Hi,

Bought myself an R-reg 406 2.1 TD the other week and it has been faultless since i bought it.

Last night i went to play badminton and it was parked up for 3 hours.

Came out and it wouldnt start, turned over a treat with no labouring at all.

I tried this 3-4 times at all times making sure the glow plug light came on and went out.

It finally started on attempt number 4.

Does anyone know how to test a glow plug to see if its not preheating the combustion chamber enough. its probably the most likely culprate.

Although it started on the button this morning ??????

Diesels have a habit of not starting sometimes. Our Focus has done it on several occasions (though usually when hot) but it always starts on the 3rd or 4th try. (Usually it starts faultlessly, but sometimes it plays up)

Glowplugs dont usually die. (how many miles has it done?) Its worth running some reddex through it if you have just bought it as i doubt it has ever had some in it.

David

I had a peugeot 205 1.9 diesel and i had to put one if not 2 IIRC sets of glow plugs in it over 160K miles.

My 406 has done 80K

What does redex do?

I fitted 4 new ones to the nieces Clio as it was struggling to start and smoking on startup chucking white smoke from unburnt fuel. It cured it and they were only £6 each so it wasn't worth doing just one.

Petes got a point, if its the glow plugs they usually start to smoke quite badly until they are warmed up.

Reddex is just an engine cleaner, cleans the injectors out and prevents build up of crap in the engine. If you get some make sure you get the stuff for diesel and not petrol!

David

Col,

My wife's old 1.5D Pug 106 did exactly as you describe about 3-4 times in the 2 years we had it. My friendly ex-Pug mechanic looked at it and replaced the glow plugs after the second time. It was OK for a good while after that. She covered ~30k over the 2 years, with 110k on the clock when we sold it.

I have a diesel Seat (VW engine), which I've had from new. I've covered 25k in the year I've had it and when the engine manaement light came on 2 weeks ago, Seat said they needed to replace the glow plugs - fortunately under warranty.

I wouldn't worry about it unless it happens again, then replace the glow plugs.

Check out GSF Car Part for reasonably priced parts.

HTH

Nick

my 1.9td 306 had same probs one winter. if it won't start easily, try 2-3 ingition on/offs to get plenty of heat into teh glow plugs before actually turning the engine over. i ran my engine on i recon only 3 glow plugs for a while before i killed the battery

glow plugs are not expensive, easiest to just replace them with a new set.

Suppose you could pull them all out, connect them back up outside the engine and turn on the ignition, i think you shuld be able to see when they are hot/glowing, so surely if one of the doesn't turn the same colour as the others it's prob the duff one. either replace jsut the one or imho better cvhange the whole set as you don't know when another is going to go, then keep the used good ones as spares..

Ned.

ps i think i've even got some of the ones i replaced still taking up room i my toolbox!

I've got a 406 TD with 190,000 miles on it as my commuter hack.

Replaced the glow plugs a few times due to rough starting probs. You can always remove the plugs and look for the glow if in doubt. Also worth checking for a voltage at the terminal, could be the timer unit gone NFG

If you do replace, try and use genuine Pug ones as pattern ones only last half the time if you are lucky. Genuine Pug ones are about £50 ish....

if it is an intermitant fault,follow the heater plug lead back to the relay,they have a habit of burning out and/or terminals melting.
a circuit tester will show if juice is getting to the plugs.need an ammeter to see how much they draw,no draw and they are shafted

The easy way to test glow plugs is to remove the wires to them and then use a multi meter to test resistance of each heater plug.

One plug not working is in some cases enough to cause problems with a cold engine. 2 gone and there nightmares to start.


In my experiance its not common for deisels (or any other IC engine) to refuse to start from hot unless some things not quite right. Its the sort of thing i associate with nakered chainsaw and tractor engines.

The peugeot plugs regularly die. The best ones imho are lucas ones. Cheap too i think 6 quid a piece. The easiest test is above. Pull the link wire off and run a multimeter across with it on resistance. The setting that beeps is easiest.

If it did it once and s ok now i wouldnt bother till it does it again, Could have been a bit of crap stuck somewhere or the fuel drained back for some reason.

The only totaly reliable way to test a glow plug, is to remove it and operate it across a good battery. Resistance / multi meter only tells you that you do have a current / voltage to them and continuity / resistance does not tell you wether they are phyisacally working correctly, only that you have a circuit, but they could be eathing out through the body. Also if you remove them you can tell if they are working by their colour and wether you have an injector problem by if there are soot spots on them (injector dribbling).
Further the cheapest way to clear/clean the injectors if to keep your foot flat on the accelerator and to keep up with the flow of traffic by keeping in lower gears ie 3rd gear flat out should be some where around 70/80mph over a continuous distance of a mile or two. Check cam belt history first. This also blows all the cr*p out of the exhaust system.

PS the above is not for the faint hearted.

And I will not be held responsible for engine problems due to cam belt failure.

The above process has stood me in good stead for 20 years with no problems.


Enjoy.

how do i test the resistance of it, have multimeter...........will play!

Set to measuring ohms (resistance) a good plug should have a resistance about 1.5ohms (example for VW 1.9TDI)

If the resistance measure higher (10ohms +) then plug is probably damaged. If resistance measures 0 (on lowest multimeter reading setting) then plug is probably damaged as well.

Make sure the wire to the plugs is disconnected, otherwise the multimeter reading would be for all 4 plugs (measured resistance would be 1/4 that of one heater plug.

[Edited on 13/4/05 by clbarclay]

Hi All
Total argreement with prettywell all of the foregoing. I have a Metro 1.4SD, Peugeot/Citroen engine. Great little machine. All prev history known. Present mileage 127560. Bought at 102000. Just passed 2nd MOT in my ownership on 6 March with smoke test same as last year, well under legal average. I stopped using Halfords oil last year, as I was told it encourages diesels to smoke. I now use GTX High Mileage. While this isn't specified especially for diesels, it is absolutely great, no smoking, good performance and in comparison to the Halfords stuff - negligible consumption.
Back to the glowplugs. Mine played up at about 122000, original and only 2 failed, but enough to cause probs starting cold. Followed Haynes test procedures. Bought four new ones from Halfords about £35 the set. Being a bit of a skinflint (comes from building a RH....) I've kept the 2 good ones!!!....
Petemate

Theres a lot of muck and magic about engine oils. When I got my first golf (1.6 diesel model) I was informed it used a lot of oil. I'm not sure if it was driving it longer average distances or using TSU oil (tractor super universal, designed for large diesels and transmissions/hydraulics as well), bit i've never had a problem with oil consumtion, and the engine smoke has improved, its not to bad know for 280,000 miles.

[Edited on 13/4/05 by clbarclay]

Check the fuel solenoid. I once had the same intermitent problem on a Peugeot diesel, changing 3 of the 4 glow plugs (one was a bastard to remove) made no difference. I eventually traced the problem to the solemoid that controls the fuel supply. Removing the internals allows fuel flow all the time but the engine does not stop when you turn the ignition switch off so you have to either stall the engine or open the bonnet and manually activate the fuel shut off switch .