[Closed] Another diesel thread! White-ish smoke, with a weird twist

leaky injector seal. Have you looked at your oil might have water in it. IE poss head gasket. Can you smell it (the smoke).

It means a new Pope has been elected.

ohnohesback - Member

It means a new Pope has been elected.

I'm in so much trouble, I think I've elected about 50 popes today.

My weird symptom's gone away, whatever was making it intermittant is now making it... mittant. So that makes things much simpler. Oil looks good. Smoke is smelly and acrid, definitely oil not steam.

I captured some smoke in its liquid form! Very rare to see this in the wild, I feel like David Attenborough.

(was eliminating components so popped the EGR valve and blanker off, just out of curiosity fired the engine and this is what came out of the EGR pipe. Just got this much out then it reverted to smoke after a few moments. I'm assuming this was a buildup, usually the EGR is blanked at the valve end but open at the exhaust end but I'm pretty sure it's diesel (blackened with soot).

So yeah, something fuel related, it's driving too well to be air starved I think so I'm saying overfuelling rather than under-airing, so probably an injector. Seeing as how it's a mondeo and all.

STDrivers folks are on it too, RACE!

Disconnect the pipe from intercooler to engine and try it? If the turbo is leaking oil the engine could run away, it runs on the engine oil being vaporised in the turbo, you can take the key out, retire to a safe distance and watch it self destruct in a cloud of smoke. Do a youtube search if you don't know what a runaway engine looks like...

(reason for disconnecting after intercooler is it can be saturated with oil)

Has she put petrol in it?

Hmm. Nothing comes out of the intercooler pipe at idle. (can't arrange to boost it and watch it at the same time but I'd bet 10 pence there's not a ton of oil in there) I like that thought, I'll repeat it and see if it throws vapour or oil on boost but if it doesn't then I might just stick my neck out and rule out the turbo. (which I'm close to doing anyway)

No definitely not got petrol in! Last filled up about 200 miles ago, supermarket pump as per usual but if it'd been fuel I reckon it'd have happened before.

tons of white/light grey smoke- enough to be worrying about safety on the road, that sort of leve

And you kept diving thinking I've switched it off and on seems fine so must be fixed.
You didn't thinking of calling the AA or whoever to save a sheload more damage.
Are you checking it's oil levels as the white smoke is probably that? Get it to a garage and find another transport until it's fixed or your ST on stilts will stop working on a roundabout with a seized engine or whatever.

Of course I've checked the oil, and said that up the page. Thanks for your contribution though 😕

I don't think that is oil on its own but dirty water and oil. Didn't you flood the car recently? If so remove the Intercooler and shake out any water trapped in there. Any water trapped in the pipes either side of the intercooler should run out on its own but force the open ends as low as possible to help. There is a a wire wound pipe that goes under the engine and this is lowest point in the boost pipes. Remove it and clean it out. Check the under the air filter for any other trapped water.

I was thinking there might be a connection between the flooding and this too. Something that had started to corrode maybe? Sorry, I have bugger all idea what the problem might be of course, but , y'know, it being STW, never let a dearth of knowledge get in the way of a contribution. 🙂

Northwind, if you look up videos of Seafoam and see if the smoke is similar. Seafoam is water based too.

At about 70k on my Mondeo 2.0 tdci 130 there were similar probs turned out to be a common rail pressure sensor playing up. I would of thought that the ECU would have picked this up though. Could be an injector playing up. This doesn't necessarily cause a fault code unless the mixture leans off and is read by the oxygen sensor. Could it be a couple of heater plugs playing up. Ie faulty wiring, they do help the cold running for a bit until the engine warms up.

I had similar with a rover 220 sdi(but it happened all the time) - the diesel return pipes had split, diesel all over the shop (white smoke), rough as extra air/too little fuel was getting into the system (extra white smoke). But it was pretty constant.

I know my 2.0 tdci is chain, but I had a rover sd that gave the same symptoms with a timing belt on it's way out, swopped it out and it was grand until a stupid hungarian man pulled out in front of me. No idea what the 2.2 uses (that the renault based engine?).

STD rivers.

How unfortunate a name!

Head gasket.

