Poor performance from 1.9cdti....Check your boost pipes

[richardn]

My 55 plate 1.9 cdti 150 Estate has developed what appears to be a turbo problem. At just over 2000 revs I can hear the turbo start to whistle and the car accelerate, but only for a fraction of a second, then it dies away and the acceleration is poor.

Although it revs freely when stationary it struggles to pull, especially going up hill, and has gone into limp mode a couple of times at revs above 3000.

Recent jobs I've done are

EGR clean (twice)
Fitted Fiat EGR gasket
Fixed swirl valve bar
Cleaned Boost Sensor
Cleaned throttle body
Modified air filter box
Fed it with Redex additive

Now the car feels restricted, as though it's driving through treacle.

I know that it has a DPF, and since I've just been doing mainly short journeys for the last year I wondered if that might be something to do with it.

There's no smoke from the exhaust.

The Spanner light comes on at start up, then goes off

I was wondering if it might be the boost sensor that's on it's way out, as I used to able to hear the turbo whistle all the way from 2000 revs up.

Alternatively could it be split pipe to the turbo? If so which ones should I check?

When I drive my wife's 08 cdt1 150 SRi hatchback the performance is scary compared to my car.

Sorry for the rambling question. Just trying to give plenty of information.

Thanks for any help.

[Dougb]

sounds like a split intercooler hose, hard to find but they usually get small splits on the inside of the bends, get someone to rev it and you may be able to hear the air escaping. the dpf have you tried a forced regen but driving for 20 mins at high rpm.

[mally]

I had similar symptoms appear a couple of weeks ago (i only really do short journeys as well). I had sluggish performance together with the occasional spanner light (light mainly appeared when the engine was warm). It got to the point a few days later when the engine died when pulling onto a very busy roundabout. Limped it around the roundabout and into a layby using the starter as the engine would die if you tried to lut the cluch out.
Got towed home, then towed to a garage a few days later. At this point i thought it was terminal, or stuffed turbo at the very least.
It turned out to be a blocked DPF. The spanner light was a warning of pending trouble.
The garage gave me the option of replacing the DPF/cat (mega bucks) or replacing it with a straight pipe. I chose the latter.
The engine runs sweet as a nut now. There seems to be a load more torque. I had it remapped 6 weeks ago, but it seems better again.

[richardn]

Dougb,

Could you tell me where the intercooler pipes are? Are they large or small diameter? I haven't a clue.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I had the car out on a half hour drive up the A1 at 3000 revs in 5th gear, and it didn't seem to make a lot of difference. Also I took it out ragged it hard as I could, only succeeding in getting the car/spanner light to come on twice as I was high revving it up a hill.

Still no difference.

[richardn]

Mally,

After reading your post and a few others about the dpf I rang the local dealers to ask about having a forced regeneration.

They said that the computer would make the engine run at 4000 revs for about ten minutes and clean the filter out. (obviously there's more to it than if you just sat outside the house and kept you foot down while reading the paper - the computer must be telling the engine to squirt more diesel in or something)

Anyway, he helpfully said that maybe I could try the high rev cruise for half an hour on the motorway, so dealers aren't all just out to rip us off.

He said that I should have a warning light flashing when the dpf needs regenerating. I told him about the spanner light, but he said that I should be getting a flashing coil light, which I'm not.

From reading other threads this warning light may have been deleted, so I'm thinking of booking in to get it diagnosed. At £45 the wife thinks it's worth doing as she's getting sick of me tinkering and talking about it.

Anyone know how much a forced regeneration is going to cost me?

[richardn]

Problem sorted.

Took the car to a friendly local company (Elddis Motors, Durham - recommended) rather than the Vauxhall dealer, for a diagnostic. Turns out there was a split vacuum pipe, which I would never have been able to fathom out. I've included some pictures.

The red circle on the left is where the fix has been done. Originally there was a short rubber section on the metal tube, with a piece of hard plastic pipe between it and the rubber hose (just like the one in the blue circle on the right of the main picture).

Anyway, this short rubber section had a split in it, but underneath where it couldn't be seen. You can see in the other pictures how it's perished, probably with the heat, and looks like it's been sucked inwards until it split. This was all going on under the engine cover, out of sight.

Hopefully this will help anyone who suffers the same symptoms as I did.

Cheers everyone.



Engine bay with engine cover off. The areas of interest are circled



Red circled area. The new suction of rubber hose that has been fitted.



Blue circled area. The short rubber section looked like this originally, with a piece of hard tube going into it.



This is how it looked when on. You can see the deformation at the bend due to the heat and vacuum.



The underside looks like this. A small split.......



But really a gaping hole.

After replacing this with new tube the car is back to normal, Hurray!

Cost of the diagnostic and fix was £47.00. Well worth it.

I'd forgotten what torque steer feels like!

[kamar]

gud stuff mate

[Vaux-Man-G]

Ill be checking these on my dad's CDTI 150 tonight, but my problem is low down grunt. Im also confident that it MUST be a split hose as I remember by OLD Vec-B DTI used to have little or no low down grunt under 2k rpm when the vac hoses were split.

[winnie2457]

I replaced my vacuum pipes too they were not split but very perished I replaced them with clear hard rubber tube so the vacuum can not crush the hose and have not used and rubber elbows just pushed the pipe on I have replaced the small one that goes top to bottom of the vacuum pump an the long one that goes from the vacuum pump to the little White plastic vacuum thing just as I had spare pipe about pushed on all the pipes and my god what a difference

I thnk the old pipes were getting too much suction and closing off as now the turbo kicks in at just over 1200revs and my boost gauge is showing steady boost through out the rev range as I was getting boost dropping off just slightly but def worth buying some hard rubber pipe cost me 3quid for 4mm by 3meters of pipe and made a hell of a difference worth changing just to remove the turbo lag

[Dougb]

checking mine know!