Poor start up from cold. Diesel engine.

JustAnotherSaver

This is going to be a hard one to describe. In fact i'm not really going to be able to. When i bought the car (56 Mondeo diesel) the car would chug a bit in the morning start up.

Lately that chug is worse. It starts up ok - the engine doesn't keep turning over. There's no lazy battery or starter or whatever. Once it fires up though it is a bit coughy & spluttery. Without videos of before and present i can't really describe the change.

Give it 10 seconds or so and it's fine.

the other day I started the car up & then went to pull away. Not aiming for record time but I wasn't hanging about either. It was within the 10 seconds. There was no power, the car crawled in to the far lane & the battery light was on. After approx. 10 seconds had passed all was good, battery light off & power returned.

I've plugged Forscan in and it says (with dash cam, heaters & radios turned off) the voltage is 11.8v-11.9v. I had a 12v USB adapter in the other day and when the car was running it was reading something like 14.0v-14.1v.

Just wondering if anyone can highlight what is likely to be going on based on the limited info i can provide. With the battery light coming on the dash that time, I thought maybe the battery is on its way out, but the car starts fine enough.

* I've no idea how old the battery is.

AdrianC

Grumpy diesels from cold are almost always glow plugs.

They wouldn't have started at all back in the day, but with common rails they will do, because the fuel is much better atomised and combustible when it's injected. These days, they're also used a lot for emissions management, even when the engine's warm, so I'd not be surprised if you get an engine management light.

"The battery light" is the (lack of) charge light - probably because the revs were too low for the alternator to be putting any output out. ~12.5v is about what you should be seeing with everything off, engine not running, while 14-14.5v is what you want to see with the engine running.

maxsteam

Diesel fuel gets a bit jelly-like when it's really really cold. Winter will be colder than Autumn. You can't change this.

I suggest taking the battery out and giving it an overnight charge. This is likely to help. If you don't want to keep doing this, replace the battery with one with a decent number of Ah. If you do replace the battery, keep the receipt as it will be likely to have a guarantee so that you can swap it if it fails in the next couple of years. I find EuroCarParts competitive for batteries but look for the discount code, and use it, when ordering through the web site.

JustAnotherSaver

Thanks guys.

Adrian - no record of glow plugs being changed. Not to say they haven't been but no record of it. 56 plate on 150k miles.

With the car sitting at 11.8v-11.9v when 'off' is this 'not normal' then?

Even now 12months on i'm still not totally happy with the car. lol. The issues that were there in the opening days that I discussed on here don't really happen much it seems so for the most part I just drive it. I'm not keen on spending anything that doesn't need to be spent on it though, unlike the last car - so on that note I don't want to buy a battery or ask for glow plugs to be replaced unless they have to be.

AdrianC

JustAnotherSaver said:

Adrian - no record of glow plugs being changed. Not to say they haven't been but no record of it. 56 plate on 150k miles.

There's a good start, then.

With the car sitting at 11.8v-11.9v when 'off' is this 'not normal' then?

It's certainly not fully charged...



How are you measuring? Ciggy socket may not be the most accurate.

Ant555

AdrianC said:

Grumpy diesels from cold are almost always glow plugs.

 This is my experience too with one car - diesel corsa gradually went to absolute rubbish in the cold (always started but took a good few turns which was unusual) plus it was just really lumpy pulling away in the first half of the journey . 

Was like a new car with new glow plugs - I was so pleased it was an easy fix.

Hope yours is too.

JustAnotherSaver

AdrianC said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

Adrian - no record of glow plugs being changed. Not to say they haven't been but no record of it. 56 plate on 150k miles.

There's a good start, then.

With the car sitting at 11.8v-11.9v when 'off' is this 'not normal' then?

It's certainly not fully charged...



How are you measuring? Ciggy socket may not be the most accurate.

Forscan on the laptop via a cabled adapter in to the ODB2 port.

Regards this cold weather talk...

What's cold weather?

