alone for the time being and re-scan when it comes back for service etc next time and take it from there.

 

 

 

 

I left it on the "closed" position and unplugged the flap from the switch. It used to open at the worst times (like behind a lorry driving through a tunnel) and a new, activated charcoal cabin filter did nothing to ease the smells coming from the outside. If I wanted corrupted exterior air I'd open the sunroof. Will do a basic setting when I can to see if it solves things.

Edited 24 June, 20197 yr by juanse_2691
Typo

Only downside to having it permanently closed is demisting could well be an issue.