Hello all,
Firstly, I hope everyone here had a merry Christmas, and will go on to have a happy new year. Secondly, I'm new here, so I apologise if this question was answered only last week (I have had a look through the old material, couldn't find anything similar)
To give you some background on the problem in hand, I have a Vectra 1.7TD, I know, not the best in terms of performance, economy, ride, driving position, the list is endless, but I couldn't afford a VW :)
Generally speaking, the car has been (touch wood) mostly trouble free for the last 2 yrs, and has got me the 60mile round trip to work without issue.
It's been serviced by me for the 2 yrs I've had it, and doesn't seem to have been particularly abused prior to that. Not that the 1.7TD has much scope for abuse, but that's a different thread altogether :)
The last time I came to change the fuel filter (about 109,000 miles), when I put the new one on, the car became progressively more difficult to start, with lots of smoke when it did start. I put this down to air ingress into the fuel system due to me disturbing something, and went down to Vauxhall parts to ask them about it. Apparently, the fuel filter cover becomes porous after a few years, it's a common fault, blah, blah, blah.
So, despite my doubts on this theory, I purchased a new one (~£140, includes the heater, a filter, etc), and sure enough, this cured the problem.
well....
We're now at just under 115,000 miles, and its very cold (for all those who hadn't noticed :) ), and the car is a right pain to start in the morning (from cold, when it's been left for a substantial amount of time). Yesterday it took two attempts (4secs, 2secs) to get the thing going, and this morning (abt -4C), I cranked it for approx 10 seconds before it spluttered into life.
I appreciate I may be being overly picky, but the car usually starts very quickly indeed, and this is somewhat out of the blue.
With all the cold weather, my first thoughts were the glow plugs. The plugs are getting (according to my HQ tandy multimeter) ~10V across the bus bar (- I assume this is voltage drop because the plugs are drawing current?), until the relay clicks off. The plugs aren't warm to the touch (on the top), but I suspect this is normal, as the heat should be contained on the engine side of the plug(?)
Or is this the air in the fuel system problem again?
How can I tell the two apart?
Any diagnostic tips greatly appreciated!
Thanks for reading this *long* post!
-David L
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