Diagnostics Doctor

My brother-in-law has bought a 2006 Transit Connect 1.8 with 180k miles. When pulling away quickly I noticed as I followed behind him quite a lot of black smoke, which cleared after 30 yards or so. On driving from Darlington to Tyneside (about 35 miles) on the motorway at a steady 55mph, the engine cut out seven times. When this happened the glow plug symbol lit up on the dashboard.

After a quick off-on with the ignition key it runs fine – until it does it again. The van is parked on his drive at home until we can get it sorted. Thank you for your advice. Steve Wooldridge The glow plug light illuminating indicates a fault is logged in the vehicle’s ECU. This is also confirmed as turning the ignition off and then on again momentarily will clear the fault and return the engine to its normal running state.

The black smoke may or may not be related, but the source of the light needs to be established first. This may be due to a faulty sensor or sticking turbo actuator causing an over-boost code – one of the more common reasons.

Another easily checked cause of the problem is the intercooler hoses which do have a habit of splitting. They are short, and any split will normally be revealed by the presence of oil around the fracture. If a failed hose is found then I would replace both hoses to prevent further problems.

If it is not caused by an intercooler hose the first thing to do is to retrieve the fault codes from the ECU using a suitable code reader. As the vehicle was built after 2004 any generic EOBD code reader will be able to retrieve the codes.