IanInHerts

Hello all.
I have a 2004 Mondeo TDCI 2.0 130. I’ve driven about 3000 miles since buying it with 126,000 on the clock. When I bought it I took a risk that the black smoke on heavy acceleration would not ultimately cost me dear because for the age the bodywork and inside were both in pretty good condition and the road test of about 40 miles went very well.
Apart from the smoke the only tiny niggle was that occasionally it didn’t start first time and occasionally it took a few seconds after starting for the power to be there. The car ran very well generally and it was a pleasure to drive.
Recently, after 150 or so trouble free miles that day I was slowing down on a motorway slip road approaching a roundabout. I could feel a very slight juddering. It was so slight I couldn’t decide if it was the engine or rough road surface. When I stopped at the roundabout it cut out and was difficult to start. I managed to get it to crawl over to the hard shoulder. It started with difficulty and ran very roughly.
An RAC patrol man diagnosed loss of compression. I had the car towed to a garage local to my home which I’d used a lot for my previous car and felt I could trust them to do a good job. They rejected the RAC diagnosis and said the problem lay with the diesel injectors. They recommended getting them tested by a specialist at a cost of £15 plus VAT each. They warned that 9 times out of 10 if there was an injector problem all 4 failed. This struck me as odd. I approved the testing as I felt I had no option. The recommendation of the specialist was to recondition all 4. My garages quoted £936 for all the work involved. I decide to go ahead. While this was on the high side they had my trust and that was worth something to me.
After refitting the injectors the engine still wouldn’t run properly so the car was sent to the specialist which reconditioned the injectors. They checked their work and claim it was necessary and was done appropriately. The car is back with my garage and I’m trying to decide how to handle this.
Have any of you any advice? Was it a reasonable thing to do to suspect the injectors and do £936 of work on the basis of this suspicion? Should other cheaper things have been tried first? Could all four injectors have failed at the same time and caused a sudden problem such as I had and for there to be simultaneously another fault?
Your help would be appreciated very much.

55rsturbo

hi i had an injector go but only one, this cost me nearly £400 to renew the one, but this came up as a fault and the car went into limp mode. so it was deffinatly the injector. mine has black smoke when it goes onto turbo as they all do. this does not solve your problem, but injectors are very exspensive, sounds more like the pump or some thing along those lines. can you not have a diagnostic done.

IanInHerts

Thanks 55rsturbo.
Here’s some more information I discovered today.
The independent garage I took the car to took it to Ford for testing. This revealed a fault code that indicated the injectors were faulty. I asked what the code was and was told that they would need to check with Ford because the information wasn’t retained by my garage.
Now that the injectors work a new fault has been revealed, a mechanical one. Electronic faults have now been eliminated.
The guy I spoke to at the garage dealing with my car said he trusted the diesel engineers that processed the injectors, that they have a good reputation.
I asked for more information about the diagnostic process that was followed. A compression test was done and one cylinder was found to be low, but not enough to be causing the problem. The fuel pressure was fine. A leak off test was inconclusive because the engine wasn’t running well enough for it to be reliable.
It was suggested on this or other forums that the problem might have been a bent con rod or jumped timing chain. I was told by guy at the garage that if either of these was the case then the engine wouldn’t run at all.
To determine the nature of the mechanical fault would entail taking the head off. Is this a big job? Of course, there’s no guarantee that what is found would be economical to repair.

IanInHerts

My biggest concern at the moment is not what remains wrong with my car (though it quickly will be ) but the quoted cost of the work done so far. The garage is not pressing me for payment yet but surely will do soon. I’m loathe to pay them anything given I put my trust in them to fix my car and it isn’t fixed and they don’t know what it will take to fix it. I remain very sceptical that a problem with the injectors caused my car to suddenly start hesitating and then stall in the space of a few seconds after 150 trouble free miles that day. The engine was running fine. I was given no test results from the injector testing, just told they were all bad and needed doing. The guy at the garage said the mechanical fault that remains was not apparent before the injectors were “fixed”. Is that really likely? He suggested that the injector problem might have caused a fault in the engine, such as a damaged piston ring for example. If that was the case wouldn’t the compression test have revealed such a fault? If I had been told that it would cost £936 to fix the injectors and then an unknown amount to fix another problem then I would surely not have agreed to have them done. The garage must know the car is only worth £1500 so trying a £936 repair to see if it fixes the problem wasn’t appropriate, if that’s what was done. Perhaps as someone on another site said, “Sounds like a case of it’s a TDCI the injectors must be knackered by now.” I wonder if I give the go ahead to do some more investigation yet another fault will be found. Should I just write it off; sell it as non-runner? At least it has the value of 4 reconditioned injectors.
It’s likely that the injectors were not in “perfect” condition, but it’s an 8 year old car and nothing on it is perfect. I just wanted it restored to working order as it was before the breakdown, not a general car improvement program.
My garage did do a diagnostics check. They took it to a local Ford deal for that. I didn’t mention that in my initial post because they only told me yesterday. I’m still waiting for them to tell me the fault code.

