Hello
New to the forum, looking for some help.
I have a 2006 6 TS2 2.0d 143 estate. It has 116k on it and I bought it two years ago and really like the car apart from one issue....It loses drive/power when on a motorway.
I'd be driving along at a steady speed and used to use cruise control. Things would be fine until I'd hit an incline where I'd notice the car losing speed. I try and accelerate and there is nothing there. It just loses speed unless going downhill where it still won't accelerate. If I am on an incline or flat it will just keep going slower and slower.
No warning lights light up when this happens.
This has been happening on and off for the last 18 months.
Originally it only seemed to happen when in 6th and the rpm was below 2k. So I stopped using 6th, not ideal but that worked for quite a while and then it started happening in 5th. The other day it happened when I was in 4th on the M62 (No hard shoulder! 'Smart' motorway. Now when it happens even on a level stretch the loss of power is noticeable.
If I pull over and rev the car it will rev very slowly and the amount of thick black smoke that leaves the exhaust is incredible!
If I turn it off and back on straight away, still no real throttle response.
If I turn it off and wait 10 minutes everything comes back and it is normal again.
I have tried 4 garages in this time period with 2 of them being diesel specialists.
Garage 1 - Said they'd found some damaged wiring and that was causing a turbo issue. Said they'd fixed it....
Garage 2 - Ran diagnostics, no codes. Tried to force a DPF regen which failed. Didn't seem interested beyond that.
Garage 3 (Diesel specialist) - Ran diagnostics, no codes. Changed all filters, they noted that the air filter was covered in an oil (The filter was only 5 months old). They also stripped and cleaned the EGR valve. Tried to force a regen on the DPF which again failed.
Garage 4 (Diesel Specialist) - Told me there was a crack on the intercooler, so they swapped it. They also tried to force a DPF regen but it failed.
Now, I was thinking that the problem seems to occur when the car might be trying to perform a regen but if that failed I would expect a warning light of some kind.
Does anyone have any ideas?
I don't know if it is related but the MPG seems pretty low (around mid 30's) considering I do 40 -50 miles a day with 75% being motorway miles.
When it is running fine I do get a fair amount of grey smoke from the exhaust under acceleration. Is that normal?
Help please!
Cheers