xantia engine lack of power engine management light on?

[fotobright]

Hi there,

the 1.9td xantia has been acting up again. I drive it on veg oil mix and last couple of days the engine management light has been coming on. On the drive uphill out of town it was really struggling to get up any gradient, management light on all the time. When driving the power comes and goes. even with a very concentrated veg mix i've not had this problem before. car doesn't appear to be leaking and the filter is new, 300 miles or so.

I see air traveling down the tube from the top of the fuel filter though. Air getting in, air getting out, turbo pipes?

If someone could run me through a checklist would be most appreciative. As a started question, where is the turbo duct work?

cheers

[Xaccers]

Air getting in is going to be the trouble, the injector needles don't like air rather than diesel being pumped through them so the needle lift sensor on the 3rd one from the gearbox is going to be sending wrong timing signals, hence the ECU light.

Now, the air could be getting in before the filter so replace as much of the fuel line as possible with clear tubing and make sure the jubilee clips are done up tight!
As the old pipe ages, it goes hard and starts letting in air.
Leak off pipes between the injectors (and the blank on the 1st injector) are another thing that should be checked, they should be flexible still rather than hard.

[fotobright]

Thanks for thoughts on this. engine idles fine, its accelerating onto the motorway that it become apart all is not well. I dont suppose I helped it loading 500kg of sandbags then driving it up a 5 mile hill yesterday. No, the engine really didnt like that!

I'm thinking it'll be tricky to replace fuel line under the car without a pit. I'll start with pipework around the engine and see how I get on with that. I'll also put some diesel in it to thin the fuel.

[Xaccers]

Change the pipe from the primer bulb to the fuel filter housing, and the one from the filter housing lid to the pump, see if you can get a pipe that will fit both the lid and the pump without needing the size adaptor the original pipe has.

At idle, the flow of fuel is slow so not much air gets sucked in, as the flow increases, more air is sucked in and the pump starts to struggle.

[fotobright]

One thing I noticed was that, may or may not be helpful was that the primer bulb was squashed flat under vacuum I expect and didn't return to its normal shape when the engine as off as normal?

I'm also just reading about the fine gauze on the bottom of the fuel pick up hose witch is part of the fuel sender unit. That seems a common issue so I might look at that. Hopefully not break the giant plastic nut undoing it

I'll change that pipework in the meantime.

[Xaccers]

Yes, definitely check the mesh on the fuel sender

[CitroJim]

And also check the return fuel line back to the tank is clear... I've known them block up with lumps of congealed veg.

If you Lexia the ECU the most likely fault recorded will be a timing motion fault. This is caused by low transfer pressure in the pump resulting from your blockage and concomitant fuel starvation.

[fotobright]

And also check the return fuel line back to the tank is clear... I've known them block up with lumps of congealed veg.

Well after a good few hours of tapping away at that plastic screwtop to the tank. That badboy was fixed well and good! Anyways it came off in one piece in the end and low and behold the mesh on the fuel sender was totally blocked up. Twas a miracle anything was getting through at all. I cleaned off the exterior gunk but couldn't see how to remove the gauze to clean the inside. So in the end I accepted those bits would get dragged and caught by the fuel filter, which i'll clean out tomorrow.

I didn't check the return pipe, didnt know about that, however the car drove better than it has done for ages. So i'm assuming that this has been a large part of the issue since the car has been run on veg. There's is a lesson there somewhere..

I floored the car on a uphill country road and it blew some brownish smoke, was hoping it might help to clear the injectors. Dunno quite what I was doing but it felt good to have some power back in the car, oh yeh!

[Xaccers]

Highly recommend doing an Italian Tune up
The mesh gets clogged up with dust that gets sucked into the tank over it's life, so even non-veg running dervs can suffer from it being clogged.

[myglaren]

Veg/Bio can also suffer from bacterial infestation that plugs the filter with a gel-like contaminant.
Standard diesel too in marine environments.

[fotobright]

Highly recommend doing an Italian Tune up
The mesh gets clogged up with dust that gets sucked into the tank over it's life, so even non-veg running dervs can suffer from it being clogged.

I've just had a flashback to Wacky Races for some reason

Next project: that heater fan again!

[DickieG]

Anyways it came off in one piece in the end and low and behold the mesh on the fuel sender was totally blocked up. Twas a miracle anything was getting through at all. I cleaned off the exterior gunk but couldn't see how to remove the gauze to clean the inside.

Did it look something like this?

[fotobright]

It looked exactly like that! Although mine had fibre material from the filter bags in it too. A bigger surface area of mesh would help. Could be an adaption done there.