White Smoke From Exhaust - Could it be anything other than injectors?

[mhobson]

I have had the same smoke and lumpy tickover fault, but for my 2006 3.0tdi allroad with 275k kilometers on the clock it was never worth buying new injectors. I have always been meticulous about filling the oil at or just below the dipstick maximum fill level, but it kept increasing. I bought a set of reconditioned injectors from ebay germany, the seller (dieselneuss) was not listed on UK or France where I live, but had a 100% feedback over 4000 sales, I paid €399 delivered plus a €300 deposit against the old units being returned. (I see the price went up last week by €100) Fitted them yesterday, wow what a difference, so that is what 233bhp feels like! Now am doing an oil change to get unadulterated oil to the correct level, I expect with diesel thinning it must have implications of increasing engine wear.

[nb99]

Hi all - I'm really sorry about "ignoring" the recent posts but I didn't get an email alert for some reason. I just want to emphasise that as I said in my first post I know nothing about cars and was only repeating what the mechanic said to me - not what I thought. Anyway, to update things - the garage took in my car, at my request they started by testing the injectors and sure enough 5 of the 6 are dead and they said the 6th one was only ok so worth changing at the same time. So you were right - thank you.

Final question (I hope!). Their quote included injectors at nearly €400 each. I can buy the same ones online for €260 each, obviously a big difference. I spoke to the garage about it and they said they are happy to fit the ones if I buy them online but that they won't guarantee anything - ie if there's a problem with the ones I buy I have to pay for the labour for removing, testing and replacing any faulty ones. But if I order through their supplier they are guaranteed ie any problem parts and labour are guaranteed. Again, I have no idea here as this is all new to me. €840 is obviously a big difference in price but what price peace of mind of knowing they are guaranteed? Anyone got a view?

Thanks to all for their input.

[Crasher]

We won't fit other peoples parts as the mark up is part of our profit margin, you can get the Bosch 0 986 435 358 for £222 off of internet sellers and as they have said, if there is a warranty issue, you pick up the labour bill and take it up with the supplier.

[nb99]

Do you have advice either way on it? My current thinking is that at €800 cheaper I have a bit of margin to pay for any additional labour if something goes wrong. That said I have no experience of doing such repairs before now....

[mhobson]

If you cannot do the job yourself you are limited to what mechanics can offer in your area, but I am very impressed with my recon injectors, cost me £345 the set of 6 delivered from dieselfixneuss in Germany, I had to buy a slide hammer kit for about £80, find a very small magnet to magnetise a 10mm socket and get a friend to code the injectors. Took me about two and a half hours to fit. I have had the car since 2011 and it has never gone so well and it is burning less fuel. Another and for me extremely important issue was resolved, was crankcase fumes coming in the A/C when I was slowing down to a junction for example, I put a post on VW AUDI forum, nobody suggested it could have been an injector issue, but since I changed the injectors the problem has completely stopped.

[nb99]

Just in case anyone else is following this, I'm happy to say that nearly 2 months later my car is running great. In the end the garage offered to fit reconditioned injectors supplied by their usual supplier and so they would guarantee the work - €2000 all in which I think is pretty good. Car has been great since. Not a puff of smoke out of the exhausts under any conditions (hard acceleration, running idle for a while etc). Performance remains as before but I feel (without tracking very closely) that fuel efficiency has gone up considerably.

So thanks to all for the advice. Much appreciated.