Help!

On or around Wed, 27 Dec 2006 21:44:44 GMT, " banjo" enlightened us thusly:

sounds a possibility. that or injection pump playing silly buggers.

BTW, your post isn't entirely free of faults either...

First off, don't panic (yet)! 200Tdi's a amazingly robust. There's a lot of things that may have gone wrong - most of them nice and cheap. At 107,000 miles your engine is barely run in ;-)

The black smoke indicates either incomplete combustion, or over- fuelling. As you don't say you've done anything to the timing or injector pump it's probably safe to rule out over-fuelling.

From your comment about noisy tappets, I'm wondering if they have ever been checked? (Not that anyone ever does!). The valve stems have little caps on them, which will fall off if the tappets are slack, and this will lead to the valve timing being completely wrong, which will mean incorrect compression and black smoke and rough running. By taking the rocker cover off is should be easy to see if this has happened. If it has, then 99% of the time new caps and setting the tappets will fix the problem. Have a look at the face of the tappets that actually makes contact with the valve (when I look, I mean as best you can) as this can become pitted, or even holed in extereme cases.

If the tappets are ok, check all the intake hoses for internal collapsing - the "lining" can come away and (under vacuum from the turbo) blocking the air flow (though they look ok at a quick glance). If its really bad the engine can't breathe and will run roughly, again with black smoke when things are really bad.

A completely blocked fuel filter/air filter can also give the symptoms you describe, though they would have to be in a very bad state, as can blocked fuel lines.

Check the above things, and all the other "simple" things I've forgotten, and then start to worry a bit - a compression test would be the next thing to try, if nothing else to rule out stuck valves, broken rings etc.

If you have lost compression, it may not be the end of the world, but the spanners may have to come out and then you can start a mild-to-mid panic!

Richard

Head gasket? Again, check compressions.

Martin