Jag/Ford TDCI black smoke..?

Asking for a friend:

It’s a 2007 X-type diesel which means it’s a Duratorq ZSD 420 or 422 not sure.  It had started to misfire on a long trip then lost a lot of power and produced loads of black smoke.  We took a look just now and it misfired heavily on startup but after a minute started to idle and rev ok but with a bit of clacky noise from the engine bay (I don’t know what’s normal on these).  I had him rev it up and it still produced a lot of smoke. However, somewhat alarmingly I saw a puff of smoke once from the turbo area, and a second time from the injector area.  And they were puffs, not wisps, like they were at higher pressure.

Around all the injectors was pretty dirty and there was diesel visible pooled around at least one of them.  Some hissing on reving was audible but rather hard to tell.  So I am thinking multiple faults.

Could leaking injector seals cause black smoke from the exhaust?  Or is it a case of a knackered injector dumping too much fuel in and also the part outside the engine leaking?  But that wouldn’t explain the loss of power.  It could be limp mode, but that would reduce fuelling and there would be a light on the dash – there isn’t one.

What do we think?  It was driving normally until this happened, and it feels like injector failure, but I don’t know about the black smoke and lack of power. That said, puffs of smoke from more than one place under the bonnet makes me think it’s pretty terminal. However that wasn’t reproducible so I am now worrying it was an illusion or I imagined it somehow.

Whatever it is, it sounds more than the car is probably worth to put right.

Hard to say just from those symptoms, but yes it could be an injector issue. The misfire makes it sound like something fuelling related rather than turbo / egr etc.

A decent trustworthy independent should be able to make a fairly quick first level diagnostic – fault codes that could help narrow it down and go from there.

Black smoke is over fueling. White smoke is turbo.

So it’s looking like an injector issue.

You’ll get black smoke and lack of power if there is an air leak between the turbo and the engine (or if the turbo is goosed). Check that none of the intake pipework (turbo -> intercooler -> intake manifold) has come loose or split, and that the clamps are still tight.

If it’s injector seals that’s cheap. Faulty injector – maybe.

Check for a split boost pipe 1st.

Knackered EGR.

Injector seals need replacing but only an issue if they are really knackered and loosing lots of compression.

It could be limp mode, but that would reduce fuelling and there would be a light on the dash – there isn’t one.

My merc van seemed to have three limp modes – restricted power and no light on the dash, with light on the the dash, and with flashing light on the dash.

Knackered EGR.

Doubt it, my C8 (same engine) never did that when the EGR packed in.

I’m with an induction hose being split or loose, my dad’s X Type blew the hose off the turbo and did exactly the same thing.

We had this in a Kuga TDCi.  1 x failed injector.

I’ve never had injector issues with mine but I’ve had a couple of split hoses and rotten clamps and also the seals failed on the inlet manifold. All of these will lead to a loss of power and no dash light and all will spread a lovely black oil mist all over the place if ignored.

(Duratec numbers are size related, the 2 litre is a 420, the 2.2 is the 422)

I had the equivalent mondeo, with the 2.2 but it doesn’t make much difference to most things. It went through all 4 injectors between about 120000 and 130000 miles. But the symptoms didn’t exactly match yours- it overfuelled like a mofo, but it never misfired or similiar, no loss of power (it got “laggy” and fat, though), it just smoked terribly (and hydrolocked itself, once).

With that in mind, leakoff test is really quick and easy on these making it maybe worth doing on general principles. Don’t try and do it with the stock pipes as some people suggest, it’s impractical to remove the OEM plasticy pipework from the connector, you’ll break something. Either buy a kit online or buy a used set of pipes just for the connectors and make up your own. You need some empty bottles, some tube, you can do it properly with measurements and such and there’s a procedure for that but you’re mostly just looking for big difference between the bottles. If it’s that, weirdly refurb injectors weren’t any cheaper than brand new for me so check that. Swapping was easy, you do need the injector socket but NOT the alignment tool and you do need to code them in but that’s simple enough. According to the service manual it ought to throw a fault code if it’s badly overfuelling but it never did for me no matter how bad it got.

