Technical Ducato dropped valve

[Barry686]

I have a 2017 ducato 2.3 maultijet 2 130. I have owned the vehicle 5 months and driven 3823 miles (15669 Total). Driving off a roundabout going from 2 to third noise from engine and engine cut out would not restart. Got vehicle recovered and recovery driver read fault codes none found. Independent garage checked fault codes none found got engine started but running very unbalanced they were too busy to look any further. The garage that I bought it from wanted to look at it. They have stripped the engine and number 4 cylinder has lost an exhaust valve with extensive damage to cylinder and head (requires a new engine) they have also found a fault code for an engine over reved saying it was my fault. They have sorced a second hand engine which they say has done 16000 miles and want to fit this engine as my old engine has got metal contamination in the turbo, injectors, oil feed pipe work etc. I have asked for proof of mileage but so far this has not been given.
They are only giving a three months warranty with it
Any advice would be welcome.

 

[madwrx]

is this a warranty claim Barry? these are very tough engines normally,, engine ovverev??? only changing down to a much lower gear could make the engine do this ,, they wont rev must past 4k normally ,,,make sure you see this code yourself on their scanner ,,,in fairness if i were the garage and i saw that code it would make me suspicious of a heavy overrev ,,quick way to blow £5k yikes

 

[Barry686]

is this a warranty claim Barry? these are very tough engines normally,, engine ovverev??? only changing down to a much lower gear could make the engine do this ,, they wont rev must past 4k normally ,,,make sure you see this code yourself on their scanner ,,,in fairness if i were the garage and i saw that code it would make me suspicious of a heavy overrev ,,quick way to blow £5k yikes

Warranty only covers 1k they want me to pay around 6.5k it’s very suspicious that the over rev only appears when it gets to there garage

 

[bugsymike]

Warranty only covers 1k they want me to pay around 6.5k it’s very suspicious that the over rev only appears when it gets to there garage

Can you get previous garage to confirm there were no codes relating to overspeed issue before it came to "warranty garage".
It does seem like repair cost is covering their warranty cover also .!!!!
It may be a time to take legal advice, are you with AA, RAC etc.? Especially if you are emphatic no "over revving occurred during your ownership.

 

[marcostig]

No way should that have ever happened..on a newish engine..makes you laugh when diesels go in for MOT they rev the cap out of them..even a warning at my garage about it being serviced ie cambelt changed etc..

 

[AndyRKett]

On fiat's engine over speed is not a code but something that can be looked up in the data held on the ECU, most cars at some point in their life will have an over speed recorded in the ECU, I think my old Punto Evo had 3 or maybe 4 over speed instances recorded by the ECU.

What it doesn't tell you is when the engine went over the RPM limit, so you are flogging a dead horse to think you'll get anywhere with that. Unfortunately the proof isn't on your side. The engine has catastrophic damage, the ECU records over speed.

As you pointed out in your earlier post the van died, the "Independent garage checked fault codes none found got engine started but running very unbalanced" so they probably added to the damage and caused the spread of metal all around the engine.

Unfortunately you are likely to be lumbered with the cost of the new engine. It is just really really unfortunate.

3 months warranty is pretty standard on second hand parts, that would only cover the engine and not the fitting of the engine, so you could argue for more warranty for any problems arising from poor installation? but if you wanted to push for a new engine fitted by fiat, well I know at the Ambulance service who regularly have to change engines on Ducatos, as they live quite a hard life, and you would be looking at well over £10k for a new engine.

 

[bugsymike]

No way should that have ever happened..on a newish engine..makes you laugh when diesels go in for MOT they rev the cap out of them..even a warning at my garage about it being serviced ie cambelt changed etc..

Yes , when the newer diesel testing first came in involving a full throttle burst no one bothered to tell the testers it was only for so many seconds!
Consequently vehicles that had only been pottered around from new and never had cambelts etc. suddenly had heart attacks and garages were being presented with the bills, so had to put up disclaimers. It did boost the sale of cam belts though.
Generally diesels have rev limiters built in to prevent destruction, so if engine was proved to have been over revved by the current owner and not a predecessor then they would argue it had gone from a high gear to a lower by accident thereby causing the damage.
Too late now but it may have been possible for the owner to pay for a specialist engineer to give a report on the engine failure and then argued it in court!
So unless there is a time stamp on the "over revving" it is hard on the new owner.

 

[MSjoberg]

It might depend on ECU model, but for at least some Ducato 290:s (250 Facelift), the ECU actually holds info info on when the last overrev happened. Screen dump from parameter list in Multiecuscan, for Marelli 9DF CF6/EOBD Diesel Injection (2.3), which is the model installed in my 2018:

 

[Barry686]

Update to my post. Took the case to my finance company who started an investigation they got the strip down report which concluded

CONCLUSIONS.

Our opinion, being based on a physical assessment, written and verbal information supplied, observations made by the engineer and our previous experience:

At the time of inspection it would appear that the vehicle has been suffering from incorrect combustion which has resulted in the buildup of unburnt fuel in the combustion chambers inducing hydrostatic locking.

Incorrect combustion can be caused by a faulty injector or alternatively the vehicle been subjected to power driving techniques.


This model vehicle has inbuilt software in the vehicles ECU to prevent the vehicle over revving. If the vehicle was subject to overrevving, the vehicle would induce a miss fire to protect the engine, and the vehicle currently subject to power driving techniques this can result in unburnt fuel building up in the combustion chamber result in catastrophic engine failure.

To determine if the vehicle was over revved would require the vehicles ECU to be checked by a specialist.

Soft Cut rev limiting on this make and model of engine isused in this car uses an engine speed limiter intended to mitigate engine overspeed. The system is however, known to be prone to causing piston damage in no2 cylinder because it controls this cylinder to slow the acceleration of the engine at high speeds. The system is intended and indeed achieves an engine speed limiter without the disadvantage of sudden power loss resulting in incorrect combustion and ultimately can result in catastrophic engine failure consistent with our findings

6 months latter they finally got an ECU report which stated that no over rev was logged on the ECU but the ECU only logges a prolonged over rev and not a spike that a downshift would cause and it was his opinion the the fault was caused by an over rev from inspection of the engine. At this point it wasn’t looking good with the finance company. After thinking about it I could not figure out how he came to this conclusion as I could not get any specialist who would give me an independent report on a stripped down engine. Meanwhile the misses phoned the bus and truck company that issued the report. Turns out that the author of the report was an auto sparky who done some warranty work for them and not a mechanical expert. The dealership had taken the truck company letter head and wrote their own report. The truck company were none too pleased to say the least and told the dealership to withdraw the report which they didn’t do. I informed the hp company of the falsified document which they checked and I one the case. I got all my money back less £900 for mileage done.

Thank you all for the help

 

[bugsymike]

That's a good result all things considered.

 

[AndyRKett]

That’s a really good result although it seems to have been on a technicality rather than a clear cut case. Still good news for you and you can get on with things and have some money in your pocket to boot

 

[jackwhoo]

Huge well done to the ops wife for ringing the truck and bus company and uncovering the fraudulent document.

What a stress for op and family.

I hope they can now put it all behind them .

Thank you for letting us know outcome.

 

[Ocwobio]

A possible claim for damages, and criminal activity the police might (might!) want to know about?