Club 80-90 Forums

Hi,

1.6D will not start!

It's run sweet as a nut for 2 years, then recently it became very reluctant to fire up, took ages to get going and chucked out a massive cloud of dirty white smoke for a few seconds when It finally caught, and then it would run sweetly. Fires up instantly when hot.

I changed the glow plugs, and the glow plug relay as that had melted!

Once that was changed over it fired up from cold straight away, came back to the van a a couple of hours later, It won't start, the start motor is recent and that turns over, the glow plug light comes on (now seems to stay on for longer than before?), but the van will not fire up.

It will bump start okay.

If it were the fusible link would the glow plug light still come on? Maybe I need to check that?

God I'm fed up with it now. I'm nipping out at lunchtime for a can of petrol and a box of matches (just in case!).

Thanks in advance.

White smoke is usually unburnt fuel when glow plugs aren't getting upto temp/working. If you bump it do you get the white smoke too for a little while? Does it still fire up instantly when hot?

MattBW wrote:White smoke is usually unburnt fuel when glow plugs aren't getting upto temp/working. If you bump it do you get the white smoke too for a little while? Does it still fire up instantly when hot?

Starts fine when hot, didn't notice any white smoke when I bumped it, but that's because I was concentrating on not hitting any oncoming traffic on the busy road I had to bump it on!

Maybe the relay is duff? The glow plug light stays on a lot longer than it used to after I changed the plugs over...

This sounds exactly like a similar problem I had with my Alfa Brera. I was getting lots of white smoke (if I used the glow plugs twice, i.e. ignition on, then off then on again it start better).

What my tame expert eventually found was tht the branded aftermarket glow plugs I had bought on ebay were actually slightly shorter than the Alfa equivilent and so I wasn't getting proper warming and thus getting unburnt fuel, white smoke and struggling to start.

I have the same van but haven't had this problem on that, sorry its not much help.

Check the fuse then see if you're getting power to the rail

Hi .long time no hear
i had a simmilar problem and the fusible link was very corroded/eroded ? well it looked ok and worked intermittantly till i poked it and it was in several bit,
bridge it with a wire to test
mm