Cupra 1.4 TSI : P2188 , P2178

Hello everyone !
After reading a lot of things about the Seat ibiza cupra on this forum (including Lucifer's excellent guide), I decided to post here because I think (I hope!) that you may help me.

My seat ibiza cupra 1.4 TSI from 2010 is now 127k Km, and has the engine emission light ON since I bought the car (105k km). The car has no mods.

The code I could read with my ELM327 was : P2188 "running too rich at idle"
This code used to appear only when I parked the car after a trip (short or long, no matter)

This is what I got replaced during the first year (march 2015 to now)
- intake air filter
- coils & plugs
- low pressure fuel pump
- injectors

Last time I got to the dealer, they told me they found a new amazing additive (G 001780 M3) to "clean the high pressure fuel pump", but I found on the net it's a multi purpose additive used to clean the carbon build up. So now I'm kinda bored of constantly giving my car to the dealer for nothing...

Now those are the symptoms I had :
-detonations in the exhaust at low rpm when I'm slowing down : for example, i'm at 3 000RPM on 2nd gear, I let the car slow down on her own (not braking) and when the RPM goes at ~2 000 RPM I can hear a serie of "poc poc poc" in the exhaust
- difficult start when cold : a few seconds before the engine start. When warm, it starts in under a second

Those symptoms are "hard" to catch up and I've been running one year with those, while replacing the parts one by one

The problem is, last week, I made a lot of consecutives short trips (5-10mins) : the more I started the car, the more it seemed to be difficult for it to start. On my last trip, while I had the key turned in, the rev were not higher than 300 for several seconds, and when it started they went slowly up to the idle revs (~800)

Usually when I start the car, the revs go up to ~1500 and then go down to idle, so something was definitely wrong.

After this event, I checked the exhaust and saw black smoke coming out (just a bit, I could only see smoke like ~20cm away from the exhaust, not more). My ELM327 also took another fault : P2178 "running too rich OFF idle".

Even more, the car now make a loud noise when starting cold (not like the timing chain rattle you can find on youtube, it's more low-pitched)

Lastly, I calculated at my last trip a consumption of 10L/100km (instead of 8)

I will bring the car wednesday 29/06 to the dealer again. They want to check the cylinders compression

I can't manage to find similar stories and I'm afraid about the piston weakness, or the timing chain failing....

Anyone would be able to give me indications on what I should focus on ? Could be just a leak in the intake manifold ? Or maybe something far worse ? I'm just lost

I thank you in advance for your help,

Thibault

Thanks @IvoLour , I appreciate the advice : I'll tell the dealer to look at it (after measuring the cylinder compression)

Unfortunatly, I heard that this engine requires a lot of labor to access the timing chain. I hope they won't charge me a lot of working hours for nothing

BTW, sorry for my english grammar errors, I'm not english

Yes i'm french ! Thanks for the numbers, I'll try to avoid using the car until wednesday. I'm just bored of having my car at the dealer every month

I'll keep you updated when I'll have news. Hopefully it will help someone else someday

Hey everyone,

(Yes Ivolour i'm from south, i'll stick to english to avoid losing people's atetntion, if there's any)

So I got my car back on friday 15/07/2016 and here's what they did :
- Cylinder compression : from 1 to 4, those were fluctuating : 12,2 ; 12,8 ; 12,4 ; 12,6

No more than 1bar between 2 cylinders so they consider it being OK

-Leak test : they found an intake leak and changed a plastic part : 177€ ... forgot the reference of the part but I have it on the bill

- Cold stratup issue : they changed the timing chain and I got a Seat participation : 100% on part and 60% on workload, so the bill was only 262€

So, as I said, I got the car back on the 15th, and the EML came back the next monday (18th)
Now I only have one default code : P2178 , "too rich off idle" , but When I check my lambda / STFT/LTFT my car is also definately too rich AT idle

So now i'll bring the car back on wednesday 3rd August, and I'll see what I can get back from the 177+262€ I spent

I'll keep you updated. Maybe someday it'll help someone else

About the participation, I asked the technician directly and he asked Seat as soon as I got the cotation. They agreed the next day

Do you think they may change the Timing chain but there would still be a problem about it ? I mean, the adjustement is still wrong even after replacing the whole Timing Chain "kit" ?

That would be so stupid ...

Hello,

I'll take a look at what we (the dealer & me) can do about the timing chain. Problem is, there is something like 4 hours of work just to get to the timing chain, so if everything's OK they will charge me about 400€ for nothing

Also, I don't consume a lot of oil : I take precise measures and I see that I used 2,5L in the past 10 000km so that's 250ml/1000km, I think it's an average value (for that 1.4 TSI engine)

Hey @BocaNL,

I solved the issue by replacing the High pressure fuel pump (in July 2016, the code didn't come back since then)

However, you should not wait too much before repairing: I think I killed my catalyst converter by running too rich for about 30k kilometers .... (waiting for the next Emission Test to verify)

About the high pressure fuel pump, there seems to be a leak between oil & gas which leads to rich mixture at idle.

I'm still unsure about the way its leaking :might be oil entering the fuel, leading to oil in the fuel mixture=> bad combustion => Rich detection
But i've been reading somewhere that the reverse (fuel entering oil circuit) would do the same strange thingy (physical properties of the oil would change because of fuel vapors, and thus in the pistons you get a bad combustion)

anyway, in my case, the dealership wanted to change the low pressure fuel pump (that was already changed a few months ago) so I told them not to, and they changed the High pressure one. Since then, I'm running fine !