Comedy Of Errors And Now My Car Has The Judders!!

[Smithler]

Evening all,

I've a Ford Mondeo 58 plate 1.8 TDCI...the situation i have is that i recently ran out of derv, unfortunatley i was not able to make it to the petrol station (actually finally came to rest just the other side of it, about 50 meters short of making it to a pump). Needless to say diesel was put it, started straight up then fully filled as normal. About 300 miles down the car seemed to judder (what i would equate to a mis-fire) and the "Engine Malfunction" message on the Convers+ dash came up. I pulled over and left it for 5 mins and restarted...seemed fine and left it ideling over for 30 mins before setting off home.

Since then on 2 further occassions i have felt the same judder when accelerating under load and have taken it to the Allen Ford garage for the error codes to be checked.
The resulting message was "investigated eml on scan and found injector 4 open. closed circuit and low fuel level forced shutdown. codes not present all codes and road tested - ok for raod test customer to retry."

My initial thought was this could be related to me running it dry and crap getting through from the fuel tank and clogging up the fuel filter, but this should have been changed for new during full service a couple of months earlier. So whats the chances of this getting clogged after 300 miles of driving since it ran dry?

Also i'm assuming the codes they read were actually from running it dry and not the EML coming on.

Any ideas or advice on what to check now...the car idles fine, accelerates fine...last judder was during a 50 mile trip, hit traffic and then upon pulling away the judder/mis-fire feeling again...i kept it at 6 in 4th (higher revs) to esnure the engine didn't labour...no EML coming back up yet either??

Got to say something just doesn't feel right, almost like its a little lumpy when accelerating at times under load.

Any advice would be welcome.

[jeebowhite]

The chances of the fuel filter being contaminated are almost 100%.

The sediment in the tank can be very heavy and the lack of fuel dredging it up and dumping it in the filter is almost guaranteed. What you will find now is that as the sediment will have also been resting in the fuel lines, so the sediment over the last 300 miles would have been further dragged into the filter, and as the fuel has flown through the filter it would have in essence brushed it all up into a wall and causing fuel starvation.

I think a new filter is a must and will have a very good chance of fixing your issue.

[slemon123]

+1

[stooge75]

The chances of the fuel filter being contaminated are almost 100%.

The sediment in the tank can be very heavy and the lack of fuel dredging it up and dumping it in the filter is almost guaranteed. What you will find now is that as the sediment will have also been resting in the fuel lines, so the sediment over the last 300 miles would have been further dragged into the filter, and as the fuel has flown through the filter it would have in essence brushed it all up into a wall and causing fuel starvation.

I think a new filter is a must and will have a very good chance of fixing your issue.

lets hope its your filter eh. get back & let s know if new one fixes it. this is another good reason for not letting the fuel system get so low,& always to drain the accumulated water from the bottom of the filter every now & then on diesel cars

[Smithler]

Cheers guys, changing the filter at the weekend, lets hope its caked in crap so at least i might think i've found and resolved the issue.

[Smithler]

Ok so fuel filter changed so now just waiting to see if anything occurs...the guys at the garage said it looked like it hadn't been changed within the last few months (question whether kiwk fit use genuine ford parts?) when I had full service. Took it away with me...filter is very black!

[stooge75]

sounds like its sucked all the crud out of fuel tank so could be your problem

[mick85]

There a PCM upgrade on some lynks engine for injector problem

[stooge75]

There a PCM upgrade on some lynks engine for injector problem

it was running ok before it ran dry

[mick85]

Yeah but it could be just new problem I would check for upgrade and have faults read first

[jeebowhite]

Looking forward to some positive results with the new filter!

[Wales_DB]

I haven't taken my car to the garage yet for a diagnostic but I appear to have the same issue at the moment - on a few occasions now the car has juddered, the malfunction light flashed on the dash and the ESP light illuminated.

Reading through Forums etc it appears that it could be a number of things including: Injectors; HT Leads; DPF (and the leads leading to it); Spark Plugs - just some of the more common ones coming in at the moment.

Was your issue with juddering fixed with the replacement of the filter or was it something more cumbersome?

Kind regards.

[BOF]

What? On a Diesel?