Hi Bradley,

Mark did give you the pointers you need: the main one being the cause of the black smoke, which comes from an incorrect air/fuel mixture ratio. Therefore you want to make sure your air mass, boost pressure and rail pressures are all within spec. for the engine load and rpm in which the fault occurs: in this case it seems to be when you're booting it. Personally I have no idea of what the values should be - I'm rubbish at remembering them but I do know where to look (e.g. Bosch ESI). You can find air mass calculators for a given engine load, EGR quantity, boost pressure, engine speed and capacity online. They'll give you a ball park figure of what to expect but make sure you get the units right when comparing to your serial data (e.g. g/s kg/hour etc - it's a minefield). You'll need to know all the values I just listed so a logging scanner would be very useful for this type of thing.

It is likely that the powertrain control module thinks all is well and it is doing the right thing, hence no fault codes. So you need to work out which sensor, if any, is misleading the ECU. Are the values that the sensors are giving to the control module accurate (plausible)? This was Marks main point really about looking at live data: have a really good look at the ...air.../fuel related sensors and see if they make sense.

If they do make sense and you know the engine hasn't been mapped then start questioning the operation of the actuators.

Hope this helps,
Barney.