Help with smokink DW8 Xsara after Head Gasket change

[xsaras4ever]

Hello CitroenXM and thanks for the offer - But we live in the land of Citroen - here in France its wall to wall Citroen/Peugeot and Renault.

We have seen a Xsara commercial near us for 300euros (about 260 pounds). Up and running with 4 good tyres. Might buy it , use the engine and sell the parts, then weigh in the shell. On a local website we use here, there are 468 xsaras for sale just in Brittany, and 332 of them are diesel.

Its a hard decision - hate quitting on something where we might be close to a solution - but tired of talking about it , thinking about it , boring the family about it and watching it smoke.

Anyway thanks again.

[xsaras4ever]

Helle again to all.

Have now done 7000km in the smoking XSARA and it is a very reliable car.

Having solved the many problems on our other cars we have set ourselves to thinking about curing this one again.

As said, it now runs well but still starts with smoke and "hunting".

It starts really easily, first turn.

We havn't replaced the glow-plugs yet and we also noticed that the cold-start lever on the diesel injector pump seems to be stuck, or the adjusting screws are set in such a way that it cannot move.

Its firm, whether the car is hot or cold. We have tried to move it left or right with a screwdriver in both hot and cold situations and it won't budge.

We are going to investigate further because we wouldn't mind selling the car and this issue lets down what is a very good car.

Are thoughts ?

[taffy]

thats exactly what i was gona sugest after reading this lol!
which pump have you got?

[lexi]

It will be the Lucas pump? The trouble with these mystery issues is that it always seems that you
are only one step away from solving it. The reality is that you may be 101 steps away. It can then get obsessive.
That is ok.........if you have nothing to do or cannot possibly buy another car OR you like mysteries

[taffy]

yeah its never simple with things like this..takes a while to get there..hope it solves it

[xsaras4ever]

Progress at last.

We took off all the gubbins and got good access to the diesel pump. The cold-start lever is not stuck.


We then tested the glowplugs and found 2 dead - sorry to everybody who suggested we change them.

The wire that connects across the glowplugs was also faulty - so we replaced that too.

We started the car this morning, it started instantly, did not misfire and did not smoke.

Then after 2 minutes of perfect idling, it started to misfire and smoke a bit , but not as bad as before.

We left it alone for the day and started it again this evening. Same result. The smoke smells of diesel.

We took it for a run to get it up to temperature and then let it idle for ten minutes - perfect - did not misfire once.

Diesel pump or EGR ??

We think that the coldstart lever is slow to dis-engage.

It seems like it needs the extra diesel to start - then is at a temperature where it doesn't want extra diesel - and finally gets the balance right when the engine is nicely warmed.

Opinions please.

[demag]

I can't see how the egr would cause a diesel smell but they can cause smoke. I tend to think it's the pump but that's just my thoughts. I could be wrong. If there are that many Xsaras for sale I assume a pump would be relatively easy to obtain?