Do the glowplugs in a Focus Mk2 1.8 TDCI have any function once the engine is running?
The reason I ask is that recently I had intermittent problems where the engine management light would come on while driving and the engine would lose power, giving very poor acceleration and an eventual top speed of around 50 mph. The first time it happened the light went out and the engine returned to normal before I could find somewhere safe to stop, the times after that were longer.
I plugged in my reader and the only code present each time was for glowplugs open circuit.
They are cheap enough, so I replaced all four and the problem has gone away - for three weeks and a couple of thousand miles so far.
Unless they are used while running, I can understand a fault being shown, but I can't understand why the need to trigger limp-home mode; however, I always thought that they were only needed for starting from cold.
SteveW