Hello,

A friend of mine has a 2006 (56 plate) Alfa Romeo 159 2.4 JTDm, I've placed this post in this forum as I want to see if any owners of 2.4 litre JTD equipped Fiats have had similar issues.

When travelling along the motorway, at 70mph in 6th, with cruise engaged, he began to lose power, to the point that he had to pull over and call the AA.

The AA operative arrived, reset the ECU and allowed him to continue, so he started to drive to the nearest Alfa Dealer. On the journey to the dealer, his top speed was limited to 50MPH, as the car had gone into 'limp home mode'.

On arriving at the dealer, they took the car and started to take various bits apart. He was advised that the inlet manifold had been destroyed and had taken the engine with it, which, though possible, I find hard to believe.

The car has only done 29,000 miles incidently. Alfa are making noises that he may have to foot the total cost for the new engine, something to do with the first two years being a manufacturer warranty and the third year being with a third party. The car is around 2.5 years old.

My question is this.

1 - Have any other 2.4 JTD owners experienced this issue?
2 - Is this issue the same one that the 1.9JTD can experience?

Having done some reading, this issue has similar 'Limp Home' symptoms and is due to a failing or failed EGR valve, which, can be cleaned but ultimately requires replacement of the inlet manifold.

3 - If the garage were to commence charging him for the work, what would be the first steps into taking the case further?

Many thanks in advance,

James

Would be best to get in touch with AA. They must have logged your breakdown.

Also they have a legal department.

Ask garage for a written report/estimate what the damage is.

If you can get a second opinion.

Get everything (copies keep originals) to AA legal department.

Hello,

Just a quick update.

The owner of the car had the call he was dreading today.

The engine is totalled. Basically, the EGR pipework/Exhaust manifold had pretty much shattered!!, sucking bits of itself into the engine, under force from the Turbo charger. The engine is a write off basically.

Alfa Romeo have accepted full responsibility for the fault and will replace the engine and associated plumbing completely free of charge, which is a very good result.

They will have the Alfa for four days minimum whilst the work is completed.

James

As a 2.4 Croma owner that's a relief ! I've been looking on the alfa forum this afternoon but there doesn't seem to be any history of this. It's not unheard of on BMW 530Ds for the turbo and manifold to be destroyed at around 70-80K miles but the normal run of things with the Fiat/Alfa 2.4JTD is for faulty inlet manifolds / swirl actuators to be replaced without causing engine damage. Fingers crossed this was just a case of bad luck. Please could you give us an update when it's all sorted?

It suprised me too, in my experience, Manifolds will tend to crack rather than shatter, which really leads me to believe this failure is due to a manufacturing defect.

Once the work is completed, he'll be selling the car, which I think is a shame as it's a wonderful, charasmatic drive that's also screwed together pretty damn well, plus it's an incredibly handsome machine, in black

If I had the money he'd be asking, I'd tear his arm off for it!!