The 2.2 is a ford unit completely different from the pug/Citroen unit. Wish I'd got the 2.2 I may have kept mine and replaced the injectors.

A small hole in one of the small gauge turbo control pipes can cause similar issues and not throw up a fault code however I am assuming that you may have some other mods to your power plant and I found that an intermittent MAF fault would do similar things but reset itself on turning the engine off.
You could get an assistant to hold a sheet of white paper at the exhaust to see what it catches ie oil, diesel or water.

Why did I think 'Mondeo' as soon as I saw the thread title...

Anyway, my 2.0 tdci Mondeo is doing similar. Random bouts of white smoke on start up. Lumpy like its missing when initially firing it up. I think its a leaking injector or an injector that has forgotten its code. The smoke being excess fuel.
I thought the euro 3 models didn't trip the eml when the egr was blanked???
Fancy a trip to Delphi to get it fixed? Whilst there we can ask them why their products crap out all the time while the Bosch system in my old xr2i was going strong after 120k...

Let us know what you find.

The egr blanking on the mk3 won't trigger the EML. I was quoted near on 1k to get the injectors fixed. Damn shame as it was a great car. Buy newer sell sooner is my new motto.

Classic symptoms of a leaking injector, or very possibly the timing has jumped (think it can jump two teeth before very bad things happen), but I would expect a more consistent issue combined with starting issues.

Proper diagnostic kit that shows injector balance may show up what one, but not guaranteed. Sometimes a leak off test shows it up.
If it's consistent, an injector cut-off test might show up what one, but if it's leaking, there's every chance it'll keep leaking even when turned of.
Only guaranteed method without swapping with a known good injector, is to get them all tested. But given the cost of getting them tested (was £25+vat per injector locally a couple years ago, so probably nearer £30 now), buying a new injector and swapping around saves money but costs more time.

BTW, you do realise blanking the EGR raises the cylinder temperature, which can get things hotter than they should normally be?

PS. message me on FB if you need any help with it.

OK folks, thanks for joining my crowdsourced troubleshooting session 😉 I'll just bash through some suggestions here and then finish up with a to do list, see if it makes sense.

@craigxxl- I was hoping you'd post! The dirty oil/whatever came from the EGR pipe not the intercooler pipe. It doesn't seem like oil/water mix, too consistent- I've left it to see if it'll settle or separate or anything like that.

I need to check the intercooler tomorrow so I'll follow your drain suggestion- I think I'm on the line of eliminating that rather than confirming it but good to have such a clear line, cheers!

I'm going to put one scottish pound on it being smoke not steam, partly just because it moves heavily if you know what I mean, but mostly because of the smell.

@Inbred- pressure sensor seems reasonable, it ought to code but I don't like assuming that it will. I'll shelve that for the moment as I can't test it myself (it's like House MD this "Don't test for that" "Why not?" "Because if it's that, he's dead"). It's not temperature sensitive and does start fine from cold so I'm inclined to rule out glows.

@bikebuoy- my thinking is not head gasket- engine oil is nice and oily, no emulsion, and both oil and coolant levels seem stable (it could be burning a little oil or leaking a little water but not in quantities) It is on the list of things to think about later though.

@Suggsey- I've run it for a good time on the drive and it doesn't seem to be dropping anything, will see what I can get with a bit of paper. Holes in pipes definitely a contender but again, a bollocks to test for. But definitely on the list.

It is remapped and decatted, has a pipercross filter on it (in standard airbox, I'm not a chav!) and normally EGR bypassed but otherwise completely standard. I cleaned the air filter on general principles, tbh it'd have to be in terrible condition to cause this (when I bought the car, the old filter was incredibly filthy, also there was a screwdriver in the airbox, neither caused obvious problems)

@olly and inbred- aside, the EGR bypass does trigger a low airflow fault which every so often fires a dashboard warning light, even on the euro3. A little hole in the plate cures that but I kept the solid plate and just reset the code from time to time- I like plugging in the laptop and watching the live feeds anyway, that's some fast and furious shit. NOSSSSSSS!

Ahem. Moving on!

@mc- cheers for the offer! It feels like a solo job right up til I get the pros in but I may end up taking you up.

