fiestaturbo.com

[Taipan]

Hi
We have a 2004 Fiesta 1.4 TDCi which seems down on power. Pootling around town its fine but when you put your foot down it doesn't seem to respond. If you back your foot off it picks up again. It starts, idles and runs fine apart from this, no smoke when you try to floor it etc. Just seems like the turbo isn't working for want of a better description? Any ideas of whats wrong?
Many thanks

[frst toady]

all the boost hoses connected and not split /cracked?
next thing id check is the actuator make sure it hasnt gone weak
if it has it wont be able to keep the waste gate shut for long enough to boost properly

[Taipan]

Thanks. I'll have a good look tonight.

[heeman10]

Sorry to pee on your proverbials, but I think the problem here is that it's just a really limp engine. The 1.4 TDCi has absolutely no guts whatsoever. I found mine seemed to go slightly better at about 60% throttle than it did at 100%, which I suspect is just a pretty patchy map. I never used to drive mine at WOT because it was quicker around 50/60%!

I once fell asleep while I waited for mine to reach 100mph. Woke up the next morning and it was still only at 96

[Taipan]

That sounds very like ours, better at lesser throttle? That said its getting better as I keep giving it large bootfulls and it does seem to be improving. I'm both surprised and disappointed to find the car is like this. We got this as we'd been told they were cracking little cars with great economy and very nippy. It turns out to be neither!

We're only getting around 50mpg around town and as said, its very underpowered. Our last small engined diesel car was a Renault Megane 1.5DCi and that was much quicker and still returned over 60mpg and gave us just over 70mpg on the motorways in France (only doing between 60-70 mph though). My wife sold her VW Beetle TDi to get this and even that was a lot more economical. I thought the Fiesta just felt down on power as we were used to a 1.9!

I'll have to work my way through the car as I'm struggling to believe Ford turned out a car that performed like this. I'll have to check its not all gummed up and the turbo is operating properly, although I'm not sure how to check this?

Its a shame as its a nice little car apart from this power/economy issue.

[frst toady]

air filter and a remap then??

[heeman10]

TBH matey, if you look up all the figures for the 1.4 TDCi Fiesta, they wouldn't have you expecting a particularly nippy car. Did you test drive it before you bought it, and this issue with low power has only happened recently? "Nippy" is the last word I'd use to describe the 1.4 TDCi Mk6 Fiesta! I bought mine for the economy, cheap tax, and cheap insurance, but very quickly found I simply couldn't tolerate the lack of power, and slapped a tuning box on it....not that that even pushed it past 85bhp