'59 1.6 Tdci Powertrain Light

[Early-1800]

Broke my rule of swapping at 5 years or 70,000 miles......... car now 5 and 1/2 and 77,000 miles.

Just completed a 140 mile round trip visiting family. 95% motorway door to door.

About 50 miles in when on round about between the M62 (or M60 these days???) and M66 it stalled when I set off from red light. At 1st thought I'd accidently put it 3rd instead of 1st but then heard a ping and saw a yellow 'powertrain' light on dash (round cog with ! in centre). Restarted and sort kangarooed a few yards and died again. Restarted again drove OK but light came back on. Off MWay on last bit of journey did struggle/miss abit when accelerating.

Parked up at destination and called AA. Nice AA man quickly arrived and confirmed I hadn't put petrol in, water and oil are fine. Plugged his laptop in and not a sausage recorded in fault memory. I did fill up from local Jet garage night before but managed 50 miles before any problems. He said poss fuel filter needs replacing and that its usually 'sticky' EGR valves that plague these engines. Car has full Ford history so assuming filter is OK?

Journey back home was fine, car ran fine but powertrain lamp did reappear when I slowed down at the M66/M62 junction. Stopped at nearby services, had a pi$$ and when I resumed journey light had disappeared and didn't reappear again.

Looking on this site the powertrain lamp is either a harbinger of impending EGR failure or glowplugs/glowplug relay problems.

One last piece of info that may be related, the previous few weeks it has sometimes puffed out grey smoke when starting in morning from cold, looks and smells like diesel not oil, injector weeping over night or sticky EGR issue???

Anyone had similar symptoms, will it hold out long enough whilst I swap car. Is there still a 3 month wait on factory orders?