2012 MC Mondeo 2.0L Ecoboost Titanium – Cylinder Issue, Advice Sought

[c4mn]

Hi all, seeking some advice to try and diagnose my Mondeo.

I purchased a 2012 MC Mondeo 2.0L Ecoboost Titanium in 2013 as a demo from a car yard. Been faultless for 7 years until the weekend. Has only done just on 80,000 km.

Was driving to my outlaws farm and it was really wet with lots of water on the road. Went up a hill and was overtaking someone at the time and noticed power loss. This continued to get worse and found the car was struggling to maintain speed up hills.

Parked the car at the farmhouse and let it sit for a couple of hours. On start it was rough and went into limp mode straight away with the engine light coming on and flashing when over 3,000 rpm until the revs came back to idle and then it would go out.

We thought it might be a coil or plug so we disconnected the leads one by one and found that unplugging cylinder 2 made no difference, whereas the others would start to stall the engine. Swapped the coil from cylinder 2 with one of the other cylinders and issue persisted on cylinder 2, so ruled out the coil. Did the same thing with the spark plug with he same result, problem stayed with cylinder 2. Noticed (to my delight) that the plug from cylinder 2 was damp with what looked like a little oil, but could have been petrol (given I had it unplugged, I don’t have the best mechanical knowledge so am guessing about this).

I managed to get hold of an OBD2 reader and it had ECU P0302 on the display. I am not sure though if this was caused by me unplugging the leads or if it was an actual fault. I cleared the code and tried to get the code to come up again however it didn’t and I was unable to generate any new codes after it was cleared, even though the engine light was coming on and the car was in limp mode.

Listening to the exhaust at idle you could hear a sucking like sound as cylinder 2 took its turn.

Brother-in-law suggested that it may be a cam sensor that got some water in it from the drive down. I was thinking could also be a blocked injector or an issue with the wiring.

There was no sign of black or white smoke from the exhaust when the power loss occurred on the drive to the farm, that I could see out the back anyways. The oil was a bit low, put 2.5L in and it came up to the top of the fill area on the dipstick (serviced 7mths ago), but this is normal for the car and I have changed the oil and filter in-between services for the last few years to avoid a low oil situation.

There were no signs of an oil leak that I could see. One thing I did notice is when I took the plastic engine cover off there was a small amount of oil on the left underside and underneath this which would be left of the coils when looking at the engine there are two circular (sensors?) that screw in and have a wire cable plugged in on top of them (one is above the other). There was oil sitting in the groove around the top of the threads of both of these that didn’t look like it belonged there, but I don’t know what these are and haven’t been able to locate a diagram to find out. There were no signs of oil anywhere else in the engine bay so not sure if this is significant or not.

I had to leave the car at the farm (2 ½ hour drive) and return to the city for work on Monday.

I am seeking advice and suggestions as to what may have occurred, or what to look for to see if I can rule out some possible causes and determine the problem. I will head back this weekend (likely with a hired car trailer to bring it home) and can try a few things to see if I can get the car out of limp mode and the cylinder to start firing again, any guidance on what to try and what to look for would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.