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Mondeo ST TDCI Update

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Mondeo ST TDCI Update

Postby Megaman » Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:08 am

Here is an update on the beast of a car they call a Ford Mondeo...

Well within two days of owning the mondeo the dash started flashing an orange glow plug warning light and limiting power to 2000 rpm... i thought oh no ive been sold a right bag of spanners here what do i do now... so being a techy the next sensible step was :bow: Google.

After a few mins of searching around there seems to be a common fault not just with the Mondeo but with a lot of diesel cars. The biggest enemy by the looks of things is Soot! The Mondeo has something called an exhaust gass recirculatory valve or EGR for short. It helps control emissions somehow and also loops air back over the turbo. Over time soot builds up on this part which starts off about as wide as a can of coke. When the soot builds up enough it chokes this valve which then needs replacing or cleaning.

We took the car to ford yesterday as we know redline wont do anything about it given theyve now got our money so got ford to check it out under warranty. After a bit of googling some ford garages seem fussy about this part as it costs £836 +VAT +Fitting so is an expensive bugger.

However yesterday they took the part off and replaced it under warranty saying that there was 4.5cm of solid soot that had built up on this valve making the car struggle. A lot of people seem to block off this valve entirely as it gives +5mpg and a fraction better turbo spool up to stop the problem re-occurring. However this does leave the turbo running hotter thus putting more wear n tear on it apparently.

So now weve got the car back its driving really well and it was all done FOC which is a bonus. If they were going to charge i was going to have a go at manually cleaning it out but its a very long and messy job as the soot gets everywhere apparently and is a bugger to get off with brake cleaner and a toothbrush. Anyway this should be okay for another 50k miles now which is cool.

Following this you may remember that I sent my Ford Focus superchips bluefin hand held unit back to them before I bought the car and asked them for the Mondeo maps to be loaded. Now this hiccup was sorted out I decided to load this new map onto the car last night.

The load process was very long winded compared to using the same unit on the focus ST for some reason. For example with the focus you plug the unit in under the dash. Turn the ignition on, press Y, choose install bluefin, away it goes. At the end, turn ignition off, unplug and job done.

With the mondeo you seem to have to plug the unit in and turn the car ignition on then off then on then off several times before it even starts backing up the existing ECU. It then does the same before it erases the existing ECU and loads on the bluefin. The process looked to be going wrong having seen the unit run on a Fiesta ST / Focus ST170 / Focus ST220. However after a bit of persaverance the map went on okay.

I picked the brother in law up last night and left the women to chin wag and went for a quick blast around the dales. As with past experience of remapping diesels especially (freelander) you have to wear them in as the fuel pumps need to get used to shifting more fuel. On the freelander it took about a tank of fuel to bed in properly where as after around 45 miles the mondeo started to kick in properly. The power figures are not what I look at with any remap its the power curve that I was particularly interested in. The standard car turbo spins up at 1500rpm and stops at 2600 rpm. When you go any higher (car redlines at 4500rpm) the car gets noisier but the car actually slows down. You kind of hit a brick wall with acceleration if you rev beyond 2600rpm.

With the new map loaded the car starts pulling a bit earlier from 1250rpm and feels a lot torquier with its 420nm of torque. However the biggest difference is the car will now rev like a petrol car all the way to 4500. You get a big kick in the back 1250rpm to 3500rpm but you dont hit a brick wall as you did before.

Where this is important is when overtaking as when we first got the car I found id get half way past a car and be short shifting, waiting for the turbo to spool again then bang youd get past. Now you can leave it in gear and get past what ever is in front of you safely and easily.

The other bonus is that it adds +7mpg to the car. When we got the car and reset the mpg meter the car read 35mpg cruising at 70mph. I thought this wasn't good being a diesel but may be down to age of the car or something.

However the low mpg was mainly down to the EGR valve as when they changed that and we went for a drive on the same bypass at 70mph (testing cruise control) the mpg showed a massive 46mpg. Last night after mapping the car we did exactly the same test after the map had bedded in on the dales run and saw the car doing 53mpg!

So strange as it may seem mapping the car improves mpg, improves the power band and improves the power on the car. I dont know how many others have diesels with low mpg but I would certainly get the EGR checked out as most seem to have them. We gained 11mpg overnight by simply changing the EGR valve and a further 7mpg with a 155bhp-185bhp remap. The other thing that shot up is the estimated miles we can get out of a tanks. Before when we filled it up it was showing 325miles on a full tank when i filled it up then went for a run on the bypass at 70 using cruise control. Now the estimated fuel has risen to around 500miles out of the tank since yesterday which is very impressive for a pokey diesel.

