Regen cycle - how many failed glow-plugs stop it?

[X5Sport]

Plug #6 was confirmed as high resistance before they started work. Should be less than 2 Ohms and was almost open circuit.

Just got the car back and it was an £800 bill including parts and 7 hours labour (£65/hr) plus the £40 ‘in place’ repair kit. The Owner did say that until these in place kits were developed, snapped plugs usually meant a head off job - with commensurate increased costs! The kit includes a ‘plug’ that goes below the damaged thread and prevents any swarf etc getting into the engine whilst the threads are being recut.

All six have been refitted with ceramic grease on the threads to make damned sure there are no future problems. Why they don’t do this at build when it is a known issue and has been for decades is beyond me. He did say that although they had a bad time with mine, it was far from a rare event.

Once it stops hissing down outside I’ll run a check to see how the soot levels now look. It was about 40-50g, but I have no idea how long the problem had existed. I don’t do huge miles and the error wasn’t there in the summer when I last checked. May be I caught it early enough that no issue had developed. There does seem to be some debate as to just what number of failures will cause a problem, and what engine/software version may (or may not) be affected,

[X5Sport]

UPDATED - all error codes now cleared apart from secondary water pump (I don’t think it has one) and soot level down from over 40g to just 2.8g. Ash steady at 16g.

I did give it a bit of a blast on a local road and thought a turbo had let go when a huge plume of grey/blue smoke suddenly erupted. It only lasted a second or two and has not occurred again so I am assuming it was soot, ash and lubricant from getting the plugs out burning off as the exhaust got very hot plus high rpm basically blasting it out the back. It won’t have impressed the traffic behind me though

[LincsX5]

Thanks for the update, glad it’s all sorted. I’ve been slow catching up due to a family emergency. I did get a quote previously for £500 to replace plugs and controller but that can obviously shoot up if there are complications. I don’t know what the in-place kit is but I’ll have to look into that too. While I’ve being going back and forth to Shropshire I’ve developed a front suspension squeak/graunch that I will need to look at first though.
As we used to say on IX Sqn “There’s always bloody something”.

[Leslie]

Laser do a kit that allows you to drill out heaters plugs in situ ,looks a bit scary a job to be attempting , video link below : I did read that updated software only looks for a temp of 60c rather than 75c before starting a regen which might explain why mine is still working !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee6sfgIhfT4

[Leslie]

Got the codes checked in a local garage today while I was having my aircon re gassed and it appears I have plugs 1 to 4 failed , there was also a code for dpf but it may have been an old code and cleared ok and the pipes are clean so the car is still re-genning and may be pre my thermostat change .
He said its most likely glowplug controller and was wary of changing all 6 like I suggested due to the problems of them snapping in the head .