Interpretation help please...

September 26, 2017

Hi

i bought a rav4 DcatD 180bhp (equivalent of the T180) in 2009 when it was a few months old. for the first year it averaged 7-8l/100km; then went in for an engine revision and some work to the fifth injector. since that time it has rarely averaged below 9.6l/100km; and my typical drive is 70k on a mix of straight a-roads and motorways where the average speed is 90kph I'd estimate.

since July I've seen a jump in consumption to about 10.3+l/100km. no particular reason that i can see - long (1000km) motorway journeys cruising at about 75mph. Pretty much normal. I change the fluids and the filters every year/10k or so. No fault codes are showing up.

In the last ten days I've seen a lot of white smoke blowing out the back after a half hour of driving or so. More frequently than to be expected on with the fifth injector decarbonisation or whatever it is supposed to do. I checked coolant levels today and they were low - topped up and on a couple of short journeys I wasn't seeing any smoke. In the same time period the cabin heater has stopped working (heat still coming from the auxillary/front screen blower). The fan still works; just blows cold air whatever the engine temp. Engine temp never gets above half way up the dial.

I ran a torque plus test which showed the that there may be an issue with the EGR. See here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/75T5ZXYw5aa9aQpf2

the air to fuel ratio at idle was 23.5:1, which seems very low too.

the car isn't eating oil.

I've taken the car to Toyota in the past and they tell me that

1. there is nothing in the engine revision in 2009/10 which could affect consumption (this must be false as the revision increased the frequency of the neat diesel injection)
2. there was nothing wrong with the car's ecu
3. they weren't prepared to do anything more since the returns were within norms; even though at the top limit.

so really not helpful; although not necessarily totally untrue, just unlikely.

can anyone help with ideas to chase down the increasing fuel consumption, the papal white smoke (no loss of power from the turbo and no obvious vapour leaks around the manifold although I've not done a compression test yet; I really don't want to have to change the head gasket though) and the odd fail report on the EGR?

many thanks in advance.

Justin

P.s. i'm not entirely sure how to use Torque Plus - it seems that a lot of common data is not being sent across the interface; which is a bit odd. I'd like to capture the raw logs and take a proper look at the incoming data.