P020213 only after filling up with petrol? 1.0 ecoboost 125ps

[0shiny1]

Hi FOC,

Have had this fault for the last few weeks and thought it had gone until today when I filled up with normal unleaded petrol this morning - moments after pulling out of the petrol station the fault came back.

The car is a Focus estate 1.0 ecoboost 125ps, I've had it just over 1 year.  Fault coming up is P020213 injector cylinder 2 open circuit.

3 weeks ago on the way to work I filled up with normal unleaded and started to get lack of power, running on 2 cylinders, it was intermittent.  Car would start fine and run fine until a few miles down the road and then loose power running on 2 until the engine turned off and same again.  I had the AA out to look at it, he read this code.  He played around with the injector wiring and his take was it was a probably a wiring fault.  Next time I used the car low and behold the same fault came back.

I had a car electrical expert have a look at it and he read the same code, he also said that the injector wiring is so close to the coil on cylinder 2 that it was possible that if that coil pack was leaking voltage it could potentially be jumping and knocking out the signal to injector cylinder 2 thus causing the fault.  So taking his advice into account I swapped coil packs over (2 with 3) and didn't have any problems for that week, ordered a new original coil pack to replace the one that was on cylinder 2 (now on 3) and swapped that out.  Car has been fine since then... apart from this morning when I filled up with petrol and the fault returned. (coincidence?):

I bought a cheap Creader OBD2 reader and checked just now and picked up this same fault.

Has anybody had this fault and what was the fix for you?  Or if anyone has any ideas (mad or not) I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Seems weird to me that it only happens after filling with petrol since it sounds like an electrical problem ?  The jet station I go past only sells normal unleaded so that's what I stick in there, I've been using normal unleaded for as long as I've had the car, should I be only using super and does anyone think normal unleaded could be causing this?

 

Thanks in advance for any input:)

[0shiny1]

I had a bit more of a dig with my cheap OBD 2 reader, here are some results if anyone could please enlighten me lol.

This is the current DTC:

 

This is from live data stream, I noticed the value is 0 on cylinder 1 & 3 but 493 on cylinder 2 (the problem cylinder):

 

Also I get OL_ Fault on datastream, I got no idea what that means...?

 

I've only had this reader a few days so don't really know whether some of this info is normal or not?  If anyone who's used to this stuff can point me in the right direction I'd much appreciate it.

At the moment I'm thinking injector fault/fuel starvation on cylinder 2, its running like a bag of spuds.

[0shiny1]

I'll answer my own question.. OL_Fault stands for open loop fault in the fuel system.  Since I'm getting the 'injector circuit open cylinder 2' pretty much every day I'd have to assume changing that injector over might hopefully cure it so a new one has been ordered.

[narwy]

Have you checked the wiring, plugs etc? Open circuit means it's not getting it's 5v reply back. Try check wiring, for little cuts etc. Follow the loom back and see what you get.

[0shiny1]

Yep I had a car electrical expert look at the wiring, moving it about doesn't seem to recreate the fault and no signs of wear/damage, he's pretty sure its not a wiring issue although it still can't be ruled out 100%.  Still waiting for the new injector so once its fitted I can eliminate it if the problem rears it head afterwards..  Problem only happens after its warmed up so hoping the new injector will sort it, we'll see fingers crossed.

[0shiny1]

Updating this in case anyone else has the same problem and wanted to know what it was.

Turns out it was the injector faulting after all.  Visibly it looked fine but it was obviously shagged inside.

I fitted it yesterday and cleared the DTC, haven't had any problems so far (touch wood).   

 

And for anyone with ape hands wondering how to get those poxy injector electrical plugs off, the tab needs to be pushed with a flat bladed screwdriver towards you (front of car) and you'll need a pick or bent piece of strong wire to hook under the plug and pull up at the same time as pushing the tab.  The plugs do have a little cut out at the bottom left you can feel for to aid pulling the plugs with a pick or bent rod, just be careful not to slip and scrape the wires. 

[0shiny1]

Well I spoke too soon, problem is back again as of this morning.😞

[TomsFocus]

Are you brimming the fuel tank or just putting a small amount in?

Might not be this at all but a mate had the same issue on a Saab, only occurred when brimming with fuel.  Turned out the be the evap valve (purge valve) stuck open allowing too much fuel vapour into the intake.

[0shiny1]

Hi Tom, the first time it happened the tank was almost full, the second time I filled it up 3/4's (still problems), as its recently playing about its got 1/2 a tank.  I no longer think its fuel related tbh, was probably a coincidence in this case.

I've been working on this problem today and after fitting the brand new injector didn't cure the problem my next thought was to replace the injector wiring harness.  It just so happened an engine mechanic around the corner from me had a spare injector wiring harness that he took off another ecoboost engine (same number).

I've already swapped the old harness with this new harness and been for a test run.  The engine runs almost fine but I can tell its still running a bit lumpy, I'm also getting some different data from the OBD2 scanner regarding the cat:

Perhaps a result of the injector fault?  May have chogged the cat up with rich/un-burnt fuel?

 

So what I'm thinking now is that maybe I've finally fixed the P020 fault and that the previous misfiring has flooded the cat causing another fault lol.

[0shiny1]

As an update - no more problems up to this point so the misfiring must have been caused by the injector harness.

The next time I filled up with petrol I stuck Esso supreme + in it and basically gave the engine an Italian tune up for a few days, that seems to have cured the blocked cat for now because there are no more cat codes and the cat is a pass according to OBD data.  Although I expect the cat is the original and the car has passed 56k so it will probably need changing in the near future anyway.  Engine is running great now so will be filling up with top tier fuel from now on.

[0shiny1]

Another update on this problem, the car has been OK but it's time to trade it in very soon. It's at about 77K miles.

Just had to replace the injector harness again after having the same problem happen, was running on 2 cylinders again got P0202, P062E and P0420 (Cat chogging up).  Replaced the injector harness again which again solved the problem.

Not sure why this happens or whether it's a common problem but it appears with my vehicle it's always the cylinder 2 part of the harness that degrades.

Hope this info helps someone out. 👍

[unofix]

1 hour ago, 0shiny1 said:

Another update on this problem,

We always enjoy regular updates 🤣

[0shiny1]

58 minutes ago, unofix said:

We always enjoy regular updates 🤣

I bet you do ! 🤪