General Horrible engine rattle at idle (2.2 Diesel 2003)

[Pat H]

Hi just got back from a long run from Scotland last night. Car ran fine as ever but when home we noticed a really horrible engine rattle at idel or slow rpm speeds. Sounds like someting is about to drop off. Sounds external to the engine.
Maybe related to A/C as it almost goes if this is off but this may just be the load changing.
Engine has donwe 40,000 and is of course outside 3rd year warrenty.
Any thoughts gratfully received.
I'll be having a dig around in an hour or so.

 

[Pat H]

Garage came back.
Crankshaft pulley came loose.
Needs new pulley plus belt plus tensioner.
£300 bill.
Could have been worse. Could have been better if the pulley bolt hadn't come loose!

 

[T14086]

Would ofbeen worse if it came off

 

[poggy]

This has happened on a lot of Ulysse, C8 & 807's. It's on the Eurovan website, may be worth trying to get Fiat to pay towards it. You wouldn't expect this to happen.

 

[Lou]

I've just had a look at the Eurovan site regarding this and surely this should be a recall job as if I'm not mistaken it depends which version of the part is installed. I would definitely get on to Fiat Customer Services and labour the possible safety implications of suddenly losing power at high speed.

Lou

 

[Pat H]

Spoke with Fiat and they have passed on a request for an out of warrenty goodwill gesture. So we'll wait and see what develops.
Now got to go and part with cash to get car back.
Still DBS Hertford turned it around in a day and the car did get us home so can't grumble.

 

[Pat H]

Got letter back from Fiat today.
They claim Crankshaft pully issues have not been identified as a production problem and if they had would have occured during the 3 year warrenty.
So the cost is down to us.

So 4 weeks after the 3 year warrenty ran out we are in excess of £400 out of pocket due to crankshaft pully falling off and handbrake wearing out.
All on a car that's done 40,000 miles. must say I'm now worried we've got a bit of a poorly build car. Compared to our previous Ulysse this one seems to have saved cost on the stuff you expect to be tough to allow extra to be spent on all the fancy gadgets. (which are nice but I'd rather have mechanical stuff that lasts)
So looks like there's not much we can do except share our sorry tale with any trade press that's interested.

 

[poggy]

Sounds like a load of rubbish to me, anyway statutory limit is 6 years on cars for "fit for purpose". This problem has occured a lot on these cars, ask them for the failure statistics for this fault, if they can't provide them then how can they say it is not a production fault if their not monitoring it. If they can and it does show up with significant failures then you can use it against them.

Good luck