Technical Stilo 1.8 rough idle, black smoke when cold

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Technical Stilo 1.8 rough idle, black smoke when cold

djsjamy

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As the winter gets colder and colder...

My 1.8 keeps dying and won't idle when the engine is cold.
If I do few km/miles... and it warms up the engine won't cut or die when idling and runs perfectly fine!

- This only happens in cold, winter times.
- Black smoke when you start it up (it takes half a minute or so to have no color)
- Big servis (belts and stuff) has been done 8kkm ago.
- It won't idle at all without a bit of gas input.
 
If it's not idling, I'd look at the Idle Control Valve first of all. It's mounted on the throttle body.

I don't know what it looks like on the 1.8 but it will be a small, hard plastic box or cylinder, about the size of a thumb. If you remove it, you'll see it has a chamber in it that will probably be full of oily soot.

Clean this out very carefully with something like a cotton wool bud... but use lots of electrical contact cleaner or WD40 etc. to dissolve the soot, rather than poking something hard in there like a screwdriver. There's a sensor in there that can easily be damaged.

I'm not sure that the smoke is related to no cold idle. If it's black then it must be oil (petrol smoke is blue) and oil in the combustion chamber is quite a different problem.

When you notice the smoke has the engine been stood overnight (for 5 or more hours)? Or does it smoke whenever the engine is cold (e.g. even after just 2 hours or so)? If it only smokes the first time you use it, that's a different problem to if it smokes just anytime when it's cold.


Ralf S.
 
It only smokes when it's left in the garage over night (in cold). After that it won't happen again even if the car is left on -15°C for few hours.
Checked oil level the last few days it had this problem and it did not change.
 
Excessively rich fuel mixture , too much petrol , produces black smoke.

Oil being burned produces blue smoke
 
So can too much petrol mean that it's not getting the amount of air needed?
Could that still be connected to the idle control valve?
 
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