hdi 110 hard to start, poor running, egr fault

[christophert21]

hey. newbie here. bought a 2000 406 110hdi for work runabout as i was expecting it to be 100% reliable and so forth
the car itself has 171k on it

list of faults so far
was drove through a flood before i got it and hadn't been running as it had before (hence i got it cheap enough). i changed air filter and few general service items. also the afm as mechanic said it was showing up on dianostics. after a few weeks the car was back to what felt like full power. happy enough

then it took a notion of being very hard to start first thing in the morning. it would grind and grind and grind until it started, would struggle for a few seconds and fill the place with smoke. was ok after about 30-40 seconds. at the same time this started, it would miss intermittitantly when driving. like a crackle.
- i got it on a computer diagnostic and he said 3 injectors were buggered and the egr solenoid also
i got all second hand and replaced all on saturday.
that has cured the intermittent miss when driving, but the car now feels dead as a door nail! very little power wotsoever! also very poor mpg as have to drive it alot harder than u would normally to get it to go anywhere.
its still a nightmare to start first thing in the morning.
changed the fuel filter on saturday also

are all hdi's noisy buggers?? like a knocking noise? been told its injector tick......but i myself think its the crankshaft issue

otherwise i love how the car drives, comfort and with a set of snow tyres on it will do me nicely over the winter!

i've got a handheld scanner that i bought a few years ago. the car i had at the time, it wouldn't work with it, so i tried it toinght just to see, as it hasn't been out of the box since. woila! it actually picked up codes. 2 of them
both p0403 egr circuit
would this be leaving the car very very low on power. tried clearing the codes but they came back immediately.
i'm thinking the egr solenoid i got on saturday was faulty?

i forgot to mention that the car is sometimes run on 'green diesel' tho it is good quality

[Busman]

Green diesel? In a hdi? What exactly are you putting in it?

[Welly]

A dodgy EGR valve won't really cause too many running issues.

The air intake is very low on the HDi (in the N/S wheel arch) I reckon it might have sucked in some water and locked the engine before. The previous keeper might have let the water out of the cylinder(s) by cranking with the glow plugs removed but some engine damage might have already occurred.

HDi's are fairly clattery but they should also sound sweet at the same (if that makes sense) they shouldn't sound nasty and knocking. If one of the cylinders has had water in it, when it tries to compress the water it will lock up and damage the rings/crank bearings.

I hope yours hasn't done this but it'd be worth considering before doing much else. I suppose a compression test is the first step.

[christophert21]

Right compression test duly noted.
However the flood was approx 2 months ago, an the car was running fine for about 2-3 weeks after it came round.

I'm thinking more I've got a dodgy 2nd hand injector. Would explain the hard starting and bad running?

Any home DIY methods of testing for a bad injector?
When I put the injectors in was there anything I should have done? Like an initialisation process or learning sequence?

[drjonts]

Spooky! Exactly like my neighbour's 110 HDi.

It died in a flood...dried out and has been running ok for a couple of months...now an absolute b@stard to start and needs about 10 goes with extended cranking before it splutters and then runs. Rough to begin with but seems to be ok once warm. Warm starts ok apparently.

I look forward to hearing any more...just in case it is something to do with the water being drawn in.

Cheers,

Jonty

[Doggy]

This may be completely unrelated, but a Xsara HDi 90 I had some years back packed in once & had the same fault code. Eventually proved to be the loss of one of the 12V supplies to the engine ecu. This feed allowed the ecu to power the lift pump & solenoid valves, including the egr valve. Obviously on self-test the output circuit check didn't work without power and this, related but confusing code was flagged. (In this specific case the real issue was no lift pump = no fuel).

Not saying yours is the same, but diagnostic codes can be misleading, so try to think in terns of, 'how does it know''? and 'what else could that mean'?

Luck.......