Hello All,
I had white smoke coming out of the exhaust on startup of my i30 2009 FD SLX CRDi Auto (206,000kms). It had been happening for at least a year. Once running, the engine would stutter a bit. Looking at these forums and elsewhere, I gathered that it was most likely the glow plugs. I read everywhere about all the types of things to do in preparation to fix the problem, especially on this forum. One of the tips was to apply penetrating oil to each glow plug each day for a few days prior to the operation. I had trouble getting to the plugs, so I gave up on that precautionary step. Today the mechanic came and we went through the plug changeover together. Before he arrived I took the car for a drive to warm the engine up, another tip I had found. He easily got to the existing glow plugs, and put some penetrating oil on them. He then set about removing the plugs. He didn't use a torque wrench! But he was confident, and he got all 4 out without any issue. I measured the resistance on each when removed. Three of them were still serviceable, all measuring at 0.9 ohms each. One of them was dead - pretty much open circuit. (The new plugs are labout 0.5 ohms each. Got genuine Hyundai/Kia ones for under $100 for a set of 4).
I had bought a reamer set from ebay. He measured the width of the reamer tip, and it was about 1mm wider than the glow plug, so he was a bit concerned the reamer may cause damage. The existing plugs didn't show much carbon on them, so decided to use the reamer.
He put the new plugs in, and used a torque wrench with the settings I found in my research (15Nm). Put everything back together.
Car now starts very easily, no stutter, and no smelly white smoke!
I don't know what's likely to go next on the car .. maybe the turbo. However there is no turbo whistle sound and I drive like a granny so the turbo rarely has too much force exerted upon it. I' often think about getting a new car just for a change .. maybe an EV .. but financially, changing it over is hard to justify. My i30 runs well, is reliable, paint job is like brand new (no exaggeration), parts are usually easy and cheap to find, get 750-800km per tank, relatively cheap insurance, may still have quite a bit of life left in it (I see some have done 500,000km in theirs) and be lucky to get $5K on selling it. I even upgraded the stereo to a modern Android-based unit with Android Auto and Carplay. However this car does lack some nice features that newer cars have, like reversing sensors, blind spot indicators, all those sorts of things.
