Yesterday I came back to my car after an hour, went to start it but only got to the ignition stage when a large amount of blackish smoke poured out from under the bonnet on the drivers side up near the windscreen and down the side.

Phaaarrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkk, jumped out shaking my head and it stopped after about 1 minute.

Popped the hood, no sign of anything.

It took a couple of long goes to get it started, idled a bit rough for a few seconds and then settled down.

On the way home it ran fine, with everything seeming to function OK. Today it started as normal and ran fine.

Clearly this is not a good thing, anyone got any ideas?

I have had something similar. Starting the car large backfire smoke from under the bonnet and into the cabin through the vents. Same starting difficulties and rough idle. Two out of the three times it was a loose vacuum hose that caused this and once with no explination at all. I sent it to the dealer who asked to have it for two days to fault find it.(free loan car of course) They found a faulty coil pack and removed and cleaned the variable timing gear. Problem seems to have dissapeared since.

Hope this helps?

Yesterday I came back to my car after an hour, went to start it but only got to the ignition stage when a large amount of blackish smoke poured out from under the bonnet on the drivers side up near the windscreen and down the side.

Henry,

did you wait a minute to pop the hood? Crikey should of popped it straight away then you'd of seen where the smoke was originating from. Did it smell plasticy?

Scotty

To get smoke under the BONNET,something must of come off,doubt if a hose would have sucked its self back on,but who knows.

Dont sound to good to me though

vik

Sounds like the breather hose to me....

blows off with gouts of smoke,

don't worry about it, take it to the dealer and he will say

" don't use the throttle when starting the car"

It's a pretty quick and easy thing to fix.

What did the smoke smell like?

There is a characteristic smell for oil, plastic, electrical (ozone) or coolant type vapours.....

The odd thing is you say it occured after an hour of siting in the carpark.

If it was black and thick, it sounds like plastic burning.... but you should have been able to identify that from the odour.

There are some very HOT heat shields and exhaust and turbo components on the driver's side. Any bit of loose plastic (cable tie, tiedown clip) could have caused it. Could even be the rubber band that quite a few of us found on our motors after pre-delivery....

Alternately, it could be a bit of oil which made its way onto the hot surfaces of the exhaust tract. Once again, the smell of oil should also be obvious.

Are there any stains / residue on the heat shields or components of the turbo or exhaust that you can see? Might help in diagnosing what it was.

Best to report it to your service rep and get them to have a look