200 TDi Head Gasket Failure

Alan> After missing a sign post and nearly running into a ditch Alan> eventually, the engine stopped. I called on a recover Alan> service and was taken to a garage near my home. When the Alan> recovery driver spoke to his base, he said they had another Alan> similar case where the head gasket had blown between an Alan> oilway and cylinder 4, allowing the engine to run on it's Alan> oil.

Alan> The garage have just stripped the head off mine and found Alan> the same fault. Hopefully, the head is fine and it will Alan> just need a new gasket.

Alan> Anyone else had this problem, and is it common?

I've heard of it happening in at least one other instance. This one was inside a dealer workshop and they had one guy fold over the air intake as the second stood on the brakes and put it in fifth gear.

AndyC

I had exactly the same problem, but I managed to stop mine by stalling it! Had the head skimmed and re-fitted.

Jeff

A friend of mine in a Lancruiser had similar problems. His turned out to be a blown turbo letting the engine run on oil. His wife was driving (he wasn't there at the time) and she restarted the engine and carried on. 50km later, goodbye engine.

Get the garage to check the turbo and ANY oil source. Maybe the blown gasket is the result of running on the oil?

Good luck. Hope it's not too expensive

Graham Carter Harare Zimbabwe

In article , Graham Carter writes

The blown head gasket is the cause of the running on oil.

Normally the gasket blows between cylinder no.4 and a pushrod hole. This causes excess gasses in the crankcase forcing oil into the inlet manifold via the breather system.

The engine then runs ungoverned on this supply of oil vapour until it runs out or you stall it.

As dramatic as it is you will be very unlucky to damage anything. May take a few thousand miles off the life of the engine though ;-)

Have seen two this year that have suffered this fault and are still going strong. And many more head gaskets that have gone but the owner has noticed the change in sound and stopped before it got that far.

Good luck

On or around Thu, 23 Oct 2003 14:25:43 +0100, "Alan Jardine" enlightened us thusly:

cross fingers the crank's OK...

not common, as such, but the same can occur for several causes.

FWIW, the best way to stop a runaway if you can't stall it is to block the air inlet.

Its verry common, due to a well known design flaw in the head gasket. New gaskets have extra material at the appropriate point and I've not heard of it happening twice. It took me two gallons of oil to get to the worksop to fix it!

Richard

Stop the car, apply the hand and foot brakes, fifth rear and drop the clutch, it'll stall !!

Richard

It happened to me in my 300 TDI last year. I needed a new turbo.

-- Keith (London, UK) Land Rover Discovery 300TDI

The garage have checked everything over and all seems fine so far, including the head and the block. The intercooler and turbo were checked first as they had a van with a similar problem in which was something to do with a failed turbo. Hopefully the head should go back on tomorrow okay. (Not too bad for an engine with 150,000 miles on the clock)

As to stopping it, it's a bit difficult to stop on a fast country road with traffic wizzing by at 70+ mph (They don't obey speed limits on that bit of road), get out and open the bonnet with smoke pouring out, and block the air inlet :-)

It's also not a good idea to remove the key and drop it in the footwell, then try to stall it and end up driving into oncoming traffic with no steering. (Okay, I admit I panicked :-)

Luckily, I survived (and the oncomming traffic stopped) and the engine does not seem to have suffered too much damage. I don't think the engine ran long enough.

On or around Thu, 23 Oct 2003 19:58:15 +0100, richard.watson enlightened us thusly:

unless it burns the clutch out or rips the engine out of the engine bay :-)

there could be a lot of torque floating around under these conditions...

Just phoned the garage. They fitted a new gasket and were taking it to be cleaned when the engine started racing again :(

Anyone got any ideas what may be wrong.

No - it will stall easily in 5th gear from stationary- you only need the brakes to prevent other road users getting alarmed. I did it about a dozen times while driving the 110 to the workshop with the failed head gasket.

Richard

Did they clean out the air filter housing and intercooler etc?

Richard

They just found the intercooler was full of oil, so they are going to flush it. They had checked the turbo and found that free of oil, so presumably did not go on to have a look at the intercooler.

Oh well, no car yet, but at least it's nothing serious.

They said they found it quite scarey when the engine started racing on them. I said they should have tried it on the A46 in peak traffic :-)

Once had a Leyland national bus start racing the governor had come apart inside the pump so being the apprentice I was thrown underneath to put a screwdriver through the fuel filter.

12 litres of metal doing what seemed like 20,000 revs (probably 3500) about 8 inch above you head is scary

Andy

Check the Tony "Llandrovers!" Luckwill (convicted paedophile) web archive at

On or around Sat, 25 Oct 2003 15:35:05 +0100, "Andy.Smalley" enlightened us thusly:

similar results with Father on a grey fergie tractor - the throttle linkage had come off, letting the throttle stay wide open. Father sitting on it, gesticulating for me to try and fix it, the while controlling the engine with the ignition switch:

brrrrrrRRRRRMMMM-RRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr...BANG!brrrrrrRRRRRRMMMM-RRRRRRRrrrrrrr....BANG!

now on the fergie, the governor (where the rod had come off) is right next to the radiator fan. Needless to say, I de3clined to go anywhere near it. Eventually, he turned it off, and we found and fixed the problem. Only reason he didn't want it to stop was he was to idle to hand-crank it to restart it...