LDV G10 2016 Problems

The most likely cause of this is a Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) that is either blocked or on its way to becoming blocked and needs cleaning. Soot build-up in a DPF can restrict the flow of exhaust gasses, at which point you might also find the car’s computer will limit performance to avoid doing damage to the engine.

You can either try to force the DPF to regenerate, or you may have to have the DPF manually cleaned or even replaced.

The other possibility is a problem with the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) valve which can also become clogged with soot and affect the vehicle’s performance and emissions. Either way a check up at a workshop with the appropriate scanning equipment is necessary.

Service intervals are specified as either/or, it’s whichever comes first. Your service is due in August, or at 30,000 km if that comes first. White smoke would tend to suggest a problem with the turbocharger. Turbochargers have to have clean oil to survive; dirty oil will kill them eventually. You need to negotiate with LDV, if you haven’t missed the service by a long way you might be able to get some help on the cost of repairs; otherwise you’re unlikely to get much assistance.

There are plenty of things that can cause this, but being a petrol engine with no turbocharger, it shouldn’t be too tricky to diagnose. Any time an engine runs well when warm but struggles when cold, suspicions are drawn to the fuel/air mixture. A warm engine needs a very different mixture to a cold engine, so modern engines have sensors that monitor the engine temperature, the air/fuel ratio and how well that mixture is burning. If any of those sensors are not telling the computer everything it needs to know, poor running can be the result.

But it would also be worth looking at the air intake side of things. An air or vacuum leak into the intake manifold can also cause rough running and hard starting. The engine’s stepper motor (which controls the idle speed) could also be at fault, but could also be the victim of one of those non-working sensors.

First things first; have the car electronically scanned to see what fault codes are thrown up. From there you can make a much more accurate diagnosis of the problem. Simply replacing random sensors and other parts on a hunch is a fast way to throw money away and still be stuck with a car that doesn’t run properly.

The de-carbonising process you mention is sometimes necessary in modern turbo-diesels which, for reasons of emissions control, consume a percentage of their own exhaust gasses as well as any gas build-up inside the actual engine. And since the exhaust gasses contain soot, and the crankcase gasses contain oil, those two compounds get mixed up into a black, gooey paste that clogs the engine’s intake system. At this point it usually needs to be pulled apart and manually cleaned. If this is the case with your car, it could well be the cause of the check-engine light and the poor running.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a modern electronic fuel-injection system is smart enough not to flood an engine when starting., However, experience tells me that sometimes, you can get excess fuel into the engine if it doesn’t fire straight away. However, if you keep trying to start it, that fuel should pass through the engine, and it should eventually fire. So, I’d say your problem is something else.

A mechanic would probably start by checking things like whether the fuel pump is operating, the fuel and air filters, fuel pressure and whether the fuel injectors are pulsing when they should be. Your problem is likely to be a shortage of fuel rather than too much of it, so checking the fuel delivery pressure and rate is a critical step.

There were three engines offered in the 2016 LDV G10, Brett; a turbo-petrol, a non-turbo petrol and a turbo-diesel. Here’s the answer to all three possibilities: Both the two-litre turbocharged petrol and the turbo-diesel use a timing chain. The 2.4-litre non-turbo petrol engine uses a timing belt.

The timing belt will need replacing at regular intervals while the timing chains should be good for the life of the vehicles they are fitted to.

This is possibly a fault with the smart key which not only physically unlocks the car, but also disables the immobiliser and allows the car to start. Have you somehow managed to lock the keys in the car at any stage and retrieved them with the spare key? If so, try the spare key to see if that will now start the car.

I’m told that locking the keys inside the car and opening it with the spare key, will wipe the electronic coding on the first key, meaning that it will no longer unlock all the electronic security measures. You can take the key to a dealership and have it recoded. Perhaps it’s just that the key has failed electronically for no good reason and needs either a new battery or a new key module. Generally speaking, messages like `No VID Found’ suggest that the key is not talking to the car’s body computer. Often it’s the key, but sometimes it can be the body computer itself.