Hi All,
I have posted something similar before and received no replies but I think I am a little further along in my diagnosis now so I thought I would try again...

I have two problems with my Focus TDCi....150k Km on the clock.

#1 Approx. 1 out of 10 starts are "rough". Engine starts unevenly and sounds rough...after 1-2 seconds engine runs smoothly. Sounds like it only fires on 3 cylinders to begin with. No pattern to this...happens on cold starts and warm starts. Engine runs normally aside from starting with smooth idling and good acceleration.

Problem started about 1.5 yrs ago. All glow plugs and their leads have been changed but problem still exists. This issue occurred more frequently a few months ago - maybe 1 out of 5 starts were rough.

# 2. This may or may not be related.....this one is also completely random...whilst driving the glow plug light flashes (a fault code is being written) and after 15 seconds the engine loses all power. I have to pull over, switch off and re-start at which time the engine runs normally again. I have had this problem for 6 years. There is no pattern to this problem other than it never occurs at idle...only when underway at 2-3k rpm. Occurs on 1 out of approx. 50 times I use the car. Occurs no more frequently now than 6 years and 60k Km back.

The car is not used every day and many trips are short - under 10 km. The starting problem was worse, occured 4 times out of 5, when the car was only used for short trips and it did reduce to 1 time out of 5 after a few motorway runs....but it is still there. Diesel filter and air filter have been changed.

Diagnosis so far:
At a recent service a mechanic read a P1200 fault code. Was not able to investigate further.
When I run the dash board check the only dtc that comes up is 9318. There are a lot of other numbers and codes that come up when I scroll through using the trip mileage reset but 9318 is the only dtc.
Shouldn't the P1200 code show up?

Any ideas?
A very helpful person on here, BenG, suggested cleaning the EGR valve - the problems above may be symptomatic of a dirty (but working) EGF valve. On my car it appears to be attached to the intake manifold so that looks like a tricky job but if someone can tell me it's easy enough I will do it.

Replacing the CAM position sensor and updating ECU software may be a good idea.

Any other ideas? I would really like to know the root cause here -a dirty EGR valve does seem possible expecially considering the random nature of the problems....but I really have no idea...

Many thanks in advance - sorry for the long post...

Ian