Random Back Fire When Starting

[mickq]

Same problem happened to me a couple of days ago. The car backfired on starting and then ran very rough for a few minutes. A pile of smoke appeared from under the bonnet.

The car seems to run OK now except for when it first starts, it now idles at around 2000rpm for about 5 seconds. It then settles down at around 900 rpm (slightly higher than before).

Where is this pipe that blows off located exactly.

Len

Ive had the same thing....exactly the same high idle before settling issue. The car runs with ok power, just not as smoothly and with a plain weird idle sometimes, especially when you stop and it idles high before settling down a little.

The cause is usually the turbo output pipe has been blown off. When it came off it takes a small oil pipe to the turbo with it. That causes a little bit of oil to be sprayed straight onto the turbo and exhuast, which vapourises and causes the white smoke from the RHS of the bonnet (depending on wind) that everyone sees when this problem occurs.

The car is still very driveable. It will still go OK...the turbo is effectively not aiding the car any more, but a naturally aspirated XR6T still makes 180kw or so. So it still goes ok. You may notice a larger turbo and pop-off valve noise when the hose is off, because parts of the turbo are exposed to air that arent normally. But they may not be as noticeable if you arent the type to drive it hard. If you saw those symptoms, get it fixed. Chances are your engine is now getting either zero boost from the turbo, or very little as the pipe is partially blown off, or blown off but close enought o still get some air under pressure. Either way, if your problem is this quite common one, you wont be getting full power until its fixed.

Dont worry about driving it, but dont go crazy and dont drive massive distances. You dont need to get it towed if that is your problem and your delaer is nearbye. Dont drive it in very dusty/sandy environments like this, because the air being sucked into the engine will be unfiltered until that pipe is re-attached.

The fix is simply to re-attach the oil hose, and the turbo hose to the turbo. You could do it yourself as some have done, or have Ford fix it (mine hasnt gone a second time...their fix seems to work).

If you know where your turbo is, you should know where to look.

From memory...stand in front of your car looking at the engine. The turbo is under a silver heat shield on the LHS of the engine. Out the front of the turbo is a black pipe about as thick as an arm. That pipe takes the air under pressure from the turbo and flows it to the engine (via EFI system etc). Follow that pipe down to where the turbo is. You may see its no longer attached to the turbo. You may also see the spinning tubine output blades. (These can take 5 mins to stop spinning once the car has been turned off, so give it a while as they can spin so fast they dont seem to be moving much).

[DallasQLD]

Thanks for all of this I just started a new thread on the same thing! just happend to me today as well

[steven131]

Guys this has happened to me as well. Call Ford assist and they said to relock car, leave for approx 30 seconds, reopen and tried restarting. All was OK. Apparently this resets it. Another time on cranking the engine it was like it had no compression. Relocked car and then tried again. was ok. Had car at dealers today for a couple of paint defects and got them to check for any codes, was all clear.

[len]

I just checked the pipe you were talking about. It certainly is connected properly in my case.

Any other pipes worth checking that are not so obvious.

Len