I was wondering about shuffling a single new injector around, injector is definitely top of my list... I can code a new one no bother and it should be fairly easy to swap... though TBH getting them all checked might not be a bad idea on general principles so I'm swithering about that.

I didn't know that about the EGR raising piston temps. The engine temperatures are normal but then that doesn't neccesarily connect, interesting. (why is that? Presumably the EGR increases the amount of oxygen?)

TO DO:
Repeat removal of EGR pipe, see if same results
Try to drain intercooler
Decide what to do about injectors but lead option- get one good one, shuffle em.
Put off thinking about holes in pipes and pressure sensors!
Should probably change the fuel filter, it's not the cause here but I don't know how old it is.

Anyway, my 2.0 tdci Mondeo is doing similar. Random bouts of white smoke on start up. Lumpy like its missing when initially firing it up. I think its a leaking injector or an injector that has forgotten its code. The smoke being excess fuel.

Glow plugs, more likely. Just 'cos you don't need to wait any more doesn't mean the engine doesn't use them to assist starting. They also run for several minutes after a cold start.

I'm surprised with that amount coming out of the EGR pipe (I assume you mean the metal pipe that bolts onto the side of the EGR valve). I would still check the boost pipes as I think you have water trapped in there. I would also check the exhaust to see if you've sucked some in there when you flooded it. Disconnect at the bottom of your decat pipe and drain what is in there.

I doubt it is your injectors as it would run like a bag of spanners as it misfired. You normally know when the injectors are going as the revs are very erratic on start up.

Exhaust is definitely dry (just replaced the flexi pretty recently). I'll drain the boost pipes to check for water and also oiling but pretty sure it's not the cause here.

It's done about 1000 miles since the Great Flood, it still smells a bit sweaty but I'm thinking the time/use gap makes that all a less likely contributor. Maybe for electrics but I can't see there's been a large amount of water sitting around waiting to strike like this.

I typed a long reply into this but it failed to post several times.

My money is on injectors leaking of being confused. Diesel that gets heated but not burned comes out as white smoke. So if it's dropping fuel into the wrong point in the cycle that could be it.

You could try disconnecting one injector at a time and seeing if the smoke goes.

From what I remember the EGR pipe connects from the exhaust manifold then around the left and front of the engine with no contact with the cooling system.
The video showing the liquid is too thin for oil or diesel and the way it is separating looks like water. The other video looks like water vapour too when you use Revive or Seafoam to clean the variable vanes on the turbo.

Not sure if I can isolate an injector but I've found guidance on doing a leakoff test which looks pretty simple (and excellently lashup-ey), that's just gone on the list too

@craigxxl... I'll check those out tonight. But I will be surprised tbh! I just can't see the egr pipe holding the amount of water needed, or for that matter having it stay in place for a month then suddenly become a problem.

Link? If it involves removing the injectors whilst still connected to the pump, be sodding careful. Injectors can inject diesel through your skin into your blood, which can kill you. My sister's neighbour is missing a finger because of this, he was lucky.

You may know this but I'm repeating it anyway just in case - please don't be insulted.

Yeah I am not ****ing with the high pressure side! Though the idea of just extracting an injector and pointing it at a bucket is sort of fun, it is probably also insane.

No idea what happens if I just unplug the wiring connector, I can see that might disable the injector, or it might cause some sort of comedy world of fail but as MC says, if it's leaking it might still leak anyway under pressure so... Feels a bit too cowboy unless I can get someone to confirm it.

How the leakoff test works- there's tubing on the injectors, you basically just extend those and route them out to bottles, idle the engine and see what comes out. Should get some diesel, it's all comparative. Not something I've done but looks basically simple, and a bit like milking a car.

Leak of test is pretty straight forward, however unless the injector is stuck wide open (in which case diesel pretty much pours straight out the leak off port), the results are often that close it tells you nothing.
Only thing to be wary of, is to blank of the return pipe, otherwise due to the recirculating filter head, everything will airlock after about 20 seconds running and grind to a halt giving you an even bigger headache.

