Hi all,
It's a bit of a saga and I apologize for the long winded post. Figured it would be a good idea to throw in as much (hopefully) relevant detail as I can.
I have a 2011 D40 ST (Thai version). I've recently had a plethora of issues with it that has caused it to spend the last few months in and out of various workshops. Unfortunately after all the $'s I've thrown at it, it's still not 100%.
The wear and tear that was the catalyst to all this probably started earlier but I noticed the issues begin in early October during a trip across the Simpson Desert. That is; being slow, blowing a heap of smoke, and going into limp mode (I could fix limp mode by restarting the car). It wasn't very fun having to drive all the way back to Melbourne like that.
On the way back I saw the "water in fuel" light flicker very quickly. I actually had to look it up as I'd never seen the icon before. We went straight home. The car seemingly deteriorating more and more the closer we got to Melbourne.
When I got back I immediately booked the car into my mechanics. He removed the fuel filter and found a fair amount of water in it. Apparently I managed to fill my car with contaminated fuel at some point on the trip.
The mechanic tried a few things to fix my issues. He put in a new boost controller and checked for boost leaks, but it was the MAF sensor that stopped it going into limp mode. Unfortunately the Nav was still dropping boost, felt sluggish and was blowing a lot of smoke. He suggested I take it to a turbo/injector specialist. Meanwhile I blanked off the EGR valve, but that didn't make an iota of difference.
The specialists were confident some of my issues were the result of injector failure, and agreed that the water hadn't done them any favors. I actually managed to get insurance to come to the party on this. They paid for the fuel system to be cleaned/replaced where required so I was pretty stoked - it did take a long time to get this sorted though ~1month, but the work was seemingly very thorough.
The issue of the boost drop (it spiked to around 19psi then dropped to 10) was apparently the car going into limp mode, if only for a short while. I was told the EGR valve (still blanked) was throwing an error when the boost started climbing. That needed replacement too. Bit annoying since I was planning on leaving it blanked anyway.
I was also told the timing chain was noisy, and being a known issue on these engines I opted to have it replaced. It was replaced with the better/stronger duplex chain from yd25.com.au so I shouldn't need to worry about that ever again.
So I got the car back after around 2 months (this was over Christmas too). Picked it up on a Friday afternoon and it still felt sluggish. I'd been driving around in a pretty quick car while mine was in the workshop so I thought it might just *feel* slow. Once I got a bit closer to home I was convinced this wasn't the case. I'd started noticing huge plumes of black smoke behind me. I wondered if it just needed to go for a drive to bed in/re-learn or something (I was being optimistic). So off I went down the highway and through the hills, did about 260kms and it just felt like it was getting worse. By the time I gave it back to the workshop on Monday morning the smoke was ridiculous, a constant stream of black smog blasting out the back. At this point my fuel consumption was at 15.4 litres per 100km's of mostly open road driving.
They tinkered with it for a further 2 weeks, double checking their work and testing a number of things. They began to suspect the turbo was having issues but were hesitant to remove it due to the amount of work required. Eventually they ran out of other ideas and found out the turbo was damaged. The compressor blades had chips in them and it was filled with a fair amount of gunk. So I got a new turbo installed.
When I picked it up it still felt slow. Smoke is coming out when I take off almost all of the time (relatively little) and a puff between gear changes on decent acceleration. I have an OBD2 bluetooth device so I plugged it in and had a look at how the turbo was behaving. It looked much better.
I decided to go for a decent drive over Australia day weekend ~1,200kms of mostly highway in 100/110km zones. First fill had used 12.8 litres per hundred, second 13.7, third 11.3. Seems that it uses a lot more cruising in the 110km zones. Either way it's not in line with what I had measured before leaving for the Simpsons desert trip. I wasn't carrying a heavy load and didn't have anything on the roof racks either.
I found the car was really struggling to get up hills. I was having to gear back a number of times and found I was putting my foot flat to the floor which is unusual. I'm avoiding towing my boat with it at the moment as I think it will really struggle.
So, after all these things have been replaced, and all this investigation has been done does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do next? Do I fork out for a proper tune? Does the computer need to be reset? Almost feels like it's suffocating.
So far:
Here's some pics...
https://imgur.com/a/oiQaO
It's a bit of a saga and I apologize for the long winded post. Figured it would be a good idea to throw in as much (hopefully) relevant detail as I can.
