Electronic VE

[burnt_servo]

What is so good about those tdi vws??
I own an shop in germany and have to say that i never ever would drive an vw-audi tdi or mercedes common rail !!
the gas engines are far more reliable, 100000 miles are the max for most modern diesel engines especialy for the v6-v10 and v12 tdi engines.
here everybody knows this and sells their diesel after 3 years.

if i read your post corectly , your saying the newer diesels have taken a big step backward ??....

i can only speak of my 1990 vw jetta which is a indirect injection turbo diesel .
it is aproaching 700,000 km now , swaped out the motor and tranny at 450,000 km for ones i rebuilt from the wrecker .
i can also easily get 70 mpg ( roughly 4 litres to 100 km ) out of it , and hoping for closer to 80 mpg with a few more mods .

[Begle1]

I found an electronic VE pump on an Italian 4.2 liter VM Motori turbodiesel the other day.


It's smoking black under load. No codes; all the sender data looks good. Any ideas? Injector(s)?

[meby]

Black smoke would indicate to much fuel or not enough air. Right? Check your air filter and maybe the intake as they tend to clog on these.

[PToombs]

EGR stuck open?

[Begle1]

I've thought about the EGR. This engine does have EGR, but it's entirely boost-actuated; no electronics are involved.

Isn't EGR typically wide open when the engine is wide open? When is the EGR typically the farthest open?



And why the heck does the starter solenoid relay control ground through a terminal on the alternator?

[PToombs]

Yes, WOT will be wide open on the EGR. I had one stick on an S10. Ran great WOT but idled like crap.

As for question 2, if it sees voltage from the alternator, it won't let the starter engage. I've seen this on the Daewoo loaders. Lots of extra wiring to go thru looking for problems, but when it works, it saves the starter from staying engaged. BTDT

[Begle1]

This engine idles great, it just smokes black when it's under load.


With the engine off, the alternator terminal has 550-720 ohms of resistance to ground. So the starter relay can't engage; the alternator terminal would have to have 1 or 2 ohms of resistance for the starter relay to engage.

So the alternator's "starter terminal" is not working right. And then, for a reason I haven't determined yet, the alternator is not charging. The alternator's "starter terminal" is over 500 ohms of resistance wherher the battery charger is on or off. Silly Italians.

[Begle1]

So I figured it out.

The engine in the boat wouldn't start because the battery charger was on. As long as the battery charger was charging at ~14 volts, the alternator terminal was convinced that the engine was running and therefore wouldn't allow the starter to engage. When the battery charger cycled off, the battery voltage would drop off and then the starter could engage; that was why the problem was intermittent.

Anybody else ever spend 4 hours troubleshooting a design feature?

[PToombs]

That's interesting, voltage level controls it. Pretty sure on what I was working on, it was the signal from the alternator that kicked it out.

Figure out the smoke problem yet?

[Begle1]

I don't know what happened to the smoke.

We changed the primary and secondary filters and laced the fuel with water dispersant and cetane booster, and the smoke went away. On the sea trial today the boost and RPM were in spec, there was no smoke and the boat planed fine, so apparently the problem was fixed.

My 75 year old boss' train of thought from the start was that bad fuel was causing black smoke; I've never heard of that, but I'm inclined to believe him at this point. It's either I believe that or I believe that the injectors were coked up and the fuel additives cleaned them; I find that hard to believe as well. Maybe the IP was getting enough fuel to inject but not enough to advance the timing?

Most likely scenario is that my boss knows what he's talking about. But he put me on a 3-day work week today, so screw that geezer.

[PToombs]

But he put me on a 3-day work week today, so screw that geezer.

Sorry to hear that, but that line was funny!