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General My Fiorino is poorly, again (no it’s not caught corona virus)

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General My Fiorino is poorly, again (no it’s not caught corona virus)

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stuartinlancashire

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Before I go any further with this post I’ll just say I’m a self employed courier and classed as a key worker so that’s why I was driving today..... Anyway I was cruising down the M6 this afternoon when I noticed a rather alarming rattle from the engine, as I came off the motorway a warning came on the display about oil pressure together with the oil light so I immediately switched off and coasted to a halt. The van turned but wouldn’t start so I called the AA and completed my delivery on foot (luckily it was documents and I was less than a mile from the delivery point). Anyway when the patrol man arrived the van started so we limped to a safe car park and I had to wait for a recovery truck as the patrols are only allowed to recover empty vehicles at the moment. I then had to travel in the van on the back of the recovery truck which under normal circumstances would be illegal but apparently it’s being permitted to enable social distancing.

Anyway garage can’t look until Monday, first impressions are that it may be a stretched timing chain and oil pump fault. But if there has been oil starvation there could be other damage ?
 
stuartinlancashire said:
Before I go any further with this post I’ll just say I’m a self employed courier and classed as a key worker so that’s why I was driving today..... Anyway I was cruising down the M6 this afternoon when I noticed a rather alarming rattle from the engine, as I came off the motorway a warning came on the display about oil pressure together with the oil light so I immediately switched off and coasted to a halt. The van turned but wouldn’t start so I called the AA and completed my delivery on foot (luckily it was documents and I was less than a mile from the delivery point). Anyway when the patrol man arrived the van started so we limped to a safe car park and I had to wait for a recovery truck as the patrols are only allowed to recover empty vehicles at the moment. I then had to travel in the van on the back of the recovery truck which under normal circumstances would be illegal but apparently it’s being permitted to enable social distancing.

Anyway garage can’t look until Monday, first impressions are that it may be a stretched timing chain and oil pump fault. But if there has been oil starvation there could be other damage ?
Click to expand...

Sounds quite possible, is it the 1.3 as you mention chain. The tensioner are plastic and do break up eventually, the chains also stretch and break if oil change intervals are not strictly adhered to. Though some people have just been unlucky and had the chain snap without warning. As you said you did get it started again it seems likely the chain is still in one piece. The low oil pressure is odd as The pump is on the end of the crank shaft so if you have rpm then you have some oil pressure. It maybe if the engine was failing it wasn’t going round fast enough to maintain pressure but would still have been pumping some oil.
 
AndyRKett said:
Sounds quite possible, is it the 1.3 as you mention chain. The tensioner are plastic and do break up eventually, the chains also stretch and break if oil change intervals are not strictly adhered to. Though some people have just been unlucky and had the chain snap without warning. As you said you did get it started again it seems likely the chain is still in one piece. The low oil pressure is odd as The pump is on the end of the crank shaft so if you have rpm then you have some oil pressure. It maybe if the engine was failing it wasn’t going round fast enough to maintain pressure but would still have been pumping some oil.
Click to expand...

The oil warning could be a red herring as it will show that up even if the engine has stalled
 
AndyRKett said:
Sounds quite possible, is it the 1.3 as you mention chain. The tensioner are plastic and do break up eventually, the chains also stretch and break if oil change intervals are not strictly adhered to. Though some people have just been unlucky and had the chain snap without warning. As you said you did get it started again it seems likely the chain is still in one piece. The low oil pressure is odd as The pump is on the end of the crank shaft so if you have rpm then you have some oil pressure. It maybe if the engine was failing it wasn’t going round fast enough to maintain pressure but would still have been pumping some oil.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is the 1.3 Multijet. I service it myself every 10,000 miles, given the mileage I do that’s fairly frequent. I had a chain come off about 10 years ago on a 1.3CDTi Vauxhall Combo which did a lot of damage. In that case the tensioner had actually worked loose and come off.



chris3234 said:
The oil warning could be a red herring as it will show that up even if the engine has stalled
Click to expand...