The other option is to blank of the high pressure side, however that involves finding a suitable blank to fit the rail. I did have a selection in my toolbox, however I think I may of threw them out. I'll check when I'm at work later.
The main safety points when dealing with the high pressure side are, don't use your fingers to check for leaks, try and avoid tightening anything with it running, and keep body parts away when slackening items.
At idle the system pressure is around 250-300bar and I think the euro 3 hit around 1200bar at peak pressure, and a good system should maintain over 50bar for a short period of switch off.

The man from Highland Spring, he say:

[img] [/img]

So, new number 1 injector. Will be checking the filter for any signs of fuelpump disasterness but #1 reason for these to fail seems to be because **** you, I'm a mondeo so that's a precaution. GOing to finish up the other faultfinding anyway as it's all good things to do regardless, but I reckon that's it.

So.. wait.. if your injector is not working properly it isn't injecting as much fuel as the others.. so more is coming back through the return..?

TBH mate I haven't a clue how it works, might as well be smurfs for all I know. But more diesel in bottle = goosed injector.

Great test Sir!!

Fancy doing my Renault Kangoo Van???

Fnar Fnar 😆

The bit I didn't mention is that I broke one of the y-splitters trying to get the bloomin hose off. So yeah, I'm well up for disabling someone else's vehicle 😆

The diesel in the end bottle is from the overflow which means that no 1 is restricting the flow to the cylinder. Ie more diesel in the bottle than the others. A leak off test is done from the return off the injector.

So why does that result in smoke? If not enough fuel was getting in, you'd get rough running surely?

I'm taking it as "injector borrocksed- weird things happen". But yep I see your train of thought, you'd think logically if it's leaking more off, then it's restricting rather than leaking, which oughtn't to lead to smoke? Still, it needs replaced regardless, it's miles out of whack.

Sometimes fuelling can cause unexpected results... Mate had a bike with a bad carb, everyone swore blind it was running rich as you could smell the unburnt fuel. It turned out to be running so disasterously lean that the fuel in that piston wasn't burning right, so it was kicking most of the charge out into the exhaust unburnt- instant rich smell.

Just pulled the fuel filter and it's obviously very old so it's getting replaced too just on general principles- but drained it off and no contamination or owt (course, it could all be held in the filter element)

Oh yeah, I did some science- the fluid from the earlier video had settled nicely, smell test was still unhelpful so I drained off the liquid and split the black particles (soot I presume) then remixed with a bit of diesel and a bit of water. End result, it was water not diesel. (and not engine oil either). So I'm removing that from the active suspects and just putting it in the "things to remember" pile as I suspect it's possibly just completely normal- a slow buildup of water in the pipe over time, condensing out of the exhaust, which has then come out when I uncapped the pipe.

Called it a night as the weather's orrible and visibility in my street's bad enough without my volcanic eruptions

The increased leak off is due to how diesel injectors work.

Kinda hard to explain without a pic, but essentially when the injector is commaned to open, a small valve opens, which then allows high pressure diesel through to the main needle (essentially another valve for simplicity!), which in turn lifts the main needle of it's seat allowing high pressure through the injector nozzle and into the cylinder. However only a small proportion of the fuel that gets past the valves ends up in the cylinder, as the rest leaks up the side of the needle and valve into the leak off port (it's designed this way, so the valves shut quicker, and everything that moves gets kept lubricated). When either valve fails to shut properly, high pressure fuel continues to leak past the valves, where some will leak out the nozzle giving you white smoke due to poor atomisation/unburnt fuel, and the rest will flow out the leak-off port.

And just realised I never answered the EGR question.
The purpose of Exhaust Gas Recirculation is to reduce the amount of oxygen in the cylinder inorder to lower the combustion temperature below the point at which Nitrogin Oxides are formed. NOx is one of the key elements that was targetted early on in the Euro diesel emmision requirements, as it's a pretty horrendous thing in large quantities ( http://www.belleville.k12.wi.us/bhs/health/environment/nitrogen_oxide.htm has all the key points).
The result of the lowered combustion temperature is a less efficient burn with more soot/carbon/particulates, however those can be dealt with pretty effectively with a cataylist (most euro 3 diesels would have one), particulate filters (requirement at euro 5, but often fitted to euro 4 to improve road/company car tax bands), and some manufacturers are moving to urea injection with a secondary catalyst to tighten emmissions further while improving fuel consumption.
Most truck manufacturers went the Urea injection route for Euro 4 instead of EGR, as they claimed using EGR would involve a ~10% hit to fuel economy, so the cost of adding and running a Urea injection system works out far cheaper. Off course, Euro 6 means trucks are having to use EGR aswell now.

