Losing the will to live.......intermittent fault!

[Browni]

Hi All

It's a long shot but I'm at the end of my tether with my daughters C2 1.4hdi and I'm hoping someone might have experienced this.

Problem- it started off on a decent drive on the motorway there'd be a tiny drop in power for like a second then it'd carry on like nothing had happened for a good 5 mins, the further into the drive you get the frequency and severity would get worse, I swapped the fuel filter as that's a quick and easy starting point (no difference). It was taken to our local French specialist and when plugged in it wasn't showing any fault codes other than the glow plug relay, but the fuel pressure was down so diagnosed injector issues. All 4 sent away and were refurbed at the place he usually uses. Once back in the car she ran like an absolute dream, fuel pressure back to where it should be, so we thought all was good. Daughter jumps on the motorway to Uni and 20 mins later I got the call to say it was doing it again. She carried on and got back to her digs (approx 160 miles) and the journey was no better or worse than usual. About a week later she rang to say that she started the car, and it was running lumpy, but this cleared after about 5 mins. She had to drive from Gloucester to London and back and it only did that drop of power once, so I presumed the fault was developing/ moving on. About 2 weeks later she's sets off to come home and got about halfway when all of a sudden when accelerating there was a loss of power and smoke (she said white but who knows) as soon as she eased off the car was ok again. Now bearing in mind she has to do the summit on the M62 I told her to pull off the motorway and get recovered as she wouldn't make that hill. Recovery turned up scanned it and still only relay fault, went to put it on the back of the truck and it wouldn't start (absolutely nothing) winched on and recovered to home. He decided to try it again to get it off the truck and this time it starts with a big cloud of black smoke. When I got there it started again but it was like it was running on 3 cylinders. Next day takes it to the garage and it ran fine. Still no codes! The garage ran it and experienced the small drops in power, but nothing shows up on live data when plugged in and the lumpy running on start up, so they made a call on the EGR which seemed like a sensible choice. I picked the car up yesterday and within 4 miles not even on the motorway i got the drop in power, it was 4 or 5 less than a second over maybe a 10 second period, the car was sat about 2500 rpm going uphill so under a little load. This morning I have the lumpy running again

Now i know that i have rambled on a bit but I needed to sort of cover it all as none of this is making sense to me, the garage is flummoxed and in all fairness, they haven't charged me any labour as they haven't actually fixed it.

Just to confirm it's had all 4 injectors changed, EGR, Fuel filter oh and for what it was a glow plug relay although that still hasn't cleared the fault.

Thanks in advance

Richard

[GiveMeABreak]

Hi Richard and welcome.

I can only chip in with this identical-sounding issue on our previous C3 1.6 HDi, which is a different engine, but the symptoms sound the same.

Our C3 was a dealer-maintained vehicle from new and at about 48k miles I had the sporadic hesitation. Suddenly the vehicle would lose power for an instant with a little jerk, then carry on normally. It started happening slightly more regularly, and again with no fault codes. This was a relatively low mileage car doing only 3600 miles per year over the 14 years which had otherwise been fault free engine.

My solution was to grab a bottle of STP Diesel injection / engine treatment, dose up the car when I next put fuel in and went for a spirited drive. Sure enough the hesitation started again and just after, it really lost power spluttering, so I floored the accelerator and got it to really high revs, were it made a large banging noise and that did the trick. Totally cleared the fault. Drove on back home and never had another issue. So I can only assume that the fuel system needed a good clean.

We sold the car a few thousand miles later and it was still without incident up until then.

[Browni]

Thanks for the welcome........to be honest my daughter is monitored for her driving style and the person before he was also a new driver, so it won't have been thrashed for a couple of years at least. Maybe I should go out and give it a proper blast! can't hurt really

[Huskyxantia]

Id try what marc has suggested , it worked for me when i had a 1.4hdi, slow driving with short stop start trips dont do these engines much good, it needs some wyns and a good blast.

Matter of interest can you safety open the coolant filler cap , old cloth over the top after its at operating temp and the coolant still stays in the expansion tank ?

[Browni]

I've not checked the coolant tank but I can do later, but it does a lot more motorway driving than urban driving.........it's more the lack of hard acceleration.

[GiveMeABreak]

It may be worth dosing the car up with the STP every tankful for a few months - to ensure it gets a good clean - I think there are at least 4 doses per bottle, and it's not the expensive.