Not sure if i will do anything more the the car now as it is driving really nice and much more torque and the car will be chewing through tyres like the ST used to every 6-8k miles. There are people who recommend decatting a deisel as they say they arent checked at MOT for emissions and can easily gain another 15-20bhp from doing it. However the downside is the car would sound like a proper truck sat on the drive probably. Others have put induction kits on and so on but to be honest the cars not been bought for power its been bought for economy. I dont really see a point of doing anything further when ive got the WR1 to have my fun in now.
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Postby Foley » Sat Aug 22, 2009 10:12 am

Good auld redline :roll:

Fook me how long did that take you to type?

I would have been down at redline banging there heids together
untill they fixed it,

Good to hear you got it all sorted foc,

Bluefin can be right fussy when trying to get the hand set reset,
I know i've been there,

Hope your happy with the car now sounds powerfull aswell :shock:
Focus ST's rule!!!
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Postby Megaman » Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:14 pm

Yer well the EGR issue only seems to happen after 30 mins of driving but it happened to the wife mon-thu like clockwork. It explains why redline wanted to keep our test drive to a minimum too. However im not that bothered because the car has lots of extras that redline didnt know about so i dont think weve done too badly. Since it was an ex lease car the car has been fully valletted, and fully fixed to be good as new before the last owners contract was up. Lease companies charge a bomb for minor scratches etc so a lot will get alloys refurbed as these have been, all dents n chips sorted out to save a big bill.

Took me a while to type - waffled on as i do ;)

the bluefin units have always performed better than other units that i have tried. Dreamscience for example was pretty lethal sometimes as i remember it dieing halfway through a mapping session for no reason. After that the headlights made the wipers go on. hazard lights made headlights go on, all buttons did different things. you really wouldnt believe it unless you saw it happen. This was due to it messing up something called the canbus or something... Anyway yer despite it being more fiddly to map than the fiesta and focii it still seems to have done the trick so im happy with it.
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Postby WR 1mposter » Sat Aug 22, 2009 2:36 pm

Mega did you buy it from redline, has'nt someone on here had bad dealings with them before ?


H's Jag diesel pulls constantanly well up to 3500rpm, I've done Falmouth to the other side of Lincoln and got back to Cheltenham which is a tad over 500 miles on a tankful, an was not hanging about either.

Mega would bluefin work on the Jag ?
2007 BMW M5
2004 Petter Solberg STi
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Postby Foley » Sat Aug 22, 2009 3:38 pm

WR 1mpostor (aka number 1 moderator) wrote:Mega did you buy it from redline, has'nt someone on here had bad dealings with them before ?


H's Jag diesel pulls constantanly well up to 3500rpm, I've done Falmouth to the other side of Lincoln and got back to Cheltenham which is a tad over 500 miles on a tankful, an was not hanging about either.

Mega would bluefin work on the Jag ?


Sure would, 30bhp,

http://www.superchips.co.uk/
Focus ST's rule!!!
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Postby Megaman » Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:44 pm

Yep like foley says it certainly would :)

and yes a few of us have had probs with redline before - me and John Mc Tiddler (Dogging Expert) Tiddler (Dogging Expert) mainly... they were offering 2k more for my car than any other so couldnt say no really
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Postby WR1 Owner! » Mon Aug 24, 2009 1:56 pm

EGR valves are a pain.. on the mondeo its more of a common fault though. compared to the astra my EGR was hidden behind the turbo. the mondeo is apparently on the front of the engine easily accesible. not sure on what people with mondeo's do but i was told you can " blank " the EGR valve. apparently makes it run a bit quicker or clean it every 5k miles.

good to know your happy with the diesel though :)

as for mods i wouldnt.. you have your WR1.. unless you get bored you could get a FMIC, Decat or even think towards a bigger turbo.. but 200bhp isnt bad..
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Postby Megaman » Mon Aug 24, 2009 2:03 pm

WR1 Owner! wrote:EGR valves are a pain.. on the mondeo its more of a common fault though. compared to the astra my EGR was hidden behind the turbo. the mondeo is apparently on the front of the engine easily accesible. not sure on what people with mondeo's do but i was told you can " blank " the EGR valve. apparently makes it run a bit quicker or clean it every 5k miles.

good to know your happy with the diesel though :)

as for mods i wouldnt.. you have your WR1.. unless you get bored you could get a FMIC, Decat or even think towards a bigger turbo.. but 200bhp isnt bad..


Hiya,

Yer the EGR is very easy to access right at the front of the car. Lots have blanked their EGR off to gain better response and 1mpg or so more. However after reading up on it i can see that the egr helps keep the turbo cool. Blocking it off makes the turbo run hotter thus shortening the life of it. so for now i will just try and keep cleaning it if it happens again instead of paying a fortune for a new part.
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