182 misfire followed by Engine light flashing

[nath&alex]

Hi,

I'm away in the US and the missus tells me there is an issue with the 182, here is what I recieved in the email she sent me

I have come in the S-Max today because there is something wrong with the Clio!

When I was going home last night it seemed a bit sluggish and when I felt a bit like it was mis-firing. I got on the motorway and it seemed ok until I got home. This morning I started it up while I was putting Thomas and the bags in the car and it didn’t sound right. It still sounded like it was mis-firing, but thought it might be because it was quite cold. Anyway, by the time I got in the car it sounded better, put it in reverse and started to move and it sounded awful and didn’t really want to go anywhere, plus the yellow engine light was flashing so I turned it off and have left it.

Anybody got some suggestions of what it could be? The obvious things I would check would be plugs, plug leads, coilpack etc. Could this be Lamda or cat related, has had a missfire and a bit slugish when first started which wears off within a few minutes as it warms up. I was going to get the RAC to come and put it on their diagnostics to give me a pointer for 10.

Obviously there are some knowledgable guys on here so thought I would give it a try.

Cheers

Nath

 

[montana]

ignoring the engine light issue for the time being, is your missus aware of how the clio runs when its cold i.e. really lumpy, i can see how someone would think something is wrong ( until its warmed up).

Given that you are overseas - i would get RAC on the job, as a bare minimum they will plug it in and read the codes.

 

[Coops Mk1]

Sounds like a dodgy injector to me,dodgy running on idle and low speed but okay higher revs (such as on the motorway)

 

[jezvalva]

Mine is doing this after putting new engine in, an once I blip the throttle the revs slowly come back to idle very odd.

 

[nath&alex]

Well I'm in the airport ready for coming home, depending what time I get home I may call out the RAC. But might leave it until Sunday

 

[KevF182]

Propper diagnostic would be quickest way to find out whats up. But, from the description its very likely to be either an ignition system problem or faulty injector. The symptoms are very similar - last winter an injector failed on me, one day it ran fine then after a brief period of it not being used it had developed a constant miss on number 3 cyl (and flashing orange engine light). I follwed a simple procedure to diagnose what it was and with a new injector fitted it was perfect again.

Now just in the last few weeks the light has been coming on occasionally during warm-up and sounding lumpier than normal then last weekend it was clearly running faulty at idle, actually missing occasionally. Looking at the plugs showed number 4 to be clearly more sooty. I'd imagined it would be another injector faulty but In fact if was just a damp/faulty HT lead. New leads and its perfect again.

The way to diagnose a cause of a single cylinder miss-fire is to first work out which cylinder is faulty, its easy if its a constant miss but a bit tricky if its occasional. Looking at the plugs should give the game away, but removing conection to individual injectors one cyl at a time is another way. Once you know which cyl, just swap injectors between cylinders. If the miss moves cylinders with the injector then its an injector at fault. If it stays same cylinder then its ignition system. For me, I'd had new plugs last year so I suspected leads and/or coil, but upon looking at the leads in the dark whilst engine running I could see the occasional faint blue flashes from number 4 lead -Bingo!

This will fix the majority of likely cases, but if this proves fruitless, a compression and leakdown test is next step. Also, one proviso with the above method is that if the wiring to an injector is faulty, the diagnosis would (incorrectly) point to ingition system. This is probably quite rare though, but bear in mind.

 

[Quinnie]

I had the exact same thing mate. It was an injector. Easy to find out which one - just unplug them one at time. If there's no change in the engine sound then that's your culprit.

 

[Coops Mk1]

Propper diagnostic would be quickest way to find out whats up. But, from the description its very likely to be either an ignition system problem or faulty injector. The symptoms are very similar - last winter an injector failed on me, one day it ran fine then after a brief period of it not being used it had developed a constant miss on number 3 cyl (and flashing orange engine light). I follwed a simple procedure to diagnose what it was and with a new injector fitted it was perfect again.

Now just in the last few weeks the light has been coming on occasionally during warm-up and sounding lumpier than normal then last weekend it was clearly running faulty at idle, actually missing occasionally. Looking at the plugs showed number 4 to be clearly more sooty. I'd imagined it would be another injector faulty but In fact if was just a damp/faulty HT lead. New leads and its perfect again.

The way to diagnose a cause of a single cylinder miss-fire is to first work out which cylinder is faulty, its easy if its a constant miss but a bit tricky if its occasional. Looking at the plugs should give the game away, but removing conection to individual injectors one cyl at a time is another way. Once you know which cyl, just swap injectors between cylinders. If the miss moves cylinders with the injector then its an injector at fault. If it stays same cylinder then its ignition system. For me, I'd had new plugs last year so I suspected leads and/or coil, but upon looking at the leads in the dark whilst engine running I could see the occasional faint blue flashes from number 4 lead -Bingo!

This will fix the majority of likely cases, but if this proves fruitless, a compression and leakdown test is next step. Also, one proviso with the above method is that if the wiring to an injector is faulty, the diagnosis would (incorrectly) point to ingition system. This is probably quite rare though, but bear in mind.

this is basically clio 1*2 dodgy running diagnosis class 101, follow this and your onto a winner

 

[bloke]

you can measure the resistance on the injectors, easier than swapping them round, should be around 16 ohms (i think?)

 

[nath&alex]

Well just to let people know the crack, was thinking on the plane on the way home that I cleaned under the bonnet before I went away. As normal I was sparing with water, but when RAC man came I was in the middle of removing the inlet manifold to look at the plugs & leads. He plugged in the fault was misfire on cylinder 3 & the diagnosis was damp plugs and leads!!!

quick clean up and a spray with WD40 and all is good!!

silly boy

 

[Renotek]

Yeah sounds like an injector issue. Should be about 16 Ohms across the connector on the injector. I've seen them up as high as 85!!
The ecu will shut the spark down on the cylinder that the faulty injector is on and this gives a feel of it being a high tension issue.

Hope this helps

Renault technician
& 172 owner....

Lol.... Replied without reading the last post!! Glad it's all sorted now mate