X-Trail 2.2d running on 3 cyls

[Tonybolony]

Can anyone help? (Sorry about Another thread about oil-burners!!)
My Mate has this 56 plate car which has a regular miss which has been getting progressively worse. It's only present on light loading (worse when cold) but when pressed, will pick up its shirt-tails and pull well. Last weekend, we were both away with our families in our caravans (Sorry Lads), and with his twin-axle on the back of the X-Trail, it pulled perfectly well (On WOT).
With engine running, bonnet open- it's obviously down on one cyl, but as the revs slowly increase the miss slowly disappears.
My initial thoughts were a badly dribbling injector, as he tells me that recently whilst driving it has started to occasionally white-smoke for a short distance, then a few seconds of rattling (he described as sounding like pinking), then clears itself again.
I suggested Forte Diesel Injector cleaner, but he was told there is no such thing (Did I dream that it existed??) and was sold Forte Fuel System Cleaner, which had no obvious effect.
Yesterday he had an 'expert' look at it, who listened to the injectors with a stethyscope and said 'The injectors are fine, I can hear the fuel travelling thro them'!!
Is It Me???????
This chap then plugged his Code-reader in, and said 'It's an EGR fault- it needs replacing/by-passing'
The car has done 70k miles, and isn't using oil or water.

Any suggestions Lads??

[recall]

I have not had much experance with diesel cars but loads with petrol,
every diesel car i have ever worked on always says EGR valve problem so i would worry about that unless it is loseing power,
The missfire bit i would say injector problem, i have just done a renault with a 1.5 diesel engine, owner supplyed a new engine as old one was rattling and missfiring, "EXPERT" said dead engine, well after fittine new engine with old pump and injectors it sounded the same,
New injectors and pump later and runs a dream,
Renault have said it is down to ppl putting dribs and drabs of fuel in, fuel gets very warm and cant cool the injectors down (must use the fuel going throu the injector to cool the driver)

Dont know if that is any good to you, Just that is my most recent problem with diesel engines on common rail with missfires

lance

[5cylinderman]

An EGR issue won't cause a misfire, just low performance.
I would suggest doing an injector leak off test to identify the culprit, especially as it mainly does it at idle.
Another experience I came across was a Diesel engine that managed to ingest a drop of water hence slightly bending a rod. It ran like crap at idle but once the revs were raised it felt as sweet as a nut. Food for thought.

[TimE-J]

Same as 5 cylinder said, do a leak off test on the injectors and also do a compression test to see if one is low.

[5cylinderman]

AFAIK each injector is coded to its matching cylinder in the ecu, so don't be tempted to "swap" injectors to isolate the offending item.

[Tonybolony]

An EGR issue won't cause a misfire, just low performance.
I would suggest doing an injector leak off test to identify the culprit, especially as it mainly does it at idle.
Another experience I came across was a Diesel engine that managed to ingest a drop of water hence slightly bending a rod. It ran like crap at idle but once the revs were raised it felt as sweet as a nut. Food for thought.

Cheers 5cyl,
Asssuming the engine will run without I/C , (which is horizontal across top of engine-Shogun/Citroen/Peugeot style) to get at injector multi-plugs- could I not pull individual plugs on injectors to identify which one??

Regarding the poss of hydraulicing- now you've got me thinking, cos it started at about the time we had flooding after the Jan snow.....
Mmmmmmm
Compression test time, methinks.
Surely that wouldn't explain the occasional white smoke tho??

[5cylinderman]

If you disconnect the I/C the AFM won't be registering airflow so it might cut the engine or just carry on and throw some fault codes. I would suggest disconnect the AFM before start up so that it will start and run on default settings.

[Tonybolony]

If you disconnect the I/C the AFM won't be registering airflow so it might cut the engine or just carry on and throw some fault codes. I would suggest disconnect the AFM before start up so that it will start and run on default settings.

Glad you suggested that, cos I would have assumed that disconnecting it would have brought up a fault code.

I wasn't gonna swap injectors from cyl to cyl, but try a 'new' one on dead cyl.
Sounds like I was right about ECU coding, so that's not a simple option either.

If it is a bent rod; will that necessarily cause an MOT fail on emissions, due to lower combustion temp on that cyl?