Ford 2.4 TDCi Puma - Blue Smoke

[blueST]

My 2007 Land Rover has one of these engines same as fitted to countless Ford vans and pick ups too. In cold weather I get quite a lot of blue smoke on start up. The colder it is the worse it is. Warm weather it's not an issue. It stops after the first few hundred yards and runs with no smoke. Literally less than 5 mins running and its cleared up. It seems to be worse on the overrun than under power, i.e. on leaving house I coast down a hill and its awefull on a cold morning. The engine does not have high oil consumption, starts on the button and runs well.

Any thoughts on the cause.

[itcaptainslow]

From the description, my initial thought is valve stem seal issues - I don't know these engines and whether they're prone to failure, though, just going on prior experience with similar symptoms in Vauxhall units.

[blueST]

That did cross my mind, from my sort of limited old school knowledge. Just confused a bit by it only happening first start in cold weather. It is an issue I know other Defenders have, but no-one seems to have bothered trying to fix it, so no conclusion on the cause.

With so many Transits having this engine, someone familiar with them may well know.

[GreenV8S]

Petrol or diesel?

[blueST]

Common rail diesel, cat, egr, no DPF

[Tony1963]

A long shot from me.
In cold weather, the valve stems contract very slightly more than in warmer weather, and this is enough to allow a tiny droplet of oil. As we all know, a tiny amount of oil creates a lot of smoke.

[GreenV8S]

Itcaptainslow is probably on the money, but if you aren't sure the blue smoke is actually blue then there's a chance what you're seeing is the result of a cold start of a diesel - you could get unburnt (white) or incompletely burnt (black) smoke from a cold combustion chamber.

[itcaptainslow]

Not sure how reliant the TDCI is on glow plugs (most modern diesels don't rely on them to start now, it's more for emission control and to also assist with e.g. DPF regeneration), but it may be worth testing the resistances of them to check before starting more invasive work. If by chance the smoke colour has been misinterpreted, it could be something as simple as glow plug weakness/failure causing the smoke, but the fuel injection system & ECU can compensate enough to get the engine started and running.

[E-bmw]

My own interpretation would be basically the same as the 2 posts above this one.

Diesels tend to start/run initially very rich this time of year to aid warm up & very quickly go back to normal running.

If there is no oil usage & the "blue" smoke stops so soon & doesn't appear on the over-run when warm this would tend to back the theory up.

OP.

When it is running like this does the smoke smell like diesel fuel?

[Smint]

As above it sounds like valve stem seals, but if it only does this for a few minutes from a cold start and then runs clear (and the MOT emissions check passes ok) then i'd be inclined to live with it.

You mention EGR, my 2005 Prado runs much better and cleaner after cleaning out the EGR and intake, might be worth having a look up the EGRs bum and marvel how the hell the engine's running at all.

[blueST]

Thanks all, just to answer a couple of points raised above.

The smoke is definitely blue, like oil smoke.

It does rely on glow plugs to start. These things are hard to start when the plugs fail. Mine starts fine.

It does smell diesely on cold start, always has, even when there's no smoke.

Oil consumption is low, but it does use some. Went to Spain through France for two and a half weeks in summer, so a couple thousand or so miles, used maybe 500ml max. I wouldn't say that's excessive.

My main concern, is not actually that the engine is about to expire, but it's more the embarrassing crawl past my neighbours in a blue haze that bothers me. Vain I know.

[blueST]

Given the ubiquity of these engines, there's very little open source expertise on repairing them on the net.