Sprinter Smoking

[OntarioVanMan]

well if ya go on a 3 to one ratio the overall cost of the oil change is dropped considerably and a little extra less scheduled down time to boot.
They were pretty insistant about making sure you change the fuel(water) filter on time...it'll grind ya to a near stop.

 

[Steady Eddie]

I talked with a Sprinter owner who said, every time he changes his oil he cleans his EGR value with carb cleaner. He said his never smokes anymore or has a loss of power.

Steady

 

[roadapple]

ask the dealer to show how to clean the egr valve. if its smoking black its probably the egr. I have a 2005 lwb hitop on the road for panther. trucks been in the shop 25 times for defective sensors. the trucks under a 100k engine warranty with no deductible, dont let them tell you anything different. Call the consumer hotline number in you owners manual if the dealers give you any grief. Use your idle stick at about 1200-1400 rpms when you idle. dealer was right on to tell you that fast idle is about 2000 rpms. It wont hurt the engine or burn any more fuel, and will eliminate a lot of the smoking. hope this helps.

 

[dieseldoctor1]

Let me shed a little light on what smoke from a diesel reveals. First of all to give you a little background so you know I have some experience with diesels. Rebuilt my first diesel engine in 1958 when I was 15 yr. old and have been involved with diesel engines ever since. Got my nickname “dieseldoctor†in the early 70’s when I was a field representative for a large construction equipment dealer doing repairs on heavy equipment. I pulled up to a dozer with an engine problem one-day. As I got out of my service truck one of the guys said, “boys, the dieseldoctor is here. Everything’s going to be ok.†The name stuck and for years around 6 counties of North Carolina I had a reputation of being the man to call if you had problems with an International, Cummins, or Detroit engine. Worked on a few Cats (mostly in bulldozers I owned) but wasn’t as familiar with them as the others. Will try to add a couple of pictures of an engine job I did right where it broke down. This was when I had 15 bulldozers split into 5 crews clearing and maintaining power line right of ways for power companies in NC and SC. To see more pictures of this operation you can go to this link and click on Skyline Construction.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dieseldoctor_1/my_photos

(Couldn't get pictures to upload but if you are interested go to above link to see them)


Now lets talk about smoke from a diesel. White smoke is a sign that the fuel to air ratio is correct but there is not enough heat to completely burn the fuel or that an injector or injectors are not atomizing the fuel enough for it to be completely burned. For some engines the lack of heat problem is normal on a cold start. (Anybody remember the Cat 3208? Crank one up on a cold morning and someone will probably call the fire dept that the truck is on fire. Lol). Once the heat builds up in the engine the smoke clears and everything is fine. If the injectors aren’t atomizing the fuel sufficiently for it to be completely burned the temperature in that cylinder or cylinders will drop thus causing the white smoke. The unburned fuel will dilute the oil film on the rings and cylinder walls and will eventually lead to gauling of the piston and cylinder. In other words if you see much white smoke the life of your engine is being shortened.

Black smoke is a sign that there is too much fuel in relation to the air that is going in the cylinder. In other words the fuel to air mixture is too rich. Have you ever started a gas engine that has a choke and seen what happens when you have the choke on too much? Smokes black smoke doesn’t it. Once again the extra fuel is not being burnt so the oil film is bring diluted. Again this is not good.

Now this thread started about a Sprinter. I have never touched a Sprinter engine and about all I know is what a friend of mine who supervises three shops for a big package delivery service has told me. He has about 80 Sprinters under his care. What he tells me, when asked about this smoke problem at start up or after idling is that he has seen this several times and it is usually an injector going bad. Replacing the injector will cure the smoke problem. But it is not unusual down the road (80,000 to 150,000 miles) that this cylinder will gaul. Cure for this is a new engine. Fortunately for this large company DC has been picking up a lot of the bill. (Prorated by mileage). Unfortunately for a single truck owner there probably won’t be any help. I have talked to three individuals that have had an engine failure in less than 150,000 miles. All had had injector failures before. One had an extended warranty that DC used to sell (It is my understanding they don’t offer this extended warranty anymore. That should tell you something.) and she got $4000.00 for her old engine. Bill for engine replacement was $12000.00. The other two got nothing.

