The other half drives the A4 2006 1.9 TDV (<35K) conservatively, today I took it up to 4000rpm and it left an embarrassing thick black cloud behind it, should my wallet be concerned ?

Dunno about Audi’s, but on Mondeo’s it was commonly a sign the EGR valve needed cleaning/replacing (not expensive).

Has it been remapped?

Every diesel car I see smokes at some point, usually under sudden acceleration. Did you give it some beans?

DPF maybe? If she pootles about everywhere it may never get cleaned

If you pootle around on short trips, sooty deposits build up inside it because the fire doesn’t get to all the corners. When you subsequently boot it it will all be cleaned out and you get the smoke.

Boot it a bit more and it’ll stop. Diesels don’t like being babied, especially ones with DPFs. Borrow her car more often for the sake of your wallet.

The little puff of smoke on sudden acceleration is the ECU over-fuelling to help the turbo spool up more quickly.

Italian tuneup required.

Get it warm, then take it for a high rev razz… nearly to the redline in every gear (might struggle with 6th!)

It will thank you for it (or the cambelt will snap).

Dave

it wouldn’t be getting through MOTs if it was smoking excessively.

My local testing station ran mine on the limiter for 3 minutes to clear the soot out, then it was fine

mine failed its last MOT on emissions (it was smoking quite a bit on acceleration) so they poured some Forte diesel cleaner in the tank and told me to drive it quite hard on a few longer journeys for a week. Smoke was massively reduced and it passed.

this stuff:

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_nkw=forte+diesel&_dmd=2&_frs=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m359

Good point about the MOT. I’ll give it a thrash. Probably due a cam belt as its 5ish years old but its only got 33000m so i’ll not be leaving it on the limited for 3mins

Road trip to Germany and let rip. Worked wonders for my motor, smoother now than when I got it 🙂

Plenty of Redex in the tank before a long run and regularly rev the t!ts off it to clear out the soot in-between that. Mine is 12 years old and used to smoke quite a lot but since adopting the above tactics the smoke is no more.

+1 for checking the EGR valve , I cleaned mine out about 12 months ago and it was really gunked up.

My diesel (Rover 75) hardly smokes at all and I drive it like an old man , I use Millers fuel x diesel adative every other time I fill up.

It does suprise me how many more modern diesels smoke like a steam train.

Or you could use the spray-in air intake cleaner.

Run some BG244 through the tank, supposedly much better than the Forte & Redex treatments at delivering noticable results.

Btw, I get no visible smoke at all from my 2.0 TDI.

As above – when I first got mine it was sooty as hell under hard acceleraion. I put this down to the previous owner’s light right foot.

Some regular driving at high revs soon sorted it out. You don’t need to ‘rag the balls of it’, just get onto a dual carriageway and sit with it at 70 in 3rd or something similar (something like 3500rpm for a while).

Soon sorts it out.

My driving miss daisy fuel saving strategy at the moment has meant mine is starting to get a bit smokey. Might give it a clear out on the way home.