Ah, that's really interesting on both counts- I always thought the EGR was basically about reburning exhaust gas, no idea where I got that from. Cheers!

(I can drive spanners pretty well but with modern cars it's so hard to figure out what's going on... I miss carbs, you know where you are with a carb. Possibly in a puddle of petrol, or running on one cylinder because it's a bit cold and damp, but still.)

Aargh, FFS... This is a long shot but does anyone know how to release the fuel hose connector at the end of the leakoff hoses? I couldn't release the hoses from the leakoff connectors to do the test so cut them off, figuring I could just swap the whole lot... So now I have this:

[img] [/img]

And had assumed it'd be a simple plug and play but I cannot for the life of me get the bottom connector undone. It's black, with a separate white clip part in it, similiar to (but not the same as) the fuel filter connectors. The access is pretty akward so hard to see what's going on but I've pushed and prodded it every way I can think of and no futher forward. Given up for the night before I kick something.

So annoying, getting the injector out is easy but swapping a bit of ****ing hose has me beat.

I miss carbs, you know where you are with a carb.

I don't think so.. I know where I am with fuel injection. Engine looks at sensors, injects right amount of fuel in - done. No stupid levers, diaphragms, vacuum advance mechanical crap to guess about.

VW had to stop selling diesels in the US in 1997 due to super strict NOx regulations, and had to develop urea injection before they could sell them again. Hopefully we'll get those here soon before I need to buy a new car.

I think its a U shaped clip that slides at 90 degrees to the pipe. A bit like the connections to the fuel filter I think. If not will need to check with mr Haynes.

"No stupid levers, diaphragms, vacuum advance mechanical crap to guess about"

Whos guessing .....

I understand the mechanics of it better than smoke in the wiring of an injection car although im getting better i just have no interest in them.

I understand the computerised systems better, but then again I do work in IT so maybe that's it 🙂

Inbred456 - Member

I think its a U shaped clip that slides at 90 degrees to the pipe. A bit like the connections to the fuel filter I think. If not will need to check with mr Haynes.

Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. Except when you look at it closely, it kind of looks like the sliding white part has to go in a direction it can't. Maybe it's just putting up a fight and causing me to overthink it. Going to fix it or destroy it tonight 😉

Carbs... You can take a carb to bits, clean it, replace a single part, fingertip diagnose. Change fuelling with a couple of quid's worth of jets and washers and maybe a drillbit instead of having to pay a dude to do it, depending on design. Sure if you've got a bank of 8 then there's trouble afoot though! Carb's a living thing, injector's a boring box.

You can only diagnose faults if you knwo the black magic. No black magic in electronics, just sensors and wires.

Yeah but no... Like this one here, no fault codes, no useful sensors, it was diagnosed with tubes and bottles and the internet. And can't be fixed without specialist equipment. Electronics are helpful but there's still an element of car whispering, it's just harder to do. (when my Focus was playing up, the sensors chose to take a minor fault and turn it into a dangerous fault, and the only code provided was "engine stop". Inevitably it was a faulty sensor)

Injector leak on this car, costs hundreds of quid, needs a laptop and the right software to recode. Carb leak on my bike? Costs 50p to fix and needs a #2 philips screwdriver.

Or perhaps I'm just being grumpy because I had to unchain my wallet

Even purely mechanical diesels need some specialist equippment.

I have engaged in combat with my dread enemy, the high pressure fuel connector, and I have emerged bloodied but victorious! You may throw flowers in my path, if you wish.

Or alternatively, I moved some bits and squished it around and cut off a bit of the old hose, and that meant I could see into the connector and realise that it pushes from the other side- it looks just like all the other fuel connectors on the car but operates in exactly the reverse way. Re-hosed, primed and...