I have no explanation for the puffs of smoke, at least, not from near the turbo. The crankcase is under a little pressure and can blow smoky/oil vapourey so that could probably explain it if there’s bad injector seal (take the oil filler cap off and see if it seems similar). but that doesn’t explain the smoke near the turbo, which just shouldn’t have any capacity to smoke into the bay ever.

As others mentioned check for split hoses, it’s old enough. And for rust on the hard pipes, I had one that was really crusty and could easily have split open or just been porous. Access/visibility is pretty bad to the boost pipes closest to the turbo.

I never found the smoke colour actually very useful with that car, when it exploded the turbo the exhaust smoke was barely any different to the overfuelling injector smoke, it was middley dirty grey for both. The injector smoke was lighter- hung in the air more, almost steamy, the engine oil smoke was heavy and fell faster, rolled more. But you’d have been brave to diagnose faults with any of that.

Oh yeah I’m not sure if all the versions got the variable vane turbo? But if yours has it, they’re famous for clogging up with crap and causing problems. As also is the intake manifold. Again not sure how well it fits your symptoms. Cleaning the intake is dead easy but absolutely horrible.

My Fiesta did that when the EGR valve and injector seals went.

Check for a split boost pipe 1st.

That would not account for the misfire though.

Thanks @Northwind.  I think there could be multiple faults. One or more injectors could be leaking either from the unit or from the seals which looks like it’s been happening for a while as what is presumably the rocker cover is filthy.  That could also account for smoke from that area.  There was something that sounded like camshaft noise but having found a video on youtube it could have been noise from a leaking seal.  If that was causing a misfire then some unburned fuel could have got through and gummed up the turbo vanes. This happened on a long journey and the driver had to continue so it’s done a few hundred miles like this.

There may also be a split pipe anyway..

The top of my engine was always covered in oily crap so I wouldn’t read massively into that. If you could clean it up and it recurred that’d be more interesting but that’s not very practical with an unhappy car.

Specfically on the seals, or rather the seals you can see on top of the engine… I think you can rule it out entirely and just stop thinking about them.

I’m about 99% sure that fuel can’t leak UP past the seals under any circumstances (too long ago for me to be 100%) If I remember rightly what’s on the other side of those is basically crankcase/head space, with the injector passing through to the combustion chamber (they’re like icebergs, you can only see about a third of em). If so then misted engine oil, vapor etc could come up past the seal, but not diesel ever.

So if you’re 100% sure you have diesel there, I think it’s got to have come downwards from the upper injector or piping. And tbh that’s not going to be your problem, because if you had an actual meaningful leak it’d be hosing out, due to the high pressure. So maybe a tiny fine leak or a porosity or something but anything small enough to not cover everything with diesel, is not enough to cause an an engine issue, and anything big enough to cause an issue, would be making a bigger mess.

And if it’s engine oil then that’s pretty much a nonissue. I mean, you don’t wnat a heavy leak but it couldn’t cause your symptoms.

Basically the injector failure modes are “stop fuelling” or “leak past the nozzle directly into the combustion chamber”

(there are crush seals between injector and combustion chamber but I only mention that for completeness)

I’m about 99% sure that fuel can’t leak UP past the seals under any circumstances

This is true. But the oil can make a mess.

Any garages done any work near the injectors recently?

We found with this design in a transit – the injector clamps had not been torqued correctly and the injectors chattered -this erodes the copper washer seal(they were gone)  This let the injector move even more and messed up the injection ratios.

Mega oil leaks from the seals on top were main symptom.

We found this out as we made the same mistake on the replacement set up 🙂

Check for a split boost pipe 1st.
That would not account for the misfire though

When my boost pipe decided to let go of the clips* it was rough as a bag of spanners**

*Took ages to find it would blow the pipe off then pop back on when the pressure drop.

**Which sounds alot like a spanner left in an engine bay… Ask me how i know…

In a previous role I used to work on the Ford engineering problem solving team responsible for issues with these very engines.

Based on the symptoms molgrips reported so far it could be many things – the checks others have suggested so far are indeed sensible things to check first (boost leaks etc etc), but if they show nothing then the next step would be for get a decent independent that knows these engines and has access for the Ford diagnostic tools to give it a once over. That should narrow things down significantly.

My money is on a failed injector by the way – but thats not a diagnosis, just inforned guesswork.