Technical Glow plugs

[Greasytrucker]

Hi all. Have just bought a bargain Sedici 1.9d off Ebay with a starting issue. I believe it’s a glow plug fault as once warm it starts as it should no problem. When it’s cold the glow plug light comes on as it should and goes out after about 5 seconds but churns over and doesn’t start. If you heat it 4 or 5 times it starts eventually after a lot of almost starting and chucks some white smoke out. Just wondered how you know on the Sedici if the glow plugs are at fault? Does the glow plug light flash as obviously there’s no display to tell you faults unlike some other Fiats? Anybody shed any light?

 

[bugsymike]

Hi all. Have just bought a bargain Sedici 1.9d off Ebay with a starting issue. I believe it’s a glow plug fault as once warm it starts as it should no problem. When it’s cold the glow plug light comes on as it should and goes out after about 5 seconds but churns over and doesn’t start. If you heat it 4 or 5 times it starts eventually after a lot of almost starting and chucks some white smoke out. Just wondered how you know on the Sedici if the glow plugs are at fault? Does the glow plug light flash as obviously there’s no display to tell you faults unlike some other Fiats? Anybody shed any light?

White smoke and poor cold starting to me is low compression/worn engine.
Does the white smoke smell of unburnt diesel and sting your eyes if near tail pipe.
Generally once warmed up white smoke goes away and vehicle runs happily.

 

[Greasytrucker]

White smoke and poor cold starting to me is low compression/worn engine.
Does the white smoke smell of unburnt diesel and sting your eyes if near tail pipe.
Generally once warmed up white smoke goes away and vehicle runs happily.

Nah not worn engine as pulls like a train and doesn’t burn oil. Do you know it the glow plug light flashes on the Sedici if it detects a fault?

 

[bugsymike]

Nah not worn engine as pulls like a train and doesn’t burn oil. Do you know it the glow plug light flashes on the Sedici if it detects a fault?

I think most of the modern ecu controlled heater plugs systems continue working for a while to aid warming up, but easy enough to get error codes read just in case.

 

[Greasytrucker]

I think most of the modern ecu controlled heater plugs systems continue working for a while to aid warming up, but easy enough to get error codes read just in case.

Thanks for that. After trawling the forums another one that causes the same symptoms with no error codes is a lazy starter motor so think I’ll start with multimeter test on glow plugs and take it from there. We’ll see what happens!