I am hoping that someone out there can PLEASE help me?

I bought a 2008 Mondeo Zetec 1.8 TDCi (6 speed) from a used car dealership 2 months ago. To cut a long story short, the car has been back into the garage on numerous occasions for a couple of different faults (air con not working, car wouldn't start first time when turning key) and today a mass of white smoke came out from the rear of the car whilst driving along the motorway at 60mph. When I pulled in and lifted the bonnet there was (what I can only describe as) an explosion of liquid (see attached photo) Whether this is oil, water or coolant, I don't know as I'm not mechanically minded. I was able to drive the car 2 miles to the garage as I was in the area but wouldn't have liked to have driven it further! It did seem to takes for the engine to cool when I stopped after it happened!

My problem is, knowing how useless the garage has been to date with previous issues with this car, they will take ages to find and rectify this fault, so I am asking for any ideas as to what may have happened so I can hopefully speed up the process of getting my fixed and back in my possession (on one occasion they had the car for 10 days and had to send it out to another garage to fix because they didn't know how to fix it!)

I have attached a photo of what the engine area looked like when I dropped the car off today and would truly appreciate any help as to what this may be.

Many thanks in advance.

Les Johnson.

Hi mate,

i have responed to this topic in another section

Looks to me like the crankcase vent hose to the air intake has split or come off.

That would explain the white smoke too, as air would be entering the engine that the MAF sensor hasn't 'seen'.

Lean running results - white smoke.

For goodness' sake don't let them tell you its injectors or something expensive!!

Its a few quid for the hose and a five minute task.