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Author Topic: 2,2 Dci a bad engine or?.  (Read 4173 times)
Jens
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Posts: 7


« on: August 05, 2013, 03:09:24 pm »

We have been offered a 2007 Espace 2,2 Dci to a ok price. But when I search for tech info and general information on this engine, it seems like everybody agree in one direction. It's a bad engine. I can also read about, that the car is due for service every 30.000 km witch in my world, would be able to kill most engines. But is the 2,2 Dci really that bad  Huh
I would be very pleased, if you would give me your best opinion on the subject, also the bad opinions  Smiley
Another question could be, if we were better of with the phase 3 (and what engine)
Enjoy the rest of the summer
Jens (Denmark)
X phase 2 owner and maybe phase 4 owner soon  Grin
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roy4matra
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Posts: 1199



« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2013, 07:35:31 pm »

We have been offered a 2007 Espace 2,2 Dci to a ok price. But when I search for tech info and general information on this engine, it seems like everybody agree in one direction. It's a bad engine. I can also read about, that the car is due for service every 30.000 km witch in my world, would be able to kill most engines. But is the 2,2 Dci really that bad  Huh

No the engine is not that bad really, it is the complex common-rail diesel injection and its electronics that were difficult for non-trained people to understand and without some diagnostics system to read the faults, difficult to work out what was wrong when it had a problem.

I was trained by Renault who I worked for at that time, and I could see these systems would become a worse problem as they got older and were not maintained as well, as often happens with many old second hand cars.

The basic mechanical engine is no different really to many modern emission engines, but the problem was that they were trying to make an old engine suit modern, very tight, emission limits and that created the complexity and like any complex thing, when something fails it causes more trouble.

Mercedes used the same Bosch common-rail system on some of their engines around the same time, as I know since I had just moved from Mercedes to Renault.  Both companies had the same problems, so you could say the trouble was really with the Bosch system.  Meeting the particulate levels was another particularly tough area and created another problem with the exhaust cleaning regeneration system.  By comparison, a newly designed engine, met the particulate levels without needing the exhaust particulate filter at all!  (so one less problem area)

Then you had mechanics that didn't understand the system well enough, and who had no fault diagnosis equipment who thought they could fix things by the 'hit-and-miss' method of trying things one after another, but that gets costly very quickly and still doesn't always work!  On top of all this the lack of room in an Espace III to get at the diesel components to even see things let alone work on them, just added to the difficulties.

I once had a problem in the early days of this system when we didn't know them so well, which turned out to be nothing more than the diesel was leaking very slightly, owing to the huge pressures these systems run at (they need 300 Bar to idle and can run up to 1400 Bar at the maximum) and the joints not being tight enough.  But I couldn't get in where I needed to even see this leak!  I had to undo and drop the engine slightly whilst still leaving it able to run, so I could see it whilst running it up.

Owing to these extremely high pressures the maintenance aspects are very specific and people don't always stick to them.  That leads to more problems.  Also injectors are coded as they have been graded very accurately and the computer needs to know the individual grades/codes so if you replace one or more you have to be able to code the injectors to the computer.  You also need special tools for many jobs, unlike the older mechanical diesels which were quite simple by comparison.

Personally, I would say forget buying a common-rail diesel engined Espace III.  I would not touch one with a 'barge-pole' as we say here.  It the whole vehicle that is simply not a user friendly vehicle for maintenance in all sorts of areas.  They look nice and the interior was a nice design with lots of features and permutations available; but I always look at the reliability and maintenance aspect first and that is simply not going to be good with a scond hand vehicle of possibly dubious past, unless you are very lucky.

Roy
« Last Edit: August 12, 2013, 07:42:42 pm by roy4matra » Logged

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