I work outside & with people of varying ages. It's funny to me listening to the youngsters talk about how 'freeeeeeeeezing' it is when it's really far from it.

Perhaps that's because i grew up in a house with no central heating, single glazed windows with ice so thick on the inside you couldn't get it off.

Right now is not cold to me. Perhaps it is for the car? Give it 2-3 months & i'm sure it'll be cold but right now when i'm getting up and it's like 10c +/- a little, that's not exactly cold to me.

maxsteam

JustAnotherSaver said:
56 plate on 150k miles.

I don't want to buy a battery or ask for glow plugs to be replaced unless they have to be.

It's getting towards the end of its life. Like I said, give the battery an overnight charge and see if it makes a difference. I hope that you can keep things rolling for a few more years and you are being sensible in not wanting to spend money unless it's necessary but, if there's a problem, you can either spend a little money and fix things yourself or take it to a garage and pay their bill or live with the problem or change car. I can't think of another option.

Goudy

Fords Duratorq can suffer a stumbling start if it's not generating enough rail pressure on the starter motor at start up.
The engine catches and fires up in the normal time but is sounds all chuggy, spluttery and flat until you can coax the engine to spin up fast enough to generate more rail pressure.

The usual culprits for this is a little too much leak off from the injectors, but don't rule out fuel leaks, blocked fuel filter, low battery or duff starter motor (slightly slower crank speed) or a worn HP pump.

These Delphi injectors tend to spill off more and more fuel as they get older, they often get to around 80k give or take when they need atttention (badly refurb ones half that) and as it's bleeding off fuel from the injectors, the rail pressure doesn't get really high on just the starter motor alone it causes a strumbling start.

It's usually noticed at start up, even warm start up can have similar problems as the injectors try to fire with even less rail pressure than cold start. When the leak off gets bad enough, they tend to trip into limp under high load as well, again not enough rail pressure to meet demand.

If your battery and charging system are good, try holding the clutch down when starting, it takes a bit of load off the engine/starter motor and helps generate a little more rail pressure, also hang onto the key on the starter for a split second longer as it fires up.
If both of these help starting, you need to test the rail pressure and perhaps perform an injector leak off test.

JustAnotherSaver

maxsteam - while it doesn't have the same future ahead of it as it did 15 years ago, i don't know about how close to end of life it is just because it's 15 & done 150k. There's older cars with higher mileage still going strong. Granted this one isn't a top example.

If i had the connection with the car that i did with my last one, maybe i'd be wanting to 'save' it. To be honest the way I feel about it is if it continues to go then it saves me a bill but if it does end up dying then no big deal, minus the obvious hand in pocket that i'd need to be doing.

Currently eyeing up possible replacements. Only issue is, I don't really know what I want.

To further complicate things is my budget. I don't like to spend too much on a car only for some idiot in a car park to play not-me-officer.

And to go even further than that is location of suitable cars. Not wanting to get in to the realms of the modern day society where everyone gets labelled too quickly, I see a lot of cars coming up on searches but when I see their location it puts me off shall we say. And that's through personal experience too as well as the experience of others.

Goudy - you've had one of these yourself IIRC so thanks for the feedback. I'm aware that these are known for suffering injector issues. I've wondered if mine are ok or on the go. I like a nice clean and dry engine bay but mine just appears a bit wet in and about there. I've given it a quick doing over with brake cleaner and a quick rub but as said earlier, i'm not 'in to' the car enough to give the engine bay a top to bottom clean like i did with the last car so that i can then see any fresh leaks.

Regards the fuel filter - that was brand spanking new this time last year & i used genuine Bosch. IIRC you get 2 fuel filters for these, a cheapy one and then a dearer one. I opted for the dearer one at the time.

Also regards start up - ever since i nearly went in to the back of someone many many moons ago I always without fail start any vehicle i'm in with the clutch down. It's just habit now.

coffeehound

Out of interest, how much does it cost to replace glowplugs and injectors? Are they hard to access?