I have a 2011 D40 ST (Thai version). I've recently had a plethora of issues with it that has caused it to spend the last few months in and out of various workshops. Unfortunately after all the $'s I've thrown at it, it's still not 100%.
The wear and tear that was the catalyst to all this probably started earlier but I noticed the issues begin in early October during a trip across the Simpson Desert. That is; being slow, blowing a heap of smoke, and going into limp mode (I could fix limp mode by restarting the car). It wasn't very fun having to drive all the way back to Melbourne like that.
On the way back I saw the "water in fuel" light flicker very quickly. I actually had to look it up as I'd never seen the icon before. We went straight home. The car seemingly deteriorating more and more the closer we got to Melbourne.
When I got back I immediately booked the car into my mechanics. He removed the fuel filter and found a fair amount of water in it. Apparently I managed to fill my car with contaminated fuel at some point on the trip.
The mechanic tried a few things to fix my issues. He put in a new boost controller and checked for boost leaks, but it was the MAF sensor that stopped it going into limp mode. Unfortunately the Nav was still dropping boost, felt sluggish and was blowing a lot of smoke. He suggested I take it to a turbo/injector specialist. Meanwhile I blanked off the EGR valve, but that didn't make an iota of difference.
The specialists were confident some of my issues were the result of injector failure, and agreed that the water hadn't done them any favors. I actually managed to get insurance to come to the party on this. They paid for the fuel system to be cleaned/replaced where required so I was pretty stoked - it did take a long time to get this sorted though ~1month, but the work was seemingly very thorough.
The issue of the boost drop (it spiked to around 19psi then dropped to 10) was apparently the car going into limp mode, if only for a short while. I was told the EGR valve (still blanked) was throwing an error when the boost started climbing. That needed replacement too. Bit annoying since I was planning on leaving it blanked anyway.
I was also told the timing chain was noisy, and being a known issue on these engines I opted to have it replaced. It was replaced with the better/stronger duplex chain from yd25.com.au so I shouldn't need to worry about that ever again.
So I got the car back after around 2 months (this was over Christmas too). Picked it up on a Friday afternoon and it still felt sluggish. I'd been driving around in a pretty quick car while mine was in the workshop so I thought it might just *feel* slow. Once I got a bit closer to home I was convinced this wasn't the case. I'd started noticing huge plumes of black smoke behind me. I wondered if it just needed to go for a drive to bed in/re-learn or something (I was being optimistic). So off I went down the highway and through the hills, did about 260kms and it just felt like it was getting worse. By the time I gave it back to the workshop on Monday morning the smoke was ridiculous, a constant stream of black smog blasting out the back. At this point my fuel consumption was at 15.4 litres per 100km's of mostly open road driving.
They tinkered with it for a further 2 weeks, double checking their work and testing a number of things. They began to suspect the turbo was having issues but were hesitant to remove it due to the amount of work required. Eventually they ran out of other ideas and found out the turbo was damaged. The compressor blades had chips in them and it was filled with a fair amount of gunk. So I got a new turbo installed.
When I picked it up it still felt slow. Smoke is coming out when I take off almost all of the time (relatively little) and a puff between gear changes on decent acceleration. I have an OBD2 bluetooth device so I plugged it in and had a look at how the turbo was behaving. It looked much better.
I decided to go for a decent drive over Australia day weekend ~1,200kms of mostly highway in 100/110km zones. First fill had used 12.8 litres per hundred, second 13.7, third 11.3. Seems that it uses a lot more cruising in the 110km zones. Either way it's not in line with what I had measured before leaving for the Simpsons desert trip. I wasn't carrying a heavy load and didn't have anything on the roof racks either.
I found the car was really struggling to get up hills. I was having to gear back a number of times and found I was putting my foot flat to the floor which is unusual. I'm avoiding towing my boat with it at the moment as I think it will really struggle.
So, after all these things have been replaced, and all this investigation has been done does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do next? Do I fork out for a proper tune? Does the computer need to be reset? Almost feels like it's suffocating.
So far:
- New injectors, common rail, fuel pump, filter etc
- Cleaning of the fuel system/tank etc
- New turbo
- New MAF sensors
- New boost controller
- Compression tested twice
- Exhaust removed and inspected (I don't actually know what they were looking at).
- EGR valve replaced
- Intercooler cleaned and pressure tested.
Here's some pics...
https://imgur.com/a/oiQaO