My Panda is an '05 with 90,000 miles and was quite smoky on start up from cold. I had assumed that this was due to its age. It wasn't until the recent very cold spell when one morning it clearly started on just one cylinder that I got to consider if the glow plugs were OK.

Today I changed the plugs - quite easy if you have a long reach 8mm 1/4" drive socket. I disconnected the air inlet pipe (2 x 10mm bolts and the electrical connector) from the turbo and pushed that to one side to improve access.

I found three of the plugs were dead. The good news is that now there is no smoke on start up. So if your 1.3 diesel is smoky on start up consider checking the glow plugs!

Obviously for those who read the manual they would have known that the glow plug symbol flashing after start meant check your plugs. :bang:

Thanks for info .. real conicidence you posting as I am changing the glow plugs on my friends multijet this week end we were going to have the engine hot first incase they are hard to remove lets hope they come out as easy as yours

In the last few weeks, my MJ seems to be starting on only 3 cylinders, and I put it down to the very cold weather. However, since the thaw, it still does it for about 10 seconds after starting. My glowplug light is not flashing.

Does anyone know what the resistance of the glowplugs should be? I can check if any of them are getting 'iffy.'

tommo1,

I checked the one plug that was still working and I'm getting a reading of 0.6 ohm. I'm not sure if this is a 'good' reading but it seems to be not unreasonable. I found that pulling the electrical connectors off the plugs was quite hard, especially under the big plastic top cover on the side by the battery. The solution I used was to take a metre length of strong cord by the centre, wrap that round the plastic plug connector and then pass the two lose cord ends back through the 'loop' in the cord so that it tightened around the plug connector. Then give the cord a tug - saved my knuckles!

Good luck

Glow plugs take a lot of current to get hot, so the reading of only 0.6 ohm on the good one is very likely correct. 12 / 0.6 = 20A. If I can get the connectors off as you suggested, a glow plug on the way out would probably have a resistance to earth of anything form 20 ohms upwards. On an old Astra diesel I once had, one glow plug had a resistance of over 100 ohms which meant it was drawing only 0.1A. No wonder it didn't get hot.

Thanks for the tip. If you mean the big plastic thing over the top of the engine, it just pulls off. It holds the air filter. Disconnect the front of the air pipe intake by the bonnet catch by twisting slightly and pushing in the pipe retaining detents.

I tried to copy paste a jpeg picture of the front pipe from my Panda elearn disc but it disappears after saving the edit.

well we changed all the heater plugs on my friends multijet on saturday (one had failed causing the heater plug symbel to flash for a while after starting) we checked mine by pulling the wires of the plugs and connecting afeed through a ampmeter for a short period to each one inturn (showed 13amps) this found the dead one (no amps) which we replaced with one of his spare ones jobs a good un

notsmartcars said:

well we changed all the heater plugs on my friends multijet on saturday (one had failed causing the heater plug symbel to flash for a while after starting) we checked mine by pulling the wires of the plugs and connecting afeed through a ampmeter for a short period to each one inturn (showed 13amps) this found the dead one (no amps) which we replaced with one of his spare ones jobs a good un

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I have an 07 multijet which sometimes quite smoky on startup and flashing glow plug symbol on dash just after start, goes ok when warm. Today I changed all the glow plugs and started the car it was worse than before, so I pulled all the new plugs out and the first one on the left facing the car was slightly fouled why is this and should I change the one plug only thanks.

Swap the #1 plug with one from a different cylinder. If it's still sooty its new home, you have a faulty glow plug. If the #1 stays sooty you have a wiring issue or (much less likely) an issue with that cylinder.

Thank you for that I will try that, if the glow plug relay is faulty would all the plugs not heat up or an individual plug not work.

Its an easy test, but yes a faulty relay would shut them all down. But a bad connection could shut just the one.

For me the easiest way to check the heater plugs as their 12 volts is just pull the wires off them then put a wire on the positive (+) post of the battery and connect it to the heater plugs one at a time as you connect /remove it will spark on the good ones and won’t on the bad ones