Help needed cdti 150 performance problems

**Butty** · 2nd April 2013, 21:06

Hello all, in the last few days my car’s been having performance problems, imagine driving a large car with a small diesel engine that’s naturally aspirated.
The car in question is my 2006 Vectra 1.9 cdti 150 that’s done 62000 miles.

The symptoms: like someone’s nicked the turbo, tick over often lumpy but not always, when I pull away I can press the accelerator to the floor with very little happening, it feels worse than limp mode, until the rev counter gets to 3k, then it starts to pull but still not like it should. There’s no smoke out the back and slightly down on mpg.

Things I have considered and checked:-
Turbo (it’s still present)
Fuel filter renewed.
Throttle body cleaned.
MAP sensor removed and cleaned.
Vacuum and boost pipes, appear in good condition no splits and not perished or blocked.
New inlet manifold, so I confident the swirl flaps are working.
Egr valve cleaned and operation checked also fitted fiat type semi blanking gaskets both sides.

No fault codes stored but the car with a spanner comes on and stays on until the engine starts (no problems starting).. Out of pure desperation I disconnected the battery and left it for half an hour, after reconnecting it I took it for a 2 mile drive all the symptoms had gone, the car was behaving how it should, happy thinking all was ok I turned it off and had a coffee. After an hour I returned to the car started it up and it was back to driving a large car with a small diesel engine that’s naturally aspirated.
I’m at my wits endand cant work it out. Can anyone help me understand what’s going on please.
Many thanks.

**paulvectrac** · 2nd April 2013, 21:23

your local to me so your welcome to pop it down to me

**Dan_BlackSRi** · 2nd April 2013, 21:27

Have money on it being EGR, blank it fully to test.

**Emilian77** · 2nd April 2013, 21:43

A mate had same problem with his Zafira. After all it was the exelerator pedal. 130£ from VX and the problem gone.

**Teapot** · 2nd April 2013, 21:44

Originally Posted by paulvectrac

your local to me so your welcome to pop it down to me

LOL, go in with a fault and only 50bhp, come out with a remap and 190bhp

**paulvectrac** · 2nd April 2013, 21:53

@littleteapot lmao you no it makes sense lmao hahah

**Butty** · 2nd April 2013, 22:06

moneys tight, out of work at the moment so i will try to bodge some temp plates to blank egr as suggested by dan. how would it affect the MOT with no EGR ?
Would it need a remap?

**paulvectrac** · 2nd April 2013, 22:24

if you completly blank it the eml light will come on then fail mot of you need it mappin out let me know

**Teapot** · 2nd April 2013, 23:18

Originally Posted by paulvectrac

if you completly blank it the eml light will come on then fail mot of you need it mappin out let me know

Blanking the EGR without disabling in mapping will have no negative effects other than EML light on. In fact it will probably improve fuel economy a little. But to get the EML off the mapping must be edited.

**Butty** · 3rd April 2013, 16:40

Ok quick update removed egr and inspected, it was quite clean the semi blanking gaskets doing a good job.
However I decided that if the egr was goosed I had nothing to loose by hooking it up to a 12v supply to see if the solenoid would function. It did, the valve opened with power and closed when the power was removed, all ok then it obviously works just fine. So I separated the valve from the solenoid and left it in some petrol, might as well clean what bit of crud that was, after a good scrub I reassembled it, back on the car it went.
I didn’t bother blanking it off totally I used the same fiat type semi blanking gaskets but didn’t plug in the electrics, my reasoning for this was to simulate total blanking just for elimination purposes.
Started up (eml on) drove off it seemed ok, but still a bit slow on setting off then got more torque about 2k on the rev counter and carried on pulling throughout the gears, soon hit triple figures (private road) and didn’t even get out of 4^th and had to back off (ran out of road) so slightly better than yesterday then.
Stopped and plugged in the egr, set off again (no eml) next to no difference In performance, if I am correct this means that the egr is ok and working as it should,
So mid range and top end seem ok but from a stand still low end grunt is still poor like its being bogged down.