Evening chaps,

New to the forum and although a long term fan and enthusiast, new to Ford ownership too. I come from a background of tinkering with MG ZR's mainly.

I have just acquired a knackered old Focus from a friend (when I say knackered old Focus, it's really a pretty good condition 04 plate Zetec, just with some pretty serious issues).

It was his daily driver until about a month ago when out of nowhere on his drive home it started juddering and misfiring. He got recovered by the AA to a local garage who told him it needed a new engine and said it would be £1000.

I'm no expert, but I think that's ********, and even if it isn't I can get a new engine sourced and fitted for a lot less than a grand, hence why it's now in my posession.

I just drove it back to my parent's from the garage, a total distance of about 5 miles. I went to tow it home but thought I might as well try it and it got me home ok.

The characteristics it's showing are:

• Lumpy idle
• very juddery and misfiring under about 3000rpm
• sometimes when leaving my foot down it would get past about 3k and take off like a rocket
• quite smokey (nothing major though) - greyish black - diesel or oil?
• it rev'd up to the redline for a few seconds before dieing down
  again without any throttle input. Not much smoke when this happened
• No warning lights on dash
• when decelerating it seemed to coast smooth as silk - throttle input immediately caused the juddering again
• Occasional knocking/piston slap - again nothing major

Now to my simple, inexperienced (but usually pretty logical) mind, I don't think this is mechanical. I might be completely wrong of course.

Does anybody have any suggestions? Has any one experienced the same? I've spent a bit of time browsing this and other forums but haven't managed to find a problem with exactly the same symptoms as this.

It's an 04 plate 1.8TDCi 100PS.

Oh and if this is any help I have access to two Connect TDCi's that are destined for the scrappy which I can pilfer for parts if needs be!

Cheers
Ben

Hi welcome :)

Thanks man :)

Last night I was talking to my friend about it and he told me that when the AA guy first showed up and started poking around under the bonnet the dipstick was chucking out a fair amount of smoke/steam - does that point to anything specific?

There's no engine management light on but my dad has some basic scanning software on his laptop so we'll hook it up soon and find out what's what.

Cheers
Ben

Cheapest first stick a new fuel filter in ... New oil

see how it goes

I've had a similar issue when i bought my Focus, when accelerating i had a juddering effect/splutter.. misfire on starting the engine, i took it back to the dealer after consulting this lovely forum and it turned out to be the Coil Pack, once this was changed i had no issues and was running smoothly.

I didn't check the fuel filter but this is something im going to get looked at just in case also.

Just had the laptop plugged in and it came up with two fault codes:

P0404 - EGR valve

P1000

We cleared them and started the car. Same characteristics but only P1000 came back - I understand that's some kind of test code so doesn't mean anything.

Does this point towards the EGR being at fault?

Cheers

Ben

Had a quick look at the car after work today.

Firstly I took it for a spin up the road again. It seems to be running a bit better than before but still very bad.

I tried to drive it a bit more aggressively this time and rev it out a
bit more and it led to the engine running away for a few seconds a
couple of times.

I've seen enough videos of turbos running off
the engine oil to know that this was something to be avoided, so each
time I dumped the clutch in a high gear and it would die down again.

I tried to get the EGR removed/loosened off but the nuts were crazy
stiff. I've soaked them in WD40 to see if I can do it tomorrow/at the
weekend.

It's also got a pretty crazy fuel filter that looks a
bit tricky to replace, but as I have two spares sat there I thought I
might as well. That's another thing to have a crack at when I get more
time.

Will keep you posted, but likewise keep the ideas coming!

Cheers
Ben

Im pretty sure if you blank the egr with the plate it stops it working and could rule it out as a fault but dont quote me on it.

3krpm is the limit on a limp mode,i know personally the mk2s can go to limp mode for something as stupid as glowplugs on the diesel.

You dont get coilpacks on a diesel.

Thanks man, it definitely will go above 3k so I don't think it's in limp mode, it just really struggles to get that far up the rev range.

The few times it started running away though it would happily sit on the rev limiter for a few seconds - 4500 ish?

Good point about the EGR, worth blanking just to rule it out if nothing else, I'll try and have a stab at that over the weekend.

Cheers

Ben

Does it rev fine when it's idling?

Sent from my iPhone using Ford OC

No, still very sluggish to rev, and sounds like it's only running on 3 cylinders.

Not loads of smoke, but certainly more than it should have!

When you say sounds like,do you mean you have checked and it's running on all four?obviously something's limiting the engine. (Atleast to me)

Sent from my iPhone using Ford OC

No i haven't had a chance to check, but from what I can tell it's almost certainly running on 3, at least for the majority of the time!

Long shot as I don't know where the egr valve is on your engine.

Years ago when I was having trouble with my td4 freelander (BMW m47 engine) it turned out to be a clogged egr starving the engine of air and causing other issues i.e lumpy engine etc.

As I didn't really know how to sort this at the time I sprayed pure acetone inside the egr every hour or so for a day to melt all the crap out. Worked a treat. Engine ran fine again. Egr valve was removed completely later on.

PS

Any acetone left over will harmlessly burn off through your engine.

Other idea was a faulty injector/s?

Best of luck

Mike

Sent from my HTC One S using Ford OC mobile app

Well I bodged together an EGR blank at the weekend, but no difference.

Still running the same, I'm now starting to think that the timing might
have slipped, I'm hoping if this is the case it hasn't caused any
damage.

Either way, I think I've run out of stuff I can investigate myself, so
it'll have to wait until my mechanic returns in a few weeks to progress
any further.

Watch this space.

cheers
Ben