Ah ya bastart, injector still hasn't arrived!

FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

So, new hoses in, new filter in, bled/primed as much as possible. "New" injector in (recon from a recommended supplier), recode... Misfire every few seconds. Checked my working, decided to refit the original injector, recode... Smoke again but no misfire. Repeated process back to new injector, smoke goes away, misfire comes back.

So... Bad "new" injector, right? Leakoff test fine, same part number, something else wrong with it, rebuilt but not recoded or something? I can't think of anything else, sure you could have some crazy random collection of faults...

Misfire.. regular or random? You have a fault code reader?

Semi-regular, it sounds slightly off all the time with a big shake every 4 or 5 seconds. Ran off the fault codes, it has a persistant gauge cluster related one but then it has that regardless of which injector is in it (and has had it for about 20000 miles). Nothing helpful though

Take it to a garage. Ask them to fix it. Drive away. Easy.

Lol. Take to a garage, ask them to fix it, watch as they empty your wallet throwing random parts at it, then take it home again still not running properly.

NW - when there's a shudder, is there a puff of white from the exhaust?

iolo - Member

Take it to a garage. Ask them to fix it. Drive away. Easy.

Average price for an injector fix on a mondeo is quite a lot. Very tempted to nip into the local delphi place and get the old injector rebuilt though, you can never have too many injectors! Pending better ideas I'm reasonably sure it's the injector, the fact that changing it changes the symptoms...

molgrips, not that I can see- it is smoking thinly but nothing like with the known-leaky injector, pretty much consistent with normal poor running but no obvious peaks. (bearing in mind that the exhaust may very well be full of crap right now)

PS, mmm, beer.

Wiring, I was thinking.

Can you take it for a thrash up the road?

Mmm. I'm inclined to say not electrical- main reason being that the failure changes so perfectly with the injector, but also, I know that running it with an injector disconnected throws an error code so I'd assume that'd be the same with a bad connection or similiar. Lets say there's more things leading me to other conclusions.

Haven't driven it...Kind of wary of it. Might not be a bad idea tbh.

What do you do to code it?

Googling throw anything up?

Is the new injector the spec as the 2.0 and 2.2 Injectors are different although they look the sane. Check the numbers.

molgrips, got a usb connector and a bit of software called Formiddable that can read codes, live-feed the sensors etc and code injectors. Nice bit of kit.

@Craig, yeah, same part number on the side. (and sold as an ST part, though obviously you can't take it as read that it's right)

Where did you get the recon injector?

Also, have you tried the old code with the new injector?
You won't break anything by doing it, just either make the rough running worse or possibly better.

To properly generate the code for reconditioned injectors involves some very expensive machinery, and I know several places don't bother. Lots just rely on the fact the ECU will adapt, and hope that it doesn't have to adapt that far it triggers a fault.

FYI the code isn't programmed into the injector. It's a code generated from measuring the injector flow at specific pressures to allow for manufacturing tolerances, as it's pretty much impossible to manufacture two common rail injectors with identical flow rates at all pressures.

Just fb'd ya...

In theory the injector should have been coded, this is a company that sells bucketfulls of mondeo injectors and have a good rep. Course, that may or may not be true, and it's always possible they've just screwed up...

Did consider popping in the old code, I'll give that a pop. Could try copying the other ones just to see, feels bodgy mind!

Yah, was using "recoded injectors" as shorthand, it's recoding the car to the injector, rather programming the injector I know.

An intermittent misfire though? If the flow was just wrong, you would expect rough running as one cylinder was down on power, not an intermittent hiccup, suurely?

Call the company back.

ECUs can appear to do strange things when trying to compensate for running issues. It could be it's unable to balance the engine by correcting the injection values, so it's reaching some programmed internal limit, and then trying to adjust something else until it hits another limit or just resetting to original values at which point it tries again and ends up stuck in a loop.

These kind of things don't always trigger a fault code, and it's up to the person fixing it to identify the problem.

I had the symtoms you describe turned out to be the turbo. if the car was left idling its like it would build up with oil then when you took off lots of white smoke. it was fine when it was getting driven normally as it would just burn it slowly and not noticeable. worth a look?

