Focus 1.8 TDCI Problem

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Barry, South Wales, UK
Wondering if any of you guys have any experience with Fords?

My wife was driving our Focus to London today and it died on her, the screen had a message saying "Engine Systems Fault" she called out a recovery garage and they took about an hour to turn up, during this time she tried several times to start the car with no joy, starter was turning and shaking the **** out of the car but it was not firing, gave up on that after about 20 mins of trying, knowing that the garage was on its way. When they finally turned up tried the car and it fired up immediately (I said some very bad words at this point!) we decided to follow the recovery driver back to the garage (right by castle combe race track) fro him to plug in a "computer" to see if there were any errors being reported, nothing showed so we carried on our journey to London, just got off the M25 and the same thing happened again! - car firmly refused to re-start, managed to get my Wife and kids to where we were heading and stayed with the focus, waited about 15 mins of trying every now and again and decided to call the recovery people again, went through the checks that they do and got put on hold, decided to try again and managed to start the car & got to where we were going while still being on hold, recovery people finally come back on the phone and I tell them that I am where I need to be and they suggest that we get the car looked at.....

Anyone have any idea what the problem may be?
 
Could be as simple as a fuel filter? If its blocking the flow of diesel itll throw a error until it can get some. When was it last changed?
 
My immediate guess would be the EGR valve if there is one. When those things get choked up they stick open and make starting the car an impossibility. All modern diesels are DBW (Drive by wire) as far as I know so pumping the pedal won't help to increase the revs to get a good start, hence why it's so difficult.

Once the engine cools off a bit the choked up EGR crumbles closed and you can start the car again. It will drive fairly normally with a lull pre 2krpm where the car may struggle a little. It's quite noticeable when this happens, like a lack of power.

Fuel filter is another prime fault for what you are describing but I believe when that is the case they just tend to stall rather than show any warnings.
 
the fuel filter was changed a week or 2 ago in a service with a local garage, had to take the car back especially to get it done as the garage broke the tool to do it with?

Looks like I need to find a friendly garage around here then...
 
would say definitely get the egr valve checked and cleaned out mate.
 
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