Major Malfunction! Dangerous! Advice?

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Gulp. Scarey story. Yikes. I really must stop reading these posts late at night!

Glad to hear it didn't actually blow sky high and hope you and your wife sort something out.
 
Hi Folks,

I hope you can help with the following. Just glad this happened when I was driving and not the missus with the little one strapped in the kiddie seat.

Half way up the A3 on SAturday night the turbo unit failed. The engine lost power, I pulled over onto a slip road and removed the key. However the engine kept revving and then around 40ft of white smoke billowed out of the exhaust halting traffic. white smoke turned to black and then sparks were coming out of the exhaust too. The engine sounded rough and quite high pitch. Eventually it stopped after around 5-10mins.

AA man turned up and explained the turbo unit had failed and sucked the oil through. He was surprised the engine had continued to turn over. This seems really dangerous to me,. anyone else had this? Anything we can take up with Landrover?

So it's been to the garage today and here's the outcome.

either replace the turbo and exhaust unit to then see if the engine is buggered too or cut our loses and write it off. They estimate the cost to be £2k for the turbo and around £900 for the exhaust. Then if the engine is dead too an additional £5-6k.

We bought the Freelander TD4 (Premium sport 5 years ago. The landy garage reckoned it was worth £5-6 on trade in 6 months ago (when it was working). So to risk paying these prices to fix it could lose us even more money than we don't already have!

So folks, we're wondering what to do next. Cut our losses. Or is there a cheaper alternative to getting this fixed? How about claiming on the insurance, is there a way to get the insurers to chip in? how about Landy? It seemed v dangerous.

The engine had 86,000 miles on it. We're gutted, we have no car and we bought it new 5 years back. We're in the middle of trying to move house before the baby arrives in a few months and now we're potentially skinted.

Any suggestions folks, any ideas welcome!

Yours,
Matt

PS Apoligies for posting on two threads but this seems relevant.
ps One day hoped to own a Disco but feel really put off now :(


Sorry to hear of your predicament - it's giving me the heebeegeebees all this talk of failed turbos and new engines!

On a positive note if it's worst case I think you can get it repaired much cheaper than you think. Recon TD4 can be had for £1200 on ebay, turbo £600 and full exchaust for a few hundred more. It's a bit of messing but you might be able to get it all sorted for a lot less outside the dealers if you're prepared to shop around.

By no means ideal but might prove cheaper than writing off a 7K car, the value your looking at is part ex and these are holding value very well at the moment.
 
I think I agree with Chaser's diagnosis. All probably caused by the crankcase "breather"!
This is supposed to be a 'depression limiter' and if its blocked the full turbo suction pressure is applied to the crankcase. We have seen pictures on here recently of what happens if you remove the dipstick, how far did the oil reach then? A depression of one atmosphere can lift water 10m. Oil is less dense than water socould be lifted to 12m Given that the depression in the filter housing could be 0.2-0.3 of an atmoshere that suggests that oil could be sucked up 2.4m, i.e easily into the turbo.
 
I think I agree with Chaser's diagnosis. All probably caused by the crankcase "breather"!
This is supposed to be a 'depression limiter' and if its blocked the full turbo suction pressure is applied to the crankcase. We have seen pictures on here recently of what happens if you remove the dipstick, how far did the oil reach then? A depression of one atmosphere can lift water 10m. Oil is less dense than water socould be lifted to 12m Given that the depression in the filter housing could be 0.2-0.3 of an atmoshere that suggests that oil could be sucked up 2.4m, i.e easily into the turbo.
I agree that there are conditions where the crackcase negitive pressure can drop too low. My old 306 Dturbo bit the dust just becasue the air filter became partly clogged. The negitive pressure applied to the crankcase became so low that the crackshaft oils seals were trashed and the oil return gallery section of the head gasket was sucked into the gallery, causing a massive oil leak. The repair quote was a small military budget so I scrapped it.

Having said that I don't hold with this theory for two reasons. Firstly, the oil level could rise under very high vacuum conditions, but to flow properley would require it to be replaced with something and that means a breech in the crackcase. Also, for the turbo to apply full suction the air intack must become completely blocked, and that would stall the engine. I still say its the oil seal on the turbo shaft, its the most common failure that causes this.

When I still ran a Pug I had a recall on the 206. In the garage I was talking to the mechanic and he said he had had a scary day. A 405 had been in for work and MOT and while the doing the emissions test the engine a entered a runaway condition. They managed to save it by doing a fifth gear stall. The scary bit was the car was up on the lift at the time!! :eek:
 
Hi Folks,



We bought the Freelander TD4 (Premium sport 5 years ago. The landy garage reckoned it was worth £5-6 on trade in 6 months ago (when it was working). So to risk paying these prices to fix it could lose us even more money than we don't already have!



The engine had 86,000 miles on it.
Be interesting to know how the car was serviced. I wonder if it was the usual 12k miles or 12 months, whichever comes sooner, on non synthetic oil. This servicing is ok for fleet users who only keep a car for three years but I would not be happy with it for a longer period, certainly not for a turbo.
 
Firstly, the oil level could rise under very high vacuum conditions, but to flow properley would require it to be replaced with something and that means a breech in the crackcase. Also, for the turbo to apply full suction the air intack must become completely blocked, and that would stall the engine. I still say its the oil seal on the turbo shaft, its the most common failure that causes this.
The oil sucked out is easily replaced by the piston blow-by. These gases are which are under pressure, expand as they pass the lower ring thus maintaining crankcase pressure. By full suction pressure I meant the normal tirbo inlet pressure, i.e. that in the filter at about -0.2 bar.
 
Yes, the crackcase should be maintained at below atmospheric pressure. However, my point still stands that in order for this level of suction to occur in the first place then the air intake must be nearly to totally blocked. This would stall the engine at these speeds so I can't see how this could happen.
 
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