The Volvo C30 1.6D uses the DLD-416 (or more commonly DV6) engine jointly developed by Ford and PSA Group (Peugeot & Citroen) where it is marketed as 1.6 HDi and 1.6 TDCi. Used in cars such as the 307, C3, C4, Fiesta, & Focus to name a few.
This is a DOHC 16v engine with a variable geometry turbocharger. Like all modern Common rail injection Diesel engines it suffers from carbon build up in the intake manifold, the intake ports and the backs of the intake valves.
The car we worked on had covered over 140k miles, and in the last couple of years got through 3 new turbochargers. When a Turbocharger fails, very often it is due to a foreign object (usually a lump of carbon) hitting the turbine blades, These are, in essence, similar to a jet engine, and we know how disastrous a bird strike is on a Jet engine. A lump of carbon impacting a turbine blade spinning at 120,000 RPM can make a right royal mess, as you can imagine.
If you have a turbo failure on any engine, it is vitally important to establish the reason for the failure, to ensure a new turbo doesn’t go the same way.
Lets take a look at just how blocked the ports and valves were on this engine….
The inlet manifold was also blocked and the port volume reduced by approx 30-40% (we’d estimate the engines power was also down by about the same margin)
The design of this engine precludes direct viewing of the intake valves, due to the ports, one short and one long for each cylinder, it makes cleaning much more difficult, and time-consuming.
In order to successfully complete this job we needed to employ a flexible probe camera to see the valves. Although the port looked clean take a look at how the valve looked at this stage. Imagine if you did this job without using such a camera, and just assumed that if the port was clean, the valve was clean…
Further cleaning…
And finally…
After we finished the job we changed the engine oil, and then road tested the vehicle. Initial results were slightly disappointing but diagnostics shows this to be a blocked DPF. After a long road test and 2 forced regenerations we got the peak DPF differential pressure from 278 hPa (0.278 BAR) down to 125 hPa (0.125 BAR). Peak air mass of 429.9kg/h indicates (based on a metric from Sussex University) enough air flow for 109HP. The standard output of the engine is 108HP. It certainly now feels like all the HP has returned!
Please get in touch if you have a sluggish car with this (or any other) Diesel engine and we can solve your problems!
This engine features in many different models of Volvo 1.6D, Citroen 1.6 HDi, Peugeot 1.6HDi and Ford 1.6 TDCi, all suffer from this carbon build up.
