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

OK so, 05 plate 2.2 TDCI euro 3 Mondeo (basically an ST on stilts) started smoking a hell of a lot yesterday, but not consistently- sometimes it does it from starting, sometimes it doesn’t, but it seems to be a roll of the dice when you fire it up- either smoke this time, or don’t!

Drove around 50 miles, parked, fine. Got back in, drove away, tons of white/light grey smoke- enough to be worrying about safety on the road, that sort of level. No warning lights. Engine feels absolutely fine. Couldn’t see any obvious correlation of revs/turbo etc- smokes more at high revs but does smoke at idle too.

Pulled over, had a look for obvious things, drove away, back to normal.

Drove another 50 miles, fine, stopped at the supermarket, drove away, smoking again. Did a quick on/off, back to normal. Drove home.

Just fired it up again, 3 starts, 2 smokey one not. Ran the fault codes and absolutely nothing of interest (the usual low airflow fault because of the EGR bypass and a communications bus error for some reason… Cleared both, started again, no new codes). On one of these restarts it noticably ran rough for a moment, like one piston wasn’t firing correctly, but talking seconds.

So symptoms- intermittant mega white/light grey smoke
Sometimes goes away when “power cycled”. (no cooldown time)
Not dependent on engine heat
No obvious loss of performance or fuel economy- could be down on either but not dramatically.
No codes

The intermittantness makes me assume something electrical tbh, can’t see anything purely mechanical causing it? I can think of a ton of things that’d cause smoke but not in this way

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:

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