Monthly Archives: September 2022

Ford Transit 2.0 EcoBlue TDCI – High Crankcase Pressure

This Ford Transit 2.0 EcoBlue TDCI came into us with a complaint of excessive oil leaks, high crankcase pressure and intermittent white smoking.

When you removed the oil filler cap there was an excessive amount of pressure and white smoke coming from inside the rocker cover and also from the breather pipe going to the inlet pipe.

On this Puma engine to be able to remove the rocker cover you must first remove the diesel injectors and when we did the problem became apparent.

what had been happening was that the injector to cylinder head copper sealing washers had failed and was allowing the combustion gases to enter the engine which was causing the high crankcase pressure.

Injector blowing past copper sealing washer

The high crankcase pressure is also what we believe was causing all the oil leaks on the engine, the engine was trying to find the easiest way to relieve the pressure, either a weak seal or weak gasket would allow the engine to release pressure and oil hence ‘oil leak’

How to resolve the issue.

With the injectors removed we removed the old copper seals and cleaned the body of the injectors using a wire wheel, making sure not to touch the tip of the injector as modern injector nozzle holes are so fine any attempt to clean them normally causes damage.

Using an injector seat cutting tool we cleaned the sealing base of the injector and also cleaned the injector holes in the cylinder head making sure to blow out any excess aluminium that the cutting tool may have left in the injector holes.

Injector seat cutting tool

Using a new rocker cover gasket and injector sealing washers (copper) we refitted the injectors making sure to also replace the injector clamp bolts as they are a one time use stretch bolt that require torquing to a specific setting when fitted.

Once rebuilt we started the engine and gave it a few minutes to settle due to having the injectors removed, and instantly we could see by removing the oil filler cap that there was now very little crankcase pressure and no sign of white smoke.

After a long road test the vehicle was returned to the garage to have a final check over for any signs of leaks and for an oil and filter change as the oil would have been contaminated with diesel and carbon deposits from the injectors which had been blowing past and then returned to its owner.

Aarons Autos car service garage.

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Give us a call at Aarons Autos for more info.