[Browni]

That's if this works, I'm on the verge of getting shut of it which is a shame as the rest of the car is mint. It's never wanted for anything, and on the lastt MOT only thing it needed was a new CV boot clip, there's not a spot of rust on it. That's what is so frustrating

[Huskyxantia]

I'd go back a bit further as to checking and changing things, rule out whats been replaced , start right where power is drawn and fused , are earth points good , are fuses good ,fuse locations clean ,is the cat ok ? One on exhaust not by the fire purring, o2 sensor ? , if there's no back pressure from the coolant head gasket may be ruled out, air intake pipes are there any splits ? Spray wd40 when the engine is running, spray around the vacuum pipes and pump if the engine rev us a bit then you know there's a leak, has the exhaust any splits or lose clamped joints ? . Just some of what ive done in the past and had good results with a 1.4hdi lump, mine was a broken glow plug on one, yours are new so rule that out, the glow plug loom can go brittle then make the car play up when its warm. Id still use some treatment in it that will give the insides a clean . Also the maf sensor this time of year 8ve found can condensate on the inside, rare but has happen to me i live in the middle of now where and when the weather is wet it is very wet. Hope this sheds some light.

[Browni]

Hi Husky, I've not done the glow plugs, just the relay and that hasn't cleared the fault. Could that really have an effect on daily driving? I've thrown some cleaner in it along with premium diesel and thrashed the arse off it.......it feels more responsive but wont know for a couple of days if its worked

[Huskyxantia]

Anything electrical is a well known thing with peugeot or citroen, try the additive route first then the other stuff ive mentioned above

[Huskyxantia]

Ok ,, a lot will say oh you dont need glow plugs BUT .. something wrong with one your know all about it , your have 25,50,80 miles trouble free motoring then your have shuddering ,missing,longer start time mpg loss smoke at start up, id test them, the 1.4 is a hard engine to reach the glow plugs they are prone to snap , if you can reach them your need a mirror to work with to see the plugs then a multimeter to check the resistance , video of how

[Huskyxantia]

@MattBLancs, have read of this thread and see what you think.

[MattBLancs]

@MattBLancs, have read of this thread and see what you think.

I am now (by the way, the @ thing didn't seem to flag this up to me, unless I am missing something!)

I'm still in the glow plugs not really needed camp (not disputing your experiences at all - I just don't understand what's going on there!)

EGR issues, in my understanding, tend to be along the lines of: not enough oxygen (as too much EGR, valve stuck open) equals rich mixture and obviously most noticeable under hard acceleration (smoke out the back due to unburnt fuel)
EGR jammed shut is more in the throwing codes camp, may or may not be any noticeable ill effects.


Ok, other thoughts. Gentle driving doesn't do much good, clogs stuff up. Hence a good blast does wonders, generally. I'm not sure the level of detail of these (insurance black box?) Monitoring systems - are revs logged or is it speed / acceleration/ deceleration only?

Reason for asking being that there's a (less fun!) version of the Italian Tune Up:
Rather than giving a good thrashing (and affecting black box readings) a continued normal motorway speed run, but in a lower ratio (4th at 70, maybe 3rd at say 60, 65 tops) may achieve much the same high gas flow, thoroughly warmed through engine as desired.
Nowt lost but a bit of , admittedly currently expensive, diesel. Would be good to combine this with one of the additives mentioned if so desired.

Checking earths and connections also good idea, given the "stumble" type behaviour noted.

Blocked catalyst would not be intermittent and most likely engine that doesn't like revs at all.

No DPF complexities to worry about thankfully. Also no "air doser" (as no intercooler either) so that isn't spuriously shutting.

It's a puzzler and a pain with intermittent nature of it.

Will "sleep on it" if any flashes of inspiration leap to mind will let you know,

Matt

[Huskyxantia]

Funny you just mentioned the egr , id just had that come to mind and thought id pop my thoughts on here , nothing like taking one off in less than 15mins on these little engines , the cleaning part is easy , getting it off and on is restricted by the room you have to work in. Maybe additive use after a month might work , but nothing compares to taking it off and cleaning it yourself, when i got my glow plug out and fitted new ones my issues were fixed , but that was my fix , as we know these faults are like doing a puzzle.

[Browni]

On EGR that was replaced 2 days ago. There's a couple of different types of black boxes, one is hard wired in and that actually does measure engine revs, cornering, deacceleration, obviously speed. the other type and this is what my daughter has is all done of GPS through her phone. Now i know I can tell her to turn it off but I do like the thought of her driving sensibly and I don't mind being the person to thrash it now and then.......it's been years since i drove a roller skate and it was great fun .