Hi,

I'm a newby to this forum, although I have had my 55 reg (late 2005) X type since new. It is the 2.0 Diesel S (5 speed manual transmission). it has covered 87k miles, has a full service history, but is now due a service.

It always starts first time BUT.. If it was petrol engined, I would state that at startup it has a weak spark. Its idling speed is slow, perhaps only running on 3 cylinders, and it does not respond at all to the throttle. During this period the console display of the Air con temp settings etc is not illuminated.

After a while the light comes on, and a few seconds later the engine speed picks up, and the car drives normally.

The period it takes varies from a few seconds, if started from cold, but perhaps after a delay of 2-3 minutes if started having had everything up to temp and then leaving the car for 30 minutes to cool down.

The problem started off over a year ago, while the car was still under extended warranty, but the garages I took it to could not isolate the problem. Over the lasy year, the problem has gradually become much worse.

A second, possibly related problem surfaced last night, driving in the snow that hit SE England. On encountering a long gentle, icy incline, the revs dropped, and I lost speed until I found myself in 1st doing 2mph, with no throttle. The wheels were not slipping. Like the other problem, the throttle control just would not respond. Eventually I discovered that removing traction control, the car would drive normally; OK the back was sliding a bit, but I was not noticeably spinning the front wheels.

It seems absurd, that I have to remove traction control to make the car move in slippery conditions.

Does anyone have any experience of these problems - I suspect there is a related electrical issue here - and know how to fix them?

Thanks

 

For your first issue I'm going to guess you have a bad battery or weak alternator, and the battery is being pulled to an extremely low voltage while the glow plugs are on. The glow plugs only run until the engine reaches an operating temperature where combustion can occur without assistance.

Once the glow plugs turn off the voltage comes back up and normal vehicle operation resumes.