Ford Fusion 2009 1.4 Tdci Intermittent Hesitation/misfire

[Chris_1882]

Hi, 1st post in the forum don't think it's in the right place but hopefully someone can help.

It's a problem with my mums fusion 1400 TDCI. Basically it hesitates/misfires very intermittently. Sounds like it loses signal to an injector every so often if your listening to it with the bonnet up.. I have driven it and its so random when it does it, it doesn't matter what speed or gear your in or if your changing gear etc..

I have had a read around and general consensus is it might need a software update?? Is this done via IDS?? Is it a take to ford job?? Can I check for updates myself?? It's a shame my peugeot/Citroen diag software won't read it as its a pug/CIT engine.

If any mechanics out there can help a fellow mechanic that would be great.

Thanks

Chris

[chemfusion]

If it's comms to an injector might that suggest something up with the EAC?

[Chris_1882]

I don't think its as technical as that mate, I was digging around last night in my mums paperwork and found out its only ever been serviced at fords and fords don't change the fuel filter until its 6 years old or done 75k whatever comes 1st so that's my first port of call.. I don't think its ever had one and there is no record of them changing it.. I'll be using genuine replacements as I know some patten parts are not exact.. I will report on my findings once I have changed it.. I'll laugh if it sorts it because the amount of 1.4tdci's that have this problem is vast!!

[iantt]

3years or 37.5k is fuel filter interval,

[Chris_1882]

Yes my mistake your correct I just checked back on etis.. Its a interim 37.5k or 3years with a fuel filter replacement.. But still only had 1 in its life which is ridiculous.

[seamo44]

Hi, my 09 1.6tdci had a very similar problem that developed into the engine randomly cutting out. When it began, the engine seemed to just 'skip a beat' for a split second. The cutting out began when the weather got really cold, like down to 1 to 3 celcius. It would restart as normal, but sometimes cut when at the clutch biting point. On diagnostics, there were no faults recorded until the auto-electrician drove it around with the laptop plugged in & it cut out. I give this detail to see if the car in question is similar.

The actual fault was caused by a solenoid in the injection unit. Ford quoted £750 for a complete assembly, but my local garage sourced the solenoid from a breaker for £10. Ford stated that the solenoid was unlikely to work as it needed coding to the ECU. This turned out to be Ford !Removed!. The hesitation/cutting out never happened again. However, several days later, the yellow light shaped like a cog inside the Tacho, came on. The engine ran ok, but there was a lack of oomph. The manual states this is a drivetrain error, or something like that. The garage reset the error codes & there hasn't been anything wrong since.

Sorry for the essay, I hope that helps.

[Chris_1882]

Hi Seamo

Thanks for the reply. Must admit it does sound very similar.. The car had a hissy fit the weekend with my mum driving. It was started up but not from cold and the engine was doing all sorts of banging around she said and then the yellow cog came up etc.. The RAC code read it as a open/short circuit on injector 4 (the expansion tank side I'm lead to believe) but he cleared the fault and recovered it back home and then I've got hold of it and its working fine except this random little "skipped beat" much to my annoyance.. Sounds quite possibly an injector mucking around then although I disconnected them all and checked there

Resistance values and there all pretty much the same which says to me it isn't.. I would like to know the resistance value tolerances if anyone has the info or know where I can get it

I don't know about changing a solenoid in a injector as such are u sure they didn't just get a 2nd hand injector??

Again thanks for your info and your reply :-)

Just waiting for the service kit and some millers to turn up to try that 1st.

[iantt]

150-250 kohms, and injector 4 is cyl3 , no1 cyl is crank pulley end

[iantt]

The solenoid I think the guy is refering to is the inlet metering valve on the high pressure pump.

[Chris_1882]

Injector 4 is cyl3? Is that definetly right its 1234 as you look at it left to right not the other way round? I was getting about 195kohms on each so that's good.. Have you got the resistance values for the solenoid on the high pressure pump is the info available anywhere?? I could check a few more bits.

Thanks Ian

[anemone]

Hi. We had just such an intermittent mis-firing and found out the cause when we ground to a halt on the M25 - luckily just before a service station which we managed to limp into. As there was a small diesel leak our local Ford garage re-seated the injectors a week or so previously during a regular service. The RAC mechanic diagnosed the problem as an injector fault, we had to be brought home on the back of a truck and our garage put in a new injector. Not happy as car only done 40,000 miles.

