Stuck accelerator AND failed brakes? I'm thinking the accelerator may have gotten stuck under, or hung up on, a floormat, and he panicked and burned up the brakes.
Thoughts on this? I'm unfamiliar with Land Rovers, but it seems like he should have downshifted to a lower gear if automatic, turned off the engine, and hauled on the emergency brake. Some newer vehicles won't allow the engine to be turned off.
It probably makes a diff which LR he was driving also. Any ideas/thoughts?
I checked Mapquest - there's something called "Sardine Summit" so he may have been on a pretty good grade.
Calling 911 is definitely NOT what I would've done!
Not 100% sure with the modern cars, and US spec too, but just turning the key ONE click back, could have cut the engine WITHOUT locking the steering, but he could have lost lights then. Or, as someone suggestd, he could have put the thing in Neutral, again, not 100% sure if all the variations of transmission would allow that. OK, the engine would have been racing at full RPM, but the drive would have been cut off, and he'd not have lost power steering, lights, or what was left of the brakes. (Even metal to metal, would do something to slow it down.)
applying the parking brake on many LR vehicles while it is moving (and fast) is less of a good idea.
Sad for the family, but when I learnt to drive (Wayyyyyy back!) They used to teach you how the car worked (at a basic level) too, also teaching you what to do in an emergency, at least, what was safe to do...
I do know someone who put a GM V8 in a Defender 110, replacing the fuel injection for a 4 barrel Holly carb. It went like stink, but at one point, his cobbled together throttle linkage "flipped over center", and jammed full open!...
Oddly, for someone who had actually built the thing, instead of just turning off the ignition, he put it into reverse (Auto box.) Resulting in most of the transmission being spread over a fair stretch of the A5, but it did (eventually) stop, more or less in one piece. He sold what was left of the 110 not long after.
Remember the similar "jammed wide open" throttle on the Toyota in CA a year or three back where several people sadly died? Seems (so I'm told) that the root cause was a "tin whisker" within the Throttle peadal pot assembley, giving a false 100% signal to the car. I have no proof of that, but google "tin whisker problem" and be scared about modern electronics in road cars, or other "consumer" safety critical products..
There's a good reason, why Leaded solder is still allowed for medical military and aerospace needs.
The Ford Exploder allegedly had a quite exiting feature. It seemed to involve one half of the cruise control thinking it was off and the other half thinking you wanted to go very fast. A documentary showed someone following the Ford advise - put the brakes on. It was very very difficult to stop or hold the car
Yep! mine did when the head gasket went, fortunately it was a manual and I stopped it by stalling the engine, but it was a bit of a surprise when turning off the ignition had no effect.
I remember a standby genset doing the same thing at a telephone exchange when I worked for them as a tender apprentice all those years ago. Trouble was, it had a large sump, with lots of engine oil to use. The "Remote Off" control of course did nothing.
I was told that when a tech type went to sort it (it was thought at first to be an electrical problem) he couldnt get near the site at first as Plod+Fire had cordoned off the exchange as they thought the place was on fire there was so much smoke.
Dunno how it was eventualy stopped, vague memory has something about a fire hose (or similar) in the engine inlet!
The silly thing was, it was a nearly new genset that replaced an "old as the hill's" two cylinder Lister job ('cos the exchange grew and was larger then it could handle) and was only run up remotely as a routine test.
Don't know what make of engine it was, but it was painted blue when I saw it some days later after being swapped for a complete trailer mounted job, that was still there on stilts some years later when I left the PO.
As Hugh said, gas leaks and diesels can be interesting. Compression Ignition can be a bad thing.... Especially if you have a juicebox on the back of it... Guess a Co2 extinguisher in the inlet would stop it, if needed, or a good cork!
Ah, the good old Ford Exploder, always good for a laugh. If it's not tyres (tires) it's electrics, door handles or steering etc.
A friend over there with a F250 truck, had a dealer recall to fix something. When he got it back it was only running on 7 cylinders. That was suposed to be what they fixed it for (they said.) So, that was a new ECU and set of injectors, that they tried to charge him for.
His wife's a commercial lawyer, so guess who lost that argument. He still has the 250, nice truck. Wouldnt want the fuel bill over hear though, just seen Diesel at £148.9/ltr advertised in Buckingham!... Yikes... And it's budget day too... Hmmmmm..
2-stroke Detroit diseasels generally have a sliding plate in the intake to shut off the supply of air when they (rather regularly) decide to run on their own oil.
'Twas over £1.54 in the NW Highlands (mainland) last summer. Goodness knows where it will now find itself. As for the islands even with their latest 'rebate'.....
It was a sprung butterfly held by a pin on the timberjack that one of the local lads bought at auction. His brother pocketed the pin on viewing day and there were few bidders for an engine that only coughed and spluttered.
That isn't a very smart way to deal with a runaway diesel. Normally, you just put a stout metal plate over the inlet.
Older series landies had a "strangle" valve that would do the same thing by a cable to the steering column. Especially for the scenario of the oil bath air cleaner feeding the engine....
The cable pull by the steering column on a series diesel, is the main engine stop. It operated a lever on the side of the injection pump, that somehow (I forget exactly) prevents injection presure being built. Nothing to do with the posiblility of injesting air cleaner oil.
The "strangle valve" bolted onto the inlet manifold of some, was to build vaccuum for the brake servo where fitted (on 109's) it was coupled to the throttle pedal and "sort of" closed off the inlet, when you took your foot of the pedal, so you got some vaccuum for the servo. Worked suprisingly well, when adjusted right..
(There was also a non return valve, and a vaccuum storage tank too, "Tee'd" into the hose to the servo.)
It is useless to stop the engine when the trottle return spring on the side of the pump breaks and fall's off (happened twice to me, crossing the England Scotland border on both ocasions. At night too!) All it does is create a "naval quality smoke screen" behind you, while the engine races at full chat as normal. Probably be more effective if it was using engine oil as fuel, but I sort of doubt it, just changing the colour of the smoke at a guess.
The "Stout metal plate on the inlet" trick, only works if the inlet is accessable, and is able to be nicely "blanked" like that, you *Have* such a plate available, and you can make a good seal with it, plus you have a volunteer with no sence of personal safety. Would you want to aproach a run-away engine and do that?
I'd doubt the fire service would have done the hose in the inlet trick lightly (*If* that's what they did) and not after considering alternative options. (CO2 in the inlet?) The engine was probably scrap by then, long before it was finally killed off in any case.
I did it just the other day, actually. Runaway pump on an dozer. Had to remove the air filter and its retention stud to do so. But we kept the speed down by blocking the inlet with rags and hands too, whilst organising this.
The later series diesels had a fuel cut-off (meter port cut off) - that's what you are talking about. I'm talking about the 2 litre, not the 2¼ litre. Though as I am talking about some vehicles I worked on over thirty years ago, I accept that I may be suffering from faulty recall.
Having had a good look about, I can't find the documents I was using at that time to confirm my recollection.
Well, that's not what I was talking about. The CAV DAP pumps came in two versions, AFAIK, only one of which had a "shut off" lever, which closed the metering port. By far the majority of the engines were fitted with the "shut off" version. But the early ones relied on a strangle valve for shut off, and oil from the filter was definitely in the service instructions we got from Rover. Oh, and they also had a hand operated shut off tap on the filter outlet.
No brake servos for those Landrovers.
Of course, I accept that this might be some Australian variation, but definitely, no servo brakes on any of these
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