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engine running rough after a couple of minutes

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  • engine running rough after a couple of minutes

    Hi, I'm hoping someone can shed some light on the problem Im having with my 2002 smart 450?
    the mechanic I gave the job of replacing my seized alternator to, has since washed his hands of trying to get to the bottom of the poor running thats now troubling the engine, the replacment alternator was a pattern part that I sourced to replaced it with,new wasn't available from Mercedes, this pattern one turned out to be faulty and wasn't charging, I explained to the supplier, that I needed a replacement before I could send the faulty one back, so it was a case of one in one out whilst on the ramp, this they agreed to, so I took the car back to do a couple of other jobs while waiting for the replacement, apart from not charging the car drove fine about a round trip of 6 mile.the replacement arrived and left it with the mechanic (I must stess that I told him there was no hurry and to do it when it suited) so it was at least 3 weeks or more when I inquired to how it was progressing, now he informs me that he's made the exchange and its charging but! there's another problem now, the car idles but has no throttle,and that he's looking into it, so I leave it with him and more weeks pass, when I enquire again he's sourced a secondhand throttle body fitted it and its still the same, i get the feeling he's losing interest in the job even though he admits he doesn't know what his next moves going to be, so I start doing some research on the internet, I soon discover that its bad news to fit pattern part or rebuilt alternators , with more research I find a post where the problem of the alternator is in the regulator thats fitted to most aftermart alternators, and its this that has some affect on the ecu, which in turn throws up electical problems, one being the throttle, fortunately the supplier told me they didn't need the fault alternator back, so I purchased the recommend regulator I had read about and took the faulty alternator to an auto electrican who repairs alternators, had him see if he could fix the charging problem and replace the regulator I had brought, which turns out was the problem in the first place, so now I take this to the mechanic and ask him to make the swap again, and tell him why I have chosen this cause of action, a week later and the swaps been made, we have charging, but again no throttle, its at this point he's given up and wants no more to do with it,, so Ive now towed it back to my garage,the battery was flat (which by the way was new because I thought this was the original problem not the alternator) so charged it up fully over night and set about seeing if I could make any sense of it, the car starts straight away into its fast idle, but its hunting and running really erratic, and pressing the throttle has no effect whatsoever, so I ran a scan to see what fault codes were stored and there was a few, so I cleared all the codes not knowing how historic they were, the car started fine, idled fine and thottle responed to the peddle, the car had being running for a couple of minutes and I was thinking all was well and I take it for a run, when came a loud squeal from the engine and it returned to its lumpy running and no throttle again, so I scanned again to see what fault codes I had nowI only had two now one being one cocerning the dash which I think is revcounter, thats not worked in a long time, and the other code N3/10(meg) which I think is the problem, I cleared the codes started the car again and again everthing was fine for the first couple of minutes, then the same loud squeal which is momentarily then the same rough running and no throttle, I beleive the loud squeal is one of the belts, (which are both new and tensioner) but what I'm thinking is the engine for a moment more or less stops, causing one of the belts to slip for a second or two, because its at this same time the engine becomes erratic and loose throttle, I did disconnect the battery on one occasion for 10 minutes just rule that out, but it made no differance, Ive a horrible feeling the ecu is damaged but can't understand why it runs fine to start with, so for the long post hope people stayed the coarse and can help me, much appreciation in advance.

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