[Engine] Smoking after uphill driving

[aServant]

Hi all
I am experiencing a curious problem at the moment with my 2.0 HDI 2004 Berlingo, which I bought back in February of this year.

I will give some history.  Whilst driving around, I would get some smoke every now and then for about 20 seconds and then it would stop, from memory, this was a whitish smoke.  I decided that I would give it an oil and filter change as it was well overdue a service.  I flushed the engine oil and replaced it, adding some Wynn’s treatment to help reduce smoke.  After changing the oil it smoked almost constantly so I took it to my local mechanic who said it was probably the turbo.

After checking the Haynes manual, it told me that I would need to remove the engine or remove the suspension (for anyone who has never changed a turbo on this on this model, it can be done without doing either of these).  After taking the old turbo off, I could see that the pipe from the engine was sooty but the pipe after the turbo was oily so I replaced it which was fine for a short time but after taking it for a test drive, the same problem.  Long story short, it looks like the engine flush had blocked the oil inlet pipe for the turbo.  I removed the filter to test this and currently have had several drives without the billowing smoke (which only happened when the engine had warmed up, presumably because this was when the exhaust was hot enough to vaporise the oil).  I have also capped off the EGR whilst I am testing as I am getting EGR Flow Excessive error.

Now that there is not a plume of smoke, I have a slightly different issue.  When the car is running at normal temperature and I go up a reasonable slope, enough to task the engine, I will get smoke from the exhaust which starts gradually and builds to quite a bit before going back to nothing noticeable.  The smoke is not white this time, from what I can tell it is more grey/blue.

Does anyone have any ideas what could cause this?

[cancunia]

Hi, welcome to the forum.
Yeah, sometimes Haynes does deserve the BOL nickname!
As far as the smoke goes, I'm guessing 1 of 2 things:
1, Oil - Piston rings or valve guides. Unusual for this engine so far as I know, how many miles?
2, Fueling - Maybe drippy injectors or maybe a dodgy MAF.
Your EGR fault may actually be a MAF fault, it was on my 2.0 so maybe worth trying to disconnect it and see if that makes any difference. If you don't already have one, get an OBD code reader, check things like fuel rail pressure & boost.

[aServant]

Hi cancunia

Thanks for the reply. It has done just under 95,000 miles. I will try disconnection the MAF for a bit and see if it makes any difference. Will report back soon.

[aServant]

OK so I unplugged the MAF sensor and have been driving it for a week now to see how it faired.

I decided I would wait until now to write a response as yesterday I went from Stroud to Coventry through the A roads so there were a lot of hills.

I have not had any smoke or certainly no plumes like I had last week but I don't understand how the MAF sensor would cause a short plume of smoke every now and then.  Can anyone explain the process?

Many thanks for the tip though, I would never have thought of it.

[cancunia]

Glad to hear that things have improved. TBH, I suggested the MAF due to the EGR error rather than the smoke. It could be that there's too much fuel going in compared to the air if the MAF is sending false readings. I suggest getting a new MAF, UK Diesel Parts have a fairly good rep, but there are plenty of others to choose from:

https://www.ukdieselparts.com/mass-air-f...e-fitments

Looks like they're also doing a 10% discount if you subscribe to their newsletter.

[polar]

Just make sure you get a good quality MAF because there are loads of crap on ebay. As cancunia says or GSF - dont forget to try dealer prices.