Contaminated Diesel?

[OldDevonian]

Of late I have had some starting issues with my 2.0 TDi Stylance being very hard to start from hot.

To get it started it would turn over and over and would require some throttle to finally get it going. Also I noted on a cold start quite a lot of grey/blue smoke once intially started.

I've had the car at the dealers on numerous occasions trying to sort out what was wrong, but nothing was showing up, the only work actually carried out was a software update which cured nothing. The car is booked back at the dealers tomorrow for a week to try and suss out.

Well I filled the car up today and the problem has gone, it is starting first time every time whether hot or cold.

This got me thinking I previously filled up at an Esso station on the 21st Jan 2009 putting in 54 litres and this was when the problem initially started.

Today I filled up at my local Sainsburys (as I normally do) with 51 litres, and although restarting at the fuel station proved hard, once home (4 miles) I swithed off and fired her up again with no problems

So do you think I had a duff batch of fuel?

Tony

 

[Tam]

quite possible... surely you'd have changed the fuel a few times before getting it to the garage though?

 

[OldDevonian]

Hi Tam

This was the first time filling up since the 21st Jan, car has only covered 370 miles giving me about 33 mpg car spent a few days at garage whilst they tried to find out what was wrong. They are coming tomorrow to pick the car up I'll let them know what I think it might have been.