breakdown on m 25,im baffled. Please help.

hi all
i was driving on m25 last night( friday)doing about 55.when for no apparent reason the engine (1993 200 tdi)suddenly lost power and died.i pulled into hard shoulder.phoned greenflag .got fed up listening to keep you waiting music.from greenflag.So decided to try car.which started strait away and ran normally.so i set off.car ran well for about two miles.same thing again.anyway this happened four times.Not nice at 11 oclock at night on pitch black roads.i was on my way to chelmsford,and had to drive back to london.I rememberd somthing about blocked fuel tank breathers so i undone the diesal cap and put it back on loseley.Tryed car and it started.from then on it went on with no probs at all and drove back to london no probs.I do this journey quite regularly so dont really want it again.
ps when i opened fuel cap i didnt here a rush of air because of traffic noise.could this have been the cause or is there any thing else i should look at; any sugestions please.
thanks.

There is a one way vent in the filler cap, you can see much just the slots around the edge of the cap but it is vented try, a new one was aroubd £7 or £8 when I bought my replacement a few years ago.

thanks very much ill try that,did you have same problem.

stevob said:

thanks very much ill try that,did you have same problem.

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No I left my cap behind at the garage theres another vent in the pipe work on top of the tank but i have never seen that mention as giving problems, the cap has been known to.

could be fuel lift pump,or theres some ****te in the sedimenter

Just had similar issues with my 300 ~(although yours does sound like the filler cap).

I changed EVERYTHING! Lift pump, sedimentor, filter, filter housing, filler cap... an the end it turned out one of the fuel pipes was coming apart from the inside and blocking itself.

New pipe front to back solved my issues