[Forbesy7777]

Hi there, newbie to the site and I have the same issue of loss of power. Initially it was an occasional misfire but last week the car died completely on a dual carriageway with no power / revs through the throttle pedal. Luckily it was late evening and I coasted into a layby. After 5 mins I restarted the engine and it was lumpy and still no power/ revs through the throttle pedal and the cog with the ! mark was still illuminated on the dash. switched off for another 5 mins and then the car ran ok for the last 20 miles to get home. Took the car to work on Monday and it covered the 6-7miles ok. go to drive it home and it losses power exactly as before and I have to coast to a standstill in rush hour. Only difference this time is the cog with the ! mark is now flashing rather than static. 10mins later I manage to get the car to start and get power through the throttle pedal. Car is not happy though and I limp it home. Managed to get the car to a local garage today and they have advised the fault is comms to injectors 1 & 4. At £175 a piece from Ford and then a heap of hours labour this is looking like a £600 bill.

Can anyone advise / recommend a breaker that could possibly supply 4 injectors (1.4 TDCi Fusion)? I don't know where to start looking or who to trust. Looking on here there seems to be many different reason for these cars having similar issues.

Many thanks in advance,

Paul

[MikefromRamsbottom]

Four months ago I bought a 10-year-old Fusion 1.4Tdci with a few faults on it, the most difficult one being a hesitation / surging /sluggish running problem. Having run a Fiesta 1.4Tdci for 230,000 miles I thought I knew enough to fix it. We know what thought did. The previous owner, a lady truck-driver, I was told, had already had work done on it, but nothing had worked. 

The Fiesta once went through a phase of having the engine management light coming on with the code for the EGR. After another year, the light was coming on a bit too often, so I started to add diesel additive at every fill up. Over the next year, the incidence of the EGR fault showing became less often, and in its last two years, never at all, and the engine performance was better.

So on this Fusion, at the first fill-up and on every fill-up, I use the diesel additive. 

The fault shows up like this -- Going up hill, the engine runs in pulses.. You hear the engine accelerating, then dying back, then going, then dying back.. My instinct was to keep my foot down. The engine seemed choked, as if something needed to be blown out. If the hill was long enough and there was no other traffic, then eventually the engine would cough and start running properly. The engine seemed to run that bit better every time I did this. There were no fault codes.

I changed the fuel filter. The one I took off was new. I hack-sawed it apart and it was perfectly clean inside. The silver sprung flap inside the filler neck had been bent to one side, so someone has had a pipe down to sample the fuel. 

I notice the turbo was leaking oil.. The air-hose coming out of it was wet with oil at the jubilee clip. That was worse at 70,000 miles than my Fiesta at 230,000 miles! I didn't think that was an immediate worry. We know what thought did. I had other worries, so I put up with it. 

Then three weeks ago, whilst I was moving off from a road junction, the engine coughed and spat out the biggest, most vast and enormous cloud of black soot that I ever saw in all my life. In my rear-view mirror, I couldn't see the sky or the houses on either side of the road. I had to take my foot off the pedal quickly, because the thing accelerated as though it had a new lease of life. Since then, on a long run, it blew out two more clouds of soot, but not as bad as the first. Now , the engine is performing nicely! 

So now I work out what's been happening. The leaking turbo has been blowing oil into the inlet manifold where the oil has been baking on, solidifying and building up gradually so that the owner didn't immediately notice the drop in performance. The diesel additive has softened the deposit and it's blown out. The engine gives a very, very occasional cough, like a mis-fire, which I put down to the odd bit of carbon breaking off and being sucked into a cylinder.. 

This, then is common to all 1.4Tdci engines, as the turbo has a reputation for leaking oil. Without the additive softening the deposit and the soot blowing out, I would still be mystified as to what was going on. And just fitting a new turbo wouldn't have helped, because the inlet ports would still be blocked! I can drive this through the coming winter, now (Once I fit the new all-weather tyres which are on order), but I will have to fit a new turbo next spring as oil in the inlet might just make it fail the MOT emission test. 

Diesel additive? I read somewhere that the recommendation is for a mix of two-stroke oil (cheapest is from Morrisons at £2 for 500ml, next cheapest Asda at £5 for a litre - don't think about using expensive 2T!) at a ratio of 200 : 1 and an additive such as Millers Diesel Ecomax or Diesel Rhino (I've used both) at a ratio of 1000 : 1.  ----  I keep a used Red-X bottle or similar with a long neck and I mix the correct quantity for a fill-up from empty. On the Fiesta and Fusion, a fill from empty is about 30 to 35 litres. The additive isn't critical, so I assume a 30lt fill-up. I have a measuring (plastic) bottle with a level mark at 150ml, and I pour the two-stroke oil in to that level, then use the little measuring reservoir on the diesel additive bottle to measure 30ml. That all goes into the old Red-x bottle and into the boot ready for the next filling station visit. 

I hope my experience does not befall others, but that if it does, then the above might just help.