FL2 Engine Stopped While Driving - Dropped Valve, Engine Swap

Just before I start pulling my engine apart can anyone offer any logical reason why my engine could have developed the faults it has at the same time?

After I replaced the engine and got it running I drove the car for a while and it was fine. I parked it up and left it for a few weeks, when I fired it up again it had an EGR stuck open and a TB fault. To have developed one symptom is plausible but to have two symptoms in two different components (albeit with a bit of a connection) seems odd.

Unsurprisingly, the car has gone into limp home mode and despite running recalibration of the EGR and TB in SDD it's still the same.

Is my next move to swap out the TB and EGR valve? Or is there anything else I can try first?

CaptainB said:

Just before I start pulling my engine apart can anyone offer any logical reason why my engine could have developed the faults it has at the same time?

After I replaced the engine and got it running I drove the car for a while and it was fine. I parked it up and left it for a few weeks, when I fired it up again it had an EGR stuck open and a TB fault. To have developed one symptom is plausible but to have two symptoms in two different components (albeit with a bit of a connection) seems odd.

Unsurprisingly, the car has gone into limp home mode and despite running recalibration of the EGR and TB in SDD it's still the same.

Is my next move to swap out the TB and EGR valve? Or is there anything else I can try first?

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Were those from your old engine, or on the new engine?

Nodge68 said:

Were those from your old engine, or on the new engine?

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They were from the new engine.

CaptainB said:

They were from the new engine.

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I'd be replacing them with the old ones, as those weren't given issues before the engine let go.

I bit the bullet and replaced the TB and EGR yesterday. The TB was easy but OMG the EGR is such a pain!

When I removed the TB I couldn't believe how much crud there was in there. I thought y old one was a bit scruffy but the one off my "new" engine was a mess:

The one I removed...

and my original one.


I checked the butterfly valve for movement and sure enough it would only move a few degrees before jamming.

When I eventually got the EGR off I was surprised at how dirty it was too:



I haven't finished putting everything back together yet but I'm hoping swapping out these parts gets me out of "Reduced Engine Performance" mode so that I can run the air path calibration routine and hopefully get me back on the road again.

The EGR is easier to get at if you remove the secondary bulkhead first, which only takes a few minutes. The TB is obviously at fault, if it only moves a few degrees. If it's that dirty, then the inlet manifold is also likely to be full of black goop. Mine was also horrible, so I cleaned it out properly while rebuilding the engine.

Nodge68 said:

The EGR is easier to get at if you remove the secondary bulkhead first, which only takes a few minutes. The TB is obviously at fault, if it only moves a few degrees. If it's that dirty, then the inlet manifold is also likely to be full of black goop. Mine was also horrible, so I cleaned it out properly while rebuilding the engine.

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Good tip on removing bulkhead, I looked at it and thought should I or shouldn't I. Of course 2 hours into the job and the answer was obviously that I should have!

I imagine the inlet manifold will be pretty bad based on what I've seen. I think I'll pull the swirl flaps out of my original inlet manifold, clean it up and swap it out as well. I was going to remove the swirl flaps anyway. I might swap out the oil separator as well while it's off.

Because I'd had a DTC relating to glow plugs I took the opportunity to test the plugs while the intake manifold was off. It turns out that they were all dead! I swapped them for my old ones which were all ok. I removed the swirl flaps from the intake manifold (they put up a heck of a fight!) and put engine back together and started it up. It fired up and was no longer in limp home mode.

Looking through the diagnostic module I found that I now had Air Path Calibration available to me under recommendations so I ran it.

I then cleared the codes and re-read for new codes and I now have more DTCs than before!



The EGR ones are a mystery as I've swapped the EGR for a known good one.

Andy Warren said:

It's about time they made it a level playing field over here as well.

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Alibro said:

Thanks mate, if you're happy to take the blame for my stupidity I'll go with that.


I would need to monitor the current draw over a journey to be certain but if it draws 7A when idle and only briefly draws up to 50A when loaded then I'll guestimate average 15A while driving which is 14.4V x 15A = 216Wh or lets round it up to 1/4kWh
The max range is approx 100 miles or maybe 3 hours driving so in that time it will draw around .75kWh and will reduce the range by around 2 miles give or take.
So not negligible but not huge either.

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CaptainB said:

Because I'd had a DTC relating to glow plugs I took the opportunity to test the plugs while the intake manifold was off. It turns out that they were all dead! I swapped them for my old ones which were all ok. I removed the swirl flaps from the intake manifold (they put up a heck of a fight!) and put engine back together and started it up. It fired up and was no longer in limp home mode.

Looking through the diagnostic module I found that I now had Air Path Calibration available to me under recommendations so I ran it.

I then cleared the codes and re-read for new codes and I now have more DTCs than before!

View attachment 314612

The EGR ones are a mystery as I've swapped the EGR for a known good one.

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Does it work OK?
Unfortunately later LRs are very good at throwing random codes, many being completely irrelevant.
If it drives ok, I'd be inclined to clear them and run it for a few weeks too see what comes up again.

Nodge68 said:

Does it work OK?
Unfortunately later LRs are very good at throwing random codes, many being completely irrelevant.
If it drives ok, I'd be inclined to clear them and run it for a few weeks too see what comes up again.

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It does seem to run ok. I'm nervous to take it far from home but I think I'll take it for a run and get my wife to follow me in her car in case the worse happens.

Well I drove it for about 15 miles and had no great dramas. There was a hot, slightly metallic smell when I stopped the car and a quick look under the bonnet revealed a bit of a drip from a coolant hose. It looks like it's dripping onto something hot (maybe the exhaust manifold) so I'll try and sort that tomorrow. I'll also clear the codes and see which ones re-emerge.

Well that coolant leak was coming from the EGR. I pulled it out again and managed to make one good one from two bad ones.

I now have what appears to be an oil leak with oil dripping onto something hot. It looks to be coming from either the rocker cover (bad gasket?) or the intake pipe to the turbo so that's a job for next week. I also have oil coming from the exhaust:



I have worked through some of the other issues today and eliminated several of the DTCs but there are two that remain and won't go away;



The strange thing is that they don't have the engine warning light symbol next to them yet the warning light is still lit. Do I need to download the CCFs? If so, do I need to download them all or can I just download the one relevant one? How do I download them, do I do it through the SDD software?

I noticed in the recommendations (in SDD) there was an option for "Vehicle Reset":



Is that something I should try? It sounds a bit scary TBH!

I've got the MOT next week so I'm really trying to give it every chance of passing .