MatraSport Forum

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

Hi all

I hereby attach a drawing of a part of the engine. I do not have any vacum hose connected to the device where the number "1" is placed on the drawing. Do anybody know what function this device have? and where the other end of the hose is going to?
Best Regards
Bo

You say you had a problem with fuel level information at first, then running problems - this could very well be related as the priming pump is the same unit as the fuel level sensor mounted in the fuel tank... **EDIT - sorry, seems like this one has its separate priming pump located under the car.**
If this has a poor connection or is about to collapse (these pumps dont last forever) the high pressure pump might get too little fuel pressure from the priming pump that should deliver 2,5 - 4 bar

When it comes to the injectors its the return flooding problem that is most common, and you might see signs of the faulty injector if checking the return amount on them even if the fault is not present. The method for measuring the return flow is attached.

Hi Tom.
Many thanks for your reply. I will try to find a workshop who are able to do the test you are mentioning.  For two years ago I had the priming pump replaced on our holiday trip to france. A few weeks before the priming pump breakdown it started to make noise and during our trip it broke down.
This pump breakdown forced us to continiue our holiday in a rental VW multivan. What a setback :-( 
Allthough we have been driving more than 100.000 km in it, it takes time to build up faith again to a car which have let you down. So it is with some kind of exitement when we are starting a long distance drive with the Espace :-)
An brand new Injector can be bought for 200 euros on Ebay so if  this ends up with beeing a bad injector, it would still be a quite affordable repair.
I doubt that this is about bad connections since the engine cut off is happening only with heavy load on the engine? I can almost predict excatly when it will happen when I give 100% throttle and the turbo pressure are building up and then ........ Cut off!

Best Regards
Bo

Then i would perhaps look on the Turbo circuit - pressure sensor ?

I have been considering the pressure sensor, but would this not have been giving an alarm on the display? (The Symbol for motor management trouble)

When it happend there are no alarms what so ever. The engine just shuts down and I can restart without any kind of alarms.

To be honest i think the fault alarms are very unpredicteable on the JE, seen cars with faults that according to the book should warn the driver "STOP" or whatever with the current fault -but it does not.

Have you had it scanned for faults ?

OK. if the alarm system is so unpredictable, I believe that the following issues can be the reason for the engine cut off (According to the workshop manual an error in (or a bad connection to) those items will cause an engine cut off):
Error in the engine rev counter.
Error in the main relay or in the priming pump (My priming pump is replaced for 2 years ago)
Error in a injector (*)
Error in the TDC sensor
Error in the fuel pressure valve (*)
Error in condensate voltage

Since it only happens during heavy acceleration I beleive that the (*) marked issues are most likely?

I will book a time for a diagnostic check on Monday.

I had the same problem with cut out with my Espace.

I changed the TDC sensor and cleaned out the EGR valve with no change in performance.

The common fault that most point towards is a problem with the injectors and fuel pump. The metal links in the fuelk pump corrode and little filings fall into the injectors.

This means that both the fuel pump and injectors need replacing.

I luckily managed to get a replacement car from the dealer.

I'm not saying this is the problem with your car, but it most certainly was with mine.

-Rob

The Car was diagnosed at a Renault workshop today. We did a "Live" test, and we got the following alarms everytime the engine cut off: 

Solenied valve jammed
Rail pressure high
Rail pressure low

A fuel return test on the injectors came out with the following result:
Injector 1:  20 ml
Injector 2: 75 ml
Injector 3: 21 ml
Injector 4: 20 ml

Injector 2 is obvision bad so I am just about to order a new injector through Ebay for 200 euros.
I cross my fingers and hope that the replacement of the injector will cure my cut off problem.
The Renault troubleshooting procedure says "Replace high pressure pump" according to the alarm list, but this pump was replaced for 2 years ago, so I don't believe that it's the pump causing the problem?
If the injector replacement do not cure the problem, I believe that I should order a new soleniod valve?
Or is there any other oppinions on this?

Best Regards
Bo

The injectors should be as similar as possible and not more than 60 ml so you are probably cured after replacing the leaking one :)

I hope so :-)

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

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.

The TDC sensor is a £27 part and can be changed easily by yourself as long as you can get under the car.
My issues started with the car having hiccups. I.e suddenly losing power, then showing the EKG-type icon ont he dash and then carrying on as easily.

When the TDC sensor is replaced, remember to push it all the way up to the fly wheel - it should be touching.

I feel pretty sure that it in my case is a bad injector (no 2) since the cut out always happens during heavy load.  I will get the injector replaced the 2-09-09 and we will then see if I'm right  :)
 To be continiued..........

Problem solved.

Injector 2 is now replaced and the Espace is now on full speed again :-)

As I got recomended here on this forum.  Start up with a leak test of the injectors when you get a cut off problem in connection with acceleration. It's a quick and simple test and if one of the injectors leaks considerable more than the others, it's most likely the reason for the problem.

Many thanks to all who commented this tread.

YAY!!!

As the injectors are very expencive there is a few Bosch Diesel centers that actually repair these injectors, both totally rebuild and only repairing the return fault. That is if they have the equippment to repair and test injectors - it might be a very reasonable price to get it fixed.
We have one diesel center here that have parts in stock for repairing this at a fraction of the cost for even a overhauled component from Bosch.

And aint it strange ;D that it seems to be the german parts failing in these diesel engines ::)
I dont know about the TDC in the dCi but i replaced TDC for a new genuine one on our Scenic 2.0 16v as a precaution when i bought it, and that was made by Siemens.

Those injectors seems to be quite rare in Denmark, but I managed to get 4 secondhand injectors from Ebay.de for 260 euros.

They were all faulty. 3 of them leaked to much and one did not close (caused the engine to sound as a major breakdown and me to think of personal bankrupt :-)

I got one injector total overhauled for 280 euro and that did the trick :-)

Now I hope for some years of troublefree driving. (Wish thinking :-)

Best Regards
Bo 

www.vedas.no fixes the return fault for aprox 175 euros + shipping for one injector. Parts in stock.
They can also rebuild the complete injector but the price is higher ofcourse.