Diesel runaway on our motorhome !

Wrighpm

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Hi all one of the most distressing things that you can experience is often a road accident, a fire or a theft. Well as some of you know we did experience a theft a few years ago. Well to add to this picture driving south on the M6 just S of Carlisle, 08:00 a.m. heading to Kendal. Things going well till mild judder and loss of power from engine, changing down gears did not help, moved to inside lane. Then engine went to max revs, a huge volume of smoke pouring from the exhaust and from under the bonnet. The engine would not stop when ignition was turned off !
I was familiar with diesel engine runaway but never thought I would ever experience it. Basically the engine is running on its own lubricating oil - potentially via very worn piston rings or blown oil seals on the turbo charger. This over revving engine can only be stopped by stalling in a high gear or blocking the air intake at the turbo.
I did the latter - blocking the air intake with my bare hand - not maybe the wisest course of action but did not have a potato or grapefruit in my pocket.
The whole incident was less than 2 minutes but created a dramatic cloud of smoke and 2 fire engines attended. I stopped the engine as promptly as I could by smothering the combustion and in doing so prevented overheating, engine seizure and potential explosion and fire.
We we recovered by Britannia Rescue (amazing service) to our local garage back near Glasgow. Our garage did a very basic investigation and advised that in spite of a very short duration runaway the engine was in a really bad way. Next day Britannia Rescue took us onwards to an engine re-build specialist for further investigation. This was beyond what they needed to do under the recovery service contract and really appreciated.
To cut a long story short a hole was discovered in a piston, oil in the intercooler (blown turbo seals) - they thought that the piston was the first failure.
So full engine re-build is in progress. Insurance ? .... who knows they are considering the claim as a potential fire and appreciate that if I had just "let it blow up" then we would be a £30K claim rather than a £5K claim. Await their on-going deliberations.
The reason for sharing is to make everyone aware of diesel runaway. We had NO warning signs and we had a well maintained engine (60k miles Ford Transit Mk7 2.2).
Keep a potato in yer pocket or a grapefruit will do. Or let it burn to ensure insurance pays out.
Take care, google "diesel runaway" if you want to see the drama. Peter and Irene.
 
Very common on high millage engines, oil getting past valve guides, worn rings/bore etc or oil in the air breather, lucky to get 60th on a ford engine, well known to expload even from day one, best engine they made was the banana tranny unit.
 
Very frightening experience,I bench tested engines after reconditioning in my early days,from earth movers to reliant robins,you would lose your hand if you tried to stop engines with your technique,I would rather have burnt the clutch out stopping engine,but we'll done 👍
 
I concur about Britannia Rescue, a great outfit backed by Liverpool & Victoria, been with them for years via our CSMA membership.

Hope the ins pays out in full and you can get back on your travels asap.
 
2cv said:
Sorry to hear that but well done with the quick thinking response. A useful reminder should this rare event happen to anyone else.
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Not so rare if you happen to be on any of the Transit forums, when I got my Transit based moho I had to take it into Ford for an ECU update to alter fuelling, if I remember correctly.
Over fuelling causing holes in pistons and then runaway.
 
saxonborg said:
Not so rare if you happen to be on any of the Transit forums, when I got my Transit based moho I had to take it into Ford for an ECU update to alter fuelling, if I remember correctly.
Over fuelling causing holes in pistons and then runaway.
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Thank you that is very interesting I will need to look into this further.
 
Just collected my van from my local trusted mechanic. I had called a week or so back to arrange for an electric step to be checked out. In the course of conversation I told him the van, Fiat, 2016 with 48,000 miles from when we bought it new, that it seemed to be using a bit of oil without drips on ground or smoking exhaust.
He immediately suggested a likely cause was a turbo seal leak. As suggested by others a common issue. So today his suspicion was proven correct. New turbo, oil change, engine flush and hopefully good for a lot of years. While I was there he showed me a Quashqui on the ramp for the same problem. Oil leaking everywhere. Good to have an old fashioned mechanic with a lifetime of knowledge and customer service at affordable prices for work.

Davy
 
TeamRienza said:
Just collected my van from my local trusted mechanic. I had called a week or so back to arrange for an electric step to be checked out. In the course of conversation I told him the van, Fiat, 2016 with 48,000 miles from when we bought it new, that it seemed to be using a bit of oil without drips on ground or smoking exhaust.
He immediately suggested a likely cause was a turbo seal leak. As suggested by others a common issue. So today his suspicion was proven correct. New turbo, oil change, engine flush and hopefully good for a lot of years. While I was there he showed me a Quashqui on the ramp for the same problem. Oil leaking everywhere. Good to have an old fashioned mechanic with a lifetime of knowledge and customer service at affordable prices for work.

Davy
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Excellent. I had no smoke before the incident. You may have just had a nice early intervention before you had a similar experience to mine.
 
Update for everyone. Moho back from re-build. Head skimmed, crank polished, new bearing shells, new turbo, new turbo hoses, new oil pump, new injectors, new glo-plugs, re-bored, new pistons and new timing chain/gears.
Running beautifully, quiet and smooth.
Should I keep it ?
 
Wrighpm said:
Update for everyone. Moho back from re-build. Head skimmed, crank polished, new bearing shells, new turbo, new turbo hoses, new oil pump, new injectors, new glo-plugs, re-bored, new pistons and new timing chain/gears.
Running beautifully, quiet and smooth.
Should I keep it ?
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After all that isn't it a no-brainer👍 Well for a little longer anyway 😀
 
It doesn't just happen to older engines. A colleague had a BL Montego on lease as did I, the one with the Perkins 2L turbo diesel. He was left sitting with his family on an M4 embankment while his engine roared to its own destruction. Fortunately for him it was well within warranty.
 
Are Mercedes engines (current ones, five years old, that is) prone to suicide? I ask because of course I am getting one. Old Mercs last forever, as we all know. The owner of CAK tanks was telling me about his old Merc delivery van - the one with a sticky-out nose and engine between the front seats. At 150k miles he thought it due for a decoke. He took the head off, looked at it and put it back, It didn't need anything. At 500k miles he thought he had better take another look, he took the head off, cleaned it and ground the vaves back in, and cleaned the piston tops. At 1.5 million miles he thought he had better get a new van because the old one didn't show his business off in the best light so he sold it. Some years later he bumped into the guy who had bought it and it had now done over 3 million miles.
My 1981 2litre petrol Merc car with 195,000 miles runs like a dream.
 
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