55rsturbo

hi when i had trouble with my injector the heater light on the dash was flashing and went into limp mode we called the AA out who put a diagnostic test on it, and it came up with a fault code number no 4 injector did yours have the heater light flashing. all the fault code numbers are the same on the mondeos, so the garage is bound to come up with these now. maybe they jumped the gun on saying it was injectors, as they always fail.

IanInHerts

Hi 55rsturbo. I'm not really sure what limp mode is. I was only lust able to get it to crawl slowly over to the hard shoulder thinking it would cut out at any moment. I don't remember any flashing lights.

IanInHerts

I was told this on TalkFord, "If the compression test was showing a cylinder was low then to me this would point to a dodgy valve or piston rings and as these engines run to very fine tolorences this low compression could cause poor running and starting problems.".



Could it be that this was the problem all along, as the RAC guy said, and the work on the injectors has been unecessay?



Can you quantify how low the compression would need to be to cause rough running and the engine to cut out?

DanW@FastFord

iTrader: (1)

Diagnosing 4x injectors was understandable (depending on the fault code that is!) and the price seems fair.

it's common for one to go and the rest to follow.

However, there are a multitude of things that can go wrong with the car, and soooooo many garages automatically claim that it's the injectors (because 9 times out of 10 it is) but fail to test them properly. £15 per injector is too cheap for them to be tested by a proper Delphi specialist - and Ford are definitely not Delphi specialists. If the specialist wasn't a Delphi one, then they can not test them properly. They can only test SOME of the parameters, not all.

You need to know the exact fault codes.

I've unfortunately had a lot of experience with misbehaving TDCis and if you can find out what codes the car flagged up I should be able to help more. Feel free to PM me.

IanInHerts

Thanks DanW. I'll let you know the fault codes when my garage tells me. I've found them pretty poor at communication generally. Not only did they not provide the evidence that prompted them to conclude the injectors were at fault, they didn't give me the injector test output, in fact they've not even had the printouts from the diesel specialist they sent the injectors to.

After refitting the suposedly reconditioned injectors the engine still didn't run properly. They still thought it was the injectors so sent the car to the firm that did the reconditioning. Now the car is back with them they say there is a mechanical fault. I'd certainly not have approved the injector work if I'd know there was another as yet undiagnosed fault. I now don't really know what to do.

IanInHerts

I've been ignoring the situation for a couple of weeks. I don't think it's worth getting any more done by the garage. I could do some limited investigation myself.



Oddly, I've heard nothing from the garage. I need to approach them. They quoted £936 to do the injectors and I trusted that this would fix my car and it hasn't. Is it reasonable for them to expect me to pay them this and take back a car that isn't fixed? What is the experience of people here of this kind of situation?

Diesel combi pete

Hi. I do not often have work done in a garge, I think the only time I have is when I have gone back for retest after a failer on the mot. They tend to find somthing that cost just about the same as it would if you take the car away and then have to pay for another mot. I trust them not, Was it a reputable garage or a back street one. those back strret garages can sometime look ok but they can be full of idiots. cars these days are so cmplicated you can not learn by experiance alone.
Well, when you have work done you should make shore that they are shore that when you pick the car up it will be working at the price they quote.
I my self would not have payed out to have the car done. and from what you have said I definatly would not pay them one peny. If they do keep on after the cash go and demand to know where they took it and then if they tell you that go and check with ford, I recon they are blagging you, I think you will not hear from them again.
I love my diesel motors, I have two old combi escorts and I can do every thing and any thing with them/to them, but when it comes to even their simple fuel pump and injectors Well we are at their mercy ar'nt we?
Wish you luck with it, but for me it sounds like your luck comes from the same place as mine,,,, Hell, Cheers pete

IanInHerts

I paid the garage because it imposed a storage charge. I have the car back. After a few weeks of ignoring it I need to decide what to do. Thanks to all of you who've suggested tests that I could do to check for timing chain slippage, bent con rod and other things. I don't feel confident in my ability to perform these tests. Would anyone here recommend a mobile mechanic who covers Royston, Herts?

IanInHerts

Thanks to all who made suggestions and recommendations. I've just logged in after a very long gap. I thought I'd add an update. I decided to spend no more on the car and sold it to a mechanic who planned to fit a used engine. I decided not to take the matter further (I'd considered taking the garage to court) when the owner of the garage wrote to me denying that they'd ever said ever that there wasn't a problem with low compression. The fact is that they did say that. They said that they'd tested the compression and it was fine. I took the car to a different garage and was told that one cylinder had zero compression, which is just was the RAC guy said at the roadside.