Smoking diesel engine

Hamsterchops

.....but only 1st thing the morning!

Start her up and she blows out copious amounts of stinking noxious smoke, only to settle down for the day, until the next morning, then she smokes again.

92BHP 1.6 HDi Turbo which I'm told is in several cars, from Citroen to Ford, Peugeot, Renault, etc etc.

The garage have actually replaced the Turbo unit, then they had the engine out of the car for a closer look, they've replace seals, they've even had the head off and they still can't solve the problem!

Any ideas?

porsche boy

What colour is the smoke and how long would it last? (Seconds, minutes??)

Hamsterchops

Ten to twelve seconds worth of revving produces a big smelly cloud of white-ish smelly smoke, then its gone . . . . .

Max Moment

Is the engine rough on a cold start also? And does it ‘hunt’ with revs varying at idle before it gets up to temperature?

PukkaStukka

Injectors or glow plug related.

Shouldn't need engine out or taken apart like in this case

Hamsterchops

They replaced the glow plugs which apparently were totally knackered, they also checked out (replaced)? the injectors too, so I doubt if they're the issue.

Its a rough start alright, not very smooth.

Somebody else mentioned the EGR valve, whatever that is?

The car is eleven years old.

Max Moment

It does sound like some form of preheat issue. Even if they replaced the glow plugs the glow plug relay may be faulty. Presume they checked that too though?

Is the engine light on? It would be worth getting the ecu scanned to check for any stored faults.

PukkaStukka

I'd say take this car to someone that knows what they're doing. Something has been missed here.

There's far too much work been done in an unstructured way that suggests it's guesswork

pablo128

It could be valve stem oil seals or worn valve stems. It could also be injector seals, but if the garage had the injectors out, I assume they replaced the seals when refitting.

The smell of the smoke would tell you if it was oil or diesel related.

zilog_jones

Is it only cold starts? Does it require a lot of cranking to start it? Because if it does, then it's probably unburnt diesel, especially since you say it's white smoke.

I used to have this problem with my Peugeot 406 2.0 HDi and cold starts. In summer it was fine. Wasted money replacing glow plugs and stuff to no avail. More powerful starter motor helped slightly. Blanking the EGR valve (which was broken and leaking anyway) made the biggest difference, but the problem never totally went away. I had the full Peugeot DiagBox kit and it told me nothing was wrong, but I think the ECU was a bit dumb regarding the EGR valve as it thought it was operating fine when it was in fact not.

1.6 could be different, and may need remapping to blank the EGR, but the right thing to do would be to fit a working EGR if it is broken and not be a cheapskate like I was.

cournioni

Smoke in the mornings would usually be an indication that diesel is leaking into the cylinder over night. This is usually due to wear on the injector nozzles.

zilog_jones

Yeah, one thing I never did was get the injectors checked or reconditioned. I could see there was a pressure offset with one of them when idling, but under load they were fine.

_Brian

Sounds like the garage are into swaptronics rather than identifying a problem before they act.

Time for a second opinion.