Latest car crisis

[MattC]

Hi folks! It's been a while.

On my way home from an oil collection this afternoon, the engine suddenly cut out and started producing lots of smoke from the exhaust.  I pulled over and gave it a rest, started up again and after a while the engine warning light came on and the car got me home, by which time the smoke seemed to have stopped coming.

I plan to take it to the garage tomorrow so that they can take a look but has anyone got an idea what might cause something like this?

It's a Citroen Xsara Picasso 2.0 running B100.  Full service only 3 days ago.

[Tony]

Sorry to hear about your problems.  Did the fuel filter get changed as part of the service?

It might be worth contacting jamesrl on the vegoildiesel forum, I believe he runs the same vehicle and has had the odd problem so may well know where to point you.

[MattC]

Yep.  Replaced all filters, oil change, etc.

It was the smoke I was most concerned about.  When I've had problems in the past I've had the loss of power but not the smoke.

[Tony]

I wouldn't worry too much so long as the smoke was white - this is unburnt fuel, caused by a number of things including getting air into the fuel.

Given the recent service I'd have the fuel filter off and on again just to make sure it's seating correctly.

[Julian]

I know it's not the same car, but I've looked at a lot of Golfs recently.  One was in very nice nick and the engine ran sweetly.  It too had just been serviced.  On the guys drive revved it quite hard to see if it smoked and a similar thing happened. It ran rough and produced clouds of white smoke.  Switched it off and started it again and it was fine.  Took it for a test drive and it was fine, pulled like a train.

The only thing I could think of was and injector was playing up.  It wasn't a common rail, but the symptoms sound the same.

[MattC]

Thanks.

I'll check the filter in the morning and see how it goes.

[MattC]

Long-awaited update....

I could see nothing wrong with the fuel filter after the last incident and no further recurrences so decided to leave it at that. 

Two days ago exactly the same thing happened so took it to the garage to have the codes read.  The diagnosis was a fault on the fuel pressure regulator solenoid circuit.  They told me that it was probably to do with the bio and suggested I put some diesel in with some conditioner.  I'll give this a go but I'm not optimistic that it will solve the real problem. 

Anyone got any other thoughts?

[Tony]

Hmm, sounds plausible.  Expensive to replace? 

[MattC]

Don't know. They didn't suggest replacing it - just running through half a tank of diesel.  I've no idea whether the problem could be related to the fuel or not.