04 Starts then Stalls

2004 Sprinter 2500.
I am looking for some help on this van. It was towed in to me with a start and stall condition, I was told that for a couple of days prior to this it was blowing black smoke and had no power. The van will start and run for a few seconds then stall out. Fuel pressure is good at about 5000 psi.

If I unplug any of the following it will start up and idle
Mass Air, O2 Sensor, EGR, Turbo Actuator.

I have noticed that when the lever on the turbo is up it will run at idle, but when the lever is pulled down it dies out. I disconnected the actuator lever and moved it by hand and can duplicate the stalling condition.

The codes in the van when it arrived are:
P2032 O2 sensor Plausibility
p2359 Boost Pressure Low
p1222 Acc Pedal Position Sens1 ckt voltage too high

The last time the van was here(4 months ago) it had blown the hose off the intercooler, we reattached it and it ran fine till now.

I suspect that the Turbo is bad, but I am trying to find some more information on how this system actually works before I suggest such an expensive repair.

Thank you for your input
Gabe

The Air mass sensor next to the Air Filter housing may need cleaning
The EGR may need cleaning,
The Turbocharged air hoses may have a leak
Any of those things will cause the black smoke , not sure about the stalling

use the SEARCH on the top blue bar above, for those codes, for more clues

check the engine wiring harness where it goes over the intake, make sure it is not rubbing against the tab that is sticking up, pull the egr out and make sure the vanes open and close freely.

GEORGIAGABE said:

2004 Sprinter 2500.

If I unplug any of the following it will start up and idle
Mass Air, O2 Sensor, EGR, Turbo Actuator.

I have noticed that when the lever on the turbo is up it will run at idle, but when the lever is pulled down it dies out. I disconnected the actuator lever and moved it by hand and can duplicate the stalling condition.

Click to expand...

Let's look at this logically:

When a fully functional Sprinter engine is started and running at idle, the turbo's actuator moves the vane control's bellcrank (the one you see from above) downward to the roughly 9:00 clock position.

9:00 (what you call the 'down' position) is the ''full boost" position. This vane position maximizes velocity of exhaust striking the turbine blades and also aims the exhaust flow at the outer circumference edge of the blades.

In other words, the actuator control is doing all it can to build max. boost, but remember, an engine at idle cannot really produce meaningful boost because of lack of rpm and load (exhaust gas flow is very low).

As rpm and load build, boost builds, and the actuator's vane control will react to maintain the required spec. boost (as calculated by the ECM). It does this by changing vane angles and thus reducing the velocity, and also changing the 'strike point', of the exhaust flow acting on the turbine blades.

An engine in 'boost' LHM (operation with no boost) has the actuator turned off and the vane control in in the minimum boost position. The bellcrank will be in the same position as when engine is shut off, approx. 11:00 (what you call the 'up' position).

When you unplugged the Mass Air, O2 Sensor, EGR, or Turbo Actuator you immediately placed the engine in LHM, which moved the vane control bellcrank to the 11:00 (up, 'no boost') position.

You observed that the engine will only run (at idle) with the vane control bellcrank in the 'no boost' up position, regardless of whether you had disconnected the link and manually moved it to that position or forced it to do this itself via LHM.

The interesting question here is why your particular engine is not capable of running at idle with the turbo's control vanes in their normal (and most restrictive, max exhaust velocity directed at impeller) mode, when everybody else's does.


Doktor A

So I finally got to the bottom of the problem. I pulled the EGR and found that it was defaulting to almost completely open. Although I had no codes for the EGR. So with No Boost it would run with the EGR open, but when it went to full boost it would stall out. Thanks for your input, hope this helps if anyone runs into the same problem.
Gabe