I was advised by a mate not to put reconned injectors in. When they tried to put them in a customers car they never worked he's a jag mechanic, same engine as the mondeo. One of the cars leaked a load of diesel into the cylinder so much in fact that it hydro locked and wrote the engine off. The life of a Delphi injector is about 80 to 120k, depends I suppose on use ie urban or motorway miles. Bite the bullet and put a new one in. I think you need to code it because each cylinder has a different firing characteristic because of the exhaust manifold and inlet but also because of the heating and cooling of the engine block. The codes are normally on the rocker cover. Sounds to me like a faulty injector. I exhausted all my options with my mondeo, loved that car but I had to let it go, just to expensive to put right, and the new ones have crappy dpf's and additive fluid tanks and cambelts!

worth a look?

He categorically identified a bad injector, and the smoke's now gone with the new unit.

Yeah, definitely a bad injector. Doesn't rule out another simultaneous fault but if the turbo's also gone, I'm going to be watching out for lightning strikes too... I don't feel like the company are cowboys, I think it's possible they've screwed up somehow though. They've not come straight out with a refund offer but say they'll retest it if need be so we'll cross that bridge maybe.

Didn't get the chance to look at it today, biek racin! And, er, tonight race biek fixin (mc, you're never going to guess what I broke...)

What USB to obd device have you got?

F-super, one of these:

So, today was more biek racin. But spent a little time on the car tonight. Fun fact number one: The new injector runs better with the old injector's code than it does with its own. Still idles like a sack of hammers but pulls better. So that's interesting.

Roadtest, well, first of all it reminded me after 2 days of driving my dad's focus that the clutch on my car is ridiculously heavy, but also that no matter how knackered my car is, it's still ridiculously more powerful than a 1.6 petrol focus.

But besides that... It feels better under load than at idle and better at high revs than low, with either code. Little bit noisy. Otherwise, nothing too interesting. Oh and still no fault codes.

So I think that's more evidence against the injector. Or perhaps the code on the injector. I'll see what the supplier says.

And, er, tonight race biek fixin (mc, you're never going to guess what I broke...)

Northwind I thought the code was to match the injector to the car, ie all the injectors are the same and the code is to suit the individual car/cylinder characteristics which would bear out the fact that it runs better with the original code. The injector may just be out of spec a bit.

I think you will only get a fault code if the exhaust oxygen sensor picks up the mixture leaning off to much or it senses a pressure fluctuation in the common rail.

Inbred456 - Member

Northwind I thought the code was to match the injector to the car, ie all the injectors are the same and the code is to suit the individual car/cylinder characteristics which would bear out the fact that it runs better with the original code.

Nah, the code belongs to the injector (one of the likely suspects was that they might have done a cowboy refurb and not bothered to recode it, but that doesn't seem to be the case)

I'm going to go out on a limb and bet 10 scottish pence that there's something innocently wrong with the injector or its code- it's going back to the suppliers for a retest and we'll take it from there. They give reassuring vibes.

@MC: looks like a mirror image of this:

[img] [/img]

I can't blame it for breaking this time - I'm not used to having to take the wheels out of the bike to put it in the car, so I absentmindedly took the wheels out, noticed the dropper post was still up, and decided to push it down while it was resting on the mech. 😳

Actually not quite like that hanger now I look at it again, but very similiar in design/shape. 2 holes not 3.

Hands up everyone who said "It's still the injector"- replacement replacement arrived today, popped it in, recoded- sorted. Well. Not quite, still a small amount of smoke, going to give it a proper run to let it settle and burn off any crap that's ended up in the pipework as a result of all this, but it's a massive improvement.

Injector hasn't been given a new code which is not inspiring. And no explanation of what was wrong with the last one. Still some ground to cover with the supplier.

Keep us informed how it goes. Still deciding if I am going to go diesel or petrol. Might go for an old knacker and keep something back for repairs. Thinking cheap lexus sportback 3.0 Auto. Will look into coding of injectors. Still not convinced about code for injector rather than car. Why would the codes be on the rocker cover ie each cylinder. Have you used the code supplied with the injector or the original one?