So I scanned my car more fully with my new U281 scanner and it threw up half a dozen codes for a bunch of not very important things that were safe to erase or deal with but there's still one code that won't go away because in my haste to rid the car of any unnecessary offending accoutrements I threw away the little valve that opens the fuel tank vent and just left the electrical connector for it dangling there. Now the scanner keeps showing a tank vent thingy fault.

 

It's nothing to worry about since my tank vent hose it now just open and it probably isn't even considered at MOT time but I was thinking that when the little electric relay/valve was still connected the car's computery brain-gubbins would have read a certain resistance across the two wires to know if it was working or not. Now with the valve itself long gone in the bin I was thinking that if I just fit an appropriate resistor between the two wires in the loose connector then it should satisfy the car's electronic whims and not register as a fault code. So I was wondering if anybody knows what sort of resistance we might be talking about here so I could fit a resistor to fool the car into thinking there's still an evaporation valve thingy there.

1.5ohm according to the dealer manual  or just refit the valve and strap it out of the way

Ah lovely. Should have kept the old valve I suppose but I chucked it.

 

One of the other codes from my scanner was something to do with the immobilizer but I've cleared it and all is well. When I got the car a couple of months ago it came with two keys and one of them has a Seat logo and "Italy" on it, the other one still looks like one of the original  VW Polo keys so I'm wondering if this car even has an immobilizer at all anymore. I can't find it but it could have been removed long before I got the car which would be fine by me. Could explain the fault code. I don't really want one anyway since they do play up from time to time.

 

 

 

The car would of come from the factory with an immob as required by UK requirements, the immob box is about the size of a 20 cig box of fags, mounted under the dash with a 6 or 8 pin connector and the read coil is built in around the ignition key switch, & tbh most of the time they are pretty reliable, the read coils have been known to go open circuit or the chip in the key damaged if dropped (it's a glass tube about 3mm dia) 

 

As with any car you don't know the history of, read the codes, make a note of them (they could well of been there for a very long time !), delete them and re-read in a few weeks time, that way you can compare the old one with those since the delete and then maybe act on the ones that have returned