I have recently become the owner of this rather nice X type. It has done just over 90,000 Km (< 60,000 miles) and has been kept in excellent condition.

However, there is a problem.

Intermittently the car will hesitate, it does this under light throttle application at any speed. It sometime does it when moving away from stopped or sometimes under light acceleration at highway speed. Sometimes at a constant throttle the engine gets "fluffy", it surges and retards slightly.
At highway speeds the hesitation is quite brutal, really jolting the transmission. Sometimes the engine warning light come on and stays on for a while - maybe a couple of days, maybe a few minutes.

The dealer that sold me the car has said that the computer is saying that there is a fuel pressure problem. He has replaced firstly the fuel filter (very dirty) and, as that did not fix it, the fuel pump. Since then he has also cleaned up electrical connections throughout the fuel system. This seemed to work for a while, but the problem returned.

It is going back in a couple of days for more attention.

I have also noticed that the fuel gauge/ trip computer are telling lies. If I fill the tank (with the best available) and drive until the trip computer says that I have 20Km left and the fuel gauge is in the red sector, I can only fit 40 litres of fuel into what is supposed to be a 60 litre tank

Where are the other 20 litres of capacity?

I have read here that the tank is basically in two halves as the tail shaft divides it , and that there is a transfer pump to even out the levels in either side of the tank.

If this transfer pump had failed, could it cause this loss in capacity?
Could it cause the main pump to starve and cause the low pressure warnings?

I intend to run the tank down to indicated near empty tomorrow and then raise the LHS of the car to try and spill fuel from one side to the other. I am not quite sure what this excercise will accomplish but I somehow think it is worthwhile.


Any suggestions as to a fix or to help diagnose both problems will be very gratefully received.

 

Hi Duncan, Try posting your question under the model section for your car, there are folks there who are familiar with your model and can help.