I was wondering if it could be a red herring as it didn’t come back when we restarted. It’s funny you should mention stalling as a couple of days ago it did stall on me a couple of times at roundabouts, coincidence? I also thought it felt very slightly down on power too, but I could be just imagining it.
 
Oil change on these engines is needed every 5000 miles with a quality oil.......at 10.000 I guess you can work out at least part the problem.............and yes it is critical. Cheers Qube O.
 
stuartinlancashire said:
when I noticed a rather alarming rattle from the engine,

as I came off the motorway a warning came on the display about oil pressure together with the oil light so I immediately switched off and coasted to a halt.
Click to expand...

So my presumption here is the engine is still running and the oil pressure light is on.


chris3234 said:
The oil warning could be a red herring as it will show that up even if the engine has stalled
Click to expand...

Yes as will all cars but in this instance the car was presumably still running given the noise and the having to stop it.

Hence why i said if the engine is failing the pump might not be producing enough pressure. However is it not powered off the chain its power comes direct from the crank shaft, so if the engine is producing any power of its own it will keep the pump pumping. My point was even with the warning light on its hopeful that some oil was still getting around the engine.

Qube O said:
Oil change on these engines is needed every 5000 miles with a quality oil.......at 10.000 I guess you can work out at least part the problem.............and yes it is critical. Cheers Qube O.
Click to expand...

No... No its not.

We don't live in america where they seeming change the oil for sport. its not a 1970s V8 range rover with tolerances measured in inches. There is absolutely no benefit to doing an oil change every 5000 miles on modern engines, like this, except for lining the pocket of the person selling the oil.
 
AndyRKett said:
So my presumption here is the engine is still running and the oil pressure light is on. .
Click to expand...

The stop engine/low oil pressure message and oil pressure light only came on just before I cut the engine. When the AA arrived the van started with no warning messages or light and we limped to a safe car park near by. It was driven on to the back of the truck for loading and unloaded off the truck and driven into the garage without the light reappearing.
 
stuartinlancashire said:
The stop engine/low oil pressure message and oil pressure light only came on just before I cut the engine. When the AA arrived the van started with no warning messages or light and we limped to a safe car park near by. It was driven on to the back of the truck for loading and unloaded off the truck and driven into the garage without the light reappearing.
Click to expand...

So the engine was running when the light initially came on. but as I said in my original reply, that could have just been a symptom of the engine revs dropping as the engine was failing, and if it was something to do with purely the chain, then i would not expect to see a problem with the oil pump or pressure.

As the pump would be pushed round by the drive from the wheels or the crank shaft even if the chain failed, some oil would still circulate around the engine.... which is what I keep saying :bang:
 
I'm confused by this whole thread
The symptoms and problem are not clear ???
Its as if the driver does not really know what happened or which order the faults Happened
Needs to sit back have a good think and re post with facts that make sense
Luigi
 
2668GRIFFIN said:
I'm confused by this whole thread
The symptoms and problem are not clear ???
Its as if the driver does not really know what happened or which order the faults Happened
Needs to sit back have a good think and re post with facts that make sense
Luigi
Click to expand...


I’ll run through what happened and nothing else.

1 Engine becomes noisy on motorway (a rattle type sound).
2 On leaving motorway stop engine/low oil pressure message appears on display and oil light pressure light illuminates.
3 I switch off engine and coast to a stop. At this point I try to restart a couple of times, engine turns but won’t fire.
3 When AA arrives engine fires up, but is noisy. Oil pressure light goes out as normal. Van driven at slow speed to a safe place for recovery, becomes increasingly noisier over the short journey but no more oil pressure warnings.
 
I’ve just had word from my garage. This is what they discovered when they stripped it down this morning.

Oil feed pipes to the pump are blocked with carbon, therefore no tension on the chain hence the noise. Luckily there appears to be no other engine damage.

The garage have advised that I need the oil pump and pipes replacing and a new timing chain and kit. It could of course have been worse had I not stopped and the chain had dropped off. They’ve also discovered I have leaking radiator which is unrelated but explains why I had to top the coolant up a couple of weeks ago. All in all it’s not going to be a cheