Vauxhall Astra G Diesel (1998 - 2004) - Van - 05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm

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Sat 16 Aug 2008 21:14
Van - 05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm - silvervanman
Hope you can shed some light on this one... When in 'cold mode' she runs fine with plenty of power and torque plus a smooth sounding engine. As soon as things warm up the engine becomes sluggish and noisy, under load sounding like an old sewing machine!. It'll still reach a good clip but takes sooo long to get there :-(.... This only started a week or so ago. Any ideas?

Edited by Dynamic Dave on 17/08/2008 at 16:01

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Sat 16 Aug 2008 21:43
05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm - mfarrow
With that sort of fault you would hope or expect an engine management light to be on. Does the spanner light and engine emissions light come on and go off with the ignition?
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Sun 17 Aug 2008 09:06
05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm - silvervanman
(it is a G model van 2005 onwards they put the Z engine in them until all the old stock were sold! then they started flogging the H model vans in late 2005 - they were nearly a year behind the cars with the new bodies)

Back to the story.... Start sequence: Ignition on - Spanner + Engine lights (spanner goes out after a couple of seconds), Engine Start: engine light goes out. What is strange is how good she runs while cold :-(, no fault light during driving: except a few weeks before this started, i was overtaking a truck and needed to boot it: hit the limiter and engine cut out (spanner light) . After a minute or so in a handy layby she started up fine and carried on without problem and has been fine until recently.
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Sun 17 Aug 2008 12:21
05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm - mfarrow
Finger in the air it's still retarding when warm giving you the increased noise and related problems. Probably a temperature sensor giving a high reading without going outside ECU tolerances. As the ECU isn't flagging anything up I'd get the live data read before throwing money at it.

Screwloose?
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Sun 17 Aug 2008 15:35
05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm - Screwloose
mf

You're certainly right that the ECU should have spotted this? I'm wondering if it's sucked in the swirl valves?
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Sun 17 Aug 2008 20:37
05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm - silvervanman
OK, this sounds interesting.... I'm not sure who to contact regarding having the data read, and what are the 'swirl valves'???...
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Sun 17 Aug 2008 20:40
05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm - silvervanman
Bit of additional info if it helps.... During accelleration she is real clattery until over 3000rpm or a bit more depending on gear, then it smoothes out again just before having to change gear.
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Sun 17 Aug 2008 22:35
05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm - Screwloose

Most garages have access to a scanner; the swirl valves manage the airflow through the inlet manifold and can shatter and get sucked into the inlet ports.
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Thu 29 Oct 2009 09:29
05 1.7cdti Noisy and sluggish when warm - silvervanman
After all this time, i finally got round to sorting this out!...
Stripped out the EGR valve and manifold pipe, both were clogged really badly - the egr was almost completely bunged up and the pipe was restricted to at least HALF its normal diameter. The swirl actuator was sticky. Slight panic after reassembly, no compression while the loosened carbon deposits worked through. She's now at 145k miles and running sweet.
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