My best advice is finding a service manager that you can talk to and insist that they cure the smoke problem. If they can’t cure the problem, request that they have a factory representative investigate the complaint and meet with you to discuss it. At the very least make them write up a work order listing all details and THEIR version of what is going on with the engine. Get a copy of this work order and keep it in a safe place. It could be a valuable piece of evidence in court later.

Good luck,
Dieseldoctor

 

[talkinghorse43]

Thanks for your interest in the Sprinter.

Your comment about injector failure and eventual cylinder/piston galling got my attention because I had an injector fail on my '02 and I don't want the same to happen to me if I can help it.

Since reading your reply, I've been trying to understand why an injector failure would start a piston/cylinder down the path to eventual failure (hoping if the failure process can be understood, then something could be done to stop it).

I recently removed the EGR valve on this engine to fix an annoying oil drip (engine breather discharges into turbo inlet) and noticed quite a bit of soot/oil deposited in the intake manifold (up to maybe 1/8" thick on the inside bottom) and that made me aware that there must be a fair amount of soot formed during combustion even when it's not visible in the exhaust (only had the injector problem for maybe 1k miles, and only smoked a little at idle).

I know from my training and experience that particulate like this soot (sub-micron size) can be pretty efficiently collected by a cooled surface inserted into a hot gas stream (called thermophoretic deposition). So, this tells me that the cylinder walls would collect some of the soot formed. I'm guessing that the oil film on the cylinder wall would normally be thick enough to suspend the captured soot and the mixture would eventually work its way into the pan. But, under abnormal conditions like an injector failure or uncontrolled EGR flow, the amount of soot captured might be too much and the oil/soot paste formed would be too viscous to flow out of the rings, would deposit there, and could interfere with the ability of the rings to deliver an oil film of the right thickness. Eventually, more paste would deposit until no oil film is formed. Metal-to-metal contact and failure by galling.

Does this make sense? Does this process lead to the eventual failure you wrote about? If so, what can be done (short of rebuilding the engine) to intervene and stop the possible failure process?

Thanks again for your interest.

 

[dieseldoctor1]

Yes the soot you refered to will cause cylinder damage. That soot/oil in the intake would worry me greatly. Soot is very abrasive. Soot caused by the gases that normally pass by the rings is helt in suspension in the oil and filtered out. (It is already on the oil side of the rings.)Any soot above the rings is going to cause ring and cylinder wear. The injector failure could have caused the soot (over fueling)but I suspect that it was caused by a low cylinder combustion temperature, maybe by the injector failure or by idling.

From what I understand the Sprinter engine runs cold when idling. that is a problem with some diesel engines. Believe it or not International had a V-8 diesel that would idle on 4 cylinders and above a certain RPM the other 4 would kick in. Now the reason for this was that the 4 that weren't getting fuel were still building compression so were putting enough "load" on the engine to keep the temperature up to the normal operating range. Had a many a shadetree mechanic pull the fuel pump off and bring it in for repair because the engine was "missing" on 4 cylinders at idle.Some were hard to convince that this was the way it was designed.

Also when the fuel is diluting the oil film the hard facing of the rings is worn much faster than normal. Once the facing is worn through wear accelerates. It also wears the crosshatch from the cylinder walls. Crosshatch consists of a microscopic pattern on the walls of the cylinders which lets the oil film hide in the "grooves" of the crosshatch. Once this crosshatch is worn off, the cylinder wears very rapidly. Wish I could describe this crosshatch better. If I can find something on the net describing it I will post a link.

