Sommerby
Full Member
Posts: 96
Spaceship Pilot
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« on: July 10, 2009, 12:57:06 am » |
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Hi gents. I just returned from a 4000 km holiday trip, which was quite eventfull. My car, a Renault Grand Espace 2.2 DCI from 2000 started to make me nervous just after 80 km driving. The first issue was the Fuel gauge which went from full to one blinking bar. Nothing was leaking so I continued. After approx 2 hours of driving, the fuel guage was functioning again. The next issue was more concerning. Driving up a steep Kassel highway in the fast lane the engine suddenly cut off. This resulted in a very dangerous situation fighting my way into the emergency lane between a convoy of trucks who did not want to reduce their speed in order to give me space to cross their lane. Safe in the emergency lane. I attemped a restart and to my big surprise the bugger started perfect and we could move on our holiday trip. During the driving the engine tripped approx 20 times and I learned quickly to get it into neutral and just to restart it while driving (With great attention to not to get the key to the steering lock position). The engine only trips when it is under heavy load. After my return I made a few test drives where I found out that I can rev the engine to max revs with a "Light foot" on the speeder without any problems, but if I put the speeder to the floor, the engine cut off when the turbo have build up a certain pressure. Searching the web makes it obvious that this cut off issue is a common 2.2 DCI problem, but the solutions are many and very different such as replacement of injectors, replacement of TDC sensor or the wiring for this, General wiring issues around the engine area, bad fuel pump, just to mention a few. So far I do not believe that this problem is caused due to bad wiring since the cut off is appearing every time at the excatly same load, and driving on rough roads do not provoke the error. So far I have renewed the fuel filter and made a visual inspection of the wiring around the engine, but this has not made any difference. Unless somebody in this forum can enlighten me in another direction my next step will be to find a good workshop who can test the injectors for minor cracks. I cant visually identify any fuel leaks around the injectors, but since the car drives perfectly untill it cut off and it the cut off is witout any alarm message, I start to believe that there may be a small leak in one injector when the pressure is at a certain level and this leak is identified by the engine safeguarding system which then cut off the engine. Any other less costly solutions I should try out first? Best Regards Bo
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« Last Edit: November 19, 2010, 07:38:58 pm by Sommerby »
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Best Regards Bo
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Lennart Sorth
Administrator
YaBB God
Posts: 832
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« Reply #12 on: August 11, 2009, 01:59:00 am » |
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Hi Bo,
I will keep my fingers crossed for the injectors being the cause, and that you can get it fixed with ease.
However, I have some vaguely similar experiences.
We also just returned after a 4 kkm holiday - ours somewhat less stressful though - although we also had a number of cut-outs with our 2002 2.2 dci.
Before setting off it only occurred just after starting from cold, and only caused the engine to stutter a bit but stay running. We had the car by Renault, but unsurprisingly they couldn't find anything in particular, but suggested to replace everything from top to toe in that order .... (sarcasm, sorry - I don't have the best of feelings for my local Renault dealer). They have replaced the TDC sensor twice, and repaired their flawed TDC wiring in between - so we suggested they may have got it wrong last time as well. To which they of course disagreed.
Anyway, we set off - only to discover that halfway there, the fault now caused the engine to cut-out - with the same drastic maneuvers as a result ... however we were not on the motorway.
It still was only happening the first few miles after starting from cold - and quite often in combination with load.
By the end of the holidays, it was almost certain to cut out 2-3 times on the 1 mile unpaved "4x4" road leading from our rented house to the main roads - but as soon as we got there, it would behave perfectly the rest of the day.
Driving back to Denmark (over two days - i.e. two cold starts) however saw no problems at all. (?)
Safely home we had the car by Renault again, and now the log was full of TDC-like messages again ... and after replacing the cam-sensor (because they still refused to believe they could have screwed up the TDC sensor replacement a year ago).... they arrived at the fact that it WAS in fact the TDC wiring ...
When the engine is put under load, the slight movement was apparently enough to upset the TDC connector ... I have checked our engine mounts, and they seem solid, so its not excessive movement.
So, you might want to verify your TDC sensor and its connection. Its very easy, as it can be reached from under the car.
Another fault our car has had years ago was that some of the plastic cable holders had broken up, causing some wires (one of them from the turbo pressure sensor) to drop down so they occasionally could touch the ancillary belt ... and be almost cut - certainly bad enough to either short to ground, or break the connection.
This of course caused the computer to seek shelter in emergency-mode ... limp-mode. As far as I recall, this was accompanied with the zig-zag symbol in the dashboard display, but for what its worth, check wiring throughout engine compartment.
Certainly a missing or inconstant TDC signals is reacted to (by the software) with big severity - as the high-pressure is not something you want to build up in case the engine stops. Other sensors (like some of the ones you list) have similar grave potential consequences, and hence pretty abrupt reactions.
/Lennart
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« Last Edit: August 20, 2009, 08:29:55 pm by Lennart Sorth »
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colin4255
Sr. Member
Posts: 119
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« Reply #13 on: August 19, 2009, 12:55:31 am » |
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I'm not sure how relevant my ten pence worht will be here, but today, I started my espace and backed it off my drive and it just cut out and would not re-start no matter what I did. Lucky I thought that I was not doing 70mph in the outside lane of the moroway when this happened.
Got it recovered to the dealers - my thoughts and theirs were true - faulty TDC sensor causing the ECU to shut down the engine. Hour later and it was fixed. About £30 for the sensor ans £45 labour charge. Sensor has been in the car for 110,000miles and I was told this is quite a commin fault on all the DCi diesels - the dealer had a load of them on the parts shelf which says a lot!
It stopped so abruptly that I figured it was either going to be the TDC sensor or an alarm system issue.
From memory, it did cut out only once before, but I re-started it immediately. Usually I am told, this first shows itself as a problem starting - ie taking a while for the engine to fire up, but not in my case. It was just one failure, then nothing worked.
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