What can be done? Get that soot out of the intake and keep a close check to see if it returns. If so the cause needs to be found. One little secret is that although the driver feels the engine is preforming good, is building good power, and no smoke or indication that anything is amiss, the injectors still may not be firing correctly. And I have had injectors that would check perfect on the test bench but when in the engine wouldn't fire right. One engine had good power but was extremely hard to start. Bench checked all injectors good. Bench checked the pump, good. Pulled injectors again and rebuilt. Still hard to start. Old mechanic told me to forget it and get a new set of injectors. Did and no more starting problems. Hardheaded me took those old injectors and installed in another engine. It wouldn't start. Took them to another fuel shop and had them bench test them. Checked good. Threw in trash. I said all this to say that you may have more injector problems but can't tell it.

Just curious but what does an injector cost for the Sprinter? Do they rebuild them or do you have to buy new?

Best of luck

Dieseldoctor

Found these. One has a couple of good pictures the other has more than you probably want to know lol.

http://www.mvinspections.com/samples.html

http://www.aa1car.com/library/2000/ar90058.htm

 

[talkinghorse43]

Thanks for your quick reply.

Don't know about the injectors, mine was replaced under warranty.

I need to tell you a little more about the soot/oil in the intake manifold. There is no surface deposit in the upper half of the flow cross section. It seems to be limited to the part of the manifold that is/was wet by the oil (from the engine breather) flowing along the bottom of the duct. It shows a smooth/shiny surface over small dimensions, but presents larger hills and valleys and has the consistency of modeling clay. The manifold is above the runners and so the deposit extends down into the runners. I thought of physically cleaning in place, but thought better of it figuring I would do more harm than good if any were to get away and get into the cylinders. Figuring it's probably stable, I was planning to watch it and at some point in the future, if necessary, remove the manifold and give it a good cleaning.

As far as where the soot's coming from, it's obviously coming from the EGR flow. As to why it was/is formed:

- I don't idle except as dictated by traffic conditions and most of the miles driven are highway miles
- I use the diesel-fired coolant heater to get the engine up to operating temp (~185) as quickly as possible and to keep it at temp if necessary
- It's hard for me to imagine that the injectors are now a problem since my overall fuel economy is 22.5 mpg (all miles since new/all fuel) and is stable, and is about average for a Sprinter
- Have no trouble starting and runs smooth at idle (doesn't smoke)
- According to many posts in the yahoo group sprintervan, it seems soot in the EGR flow is expected - '02 &'03 model EGR valves need to be cleaned every ~25k miles so the valve continues to seal and control reliably - newer EGR valves are of a different design that is assumed to be "self cleaning"

Are EGR flows in other modern engines free of soot? I know the TDI engine in my daughter's '04 VW Golf smokes a little on start-up.

Thanks again for your interest.

 

[cargodreaming]

A driver I work with is having to have all injectors replaced and the heads replaceds. He only has 120 thousand miles. They [Dodge] told him his injector sleaves slipped causing damage to the injectors and worked its way to the heads. I am no mechanic so I am sure it was more stuff to it. He drives a 04 and most of the miles are highway miles. He noticed the problem when he started smelling exhaust in the cab. The mechanic showed him the injector sleaves leaking that was causing the problem. We found some information on the Sprinter MB engine and it stated the injectors need replacing every 100 thousand miles. If this is true that sucks. The injectors are like $359 a piece. The dealers shop qouted a bill 0f around $6000 to repair. he is getting the parts from them but is looking into some local MB shops around that might have a cheaper labor rate. I know others that are reaching the 100 thousand mile mark and going to watch how it works out for them.

 

[bryan]

Hi
An oil analysis would tell you if this smoking is causing any premature wear.NAPA sells the kit.Blackstone also sells a kit and does the analysis.But the fastest way is take it to J Care in Indy they have a kit with a hand pump so instead of removing the drain plug you can just extract oil from the filler tube.Much easier and cleaner.

You can get alot of info from these kits such as oil change intervals,bearing wear and impurities.Since your vehicle has a turbo its a really good idea to have this done atleast twice a year.The savings and peace of mind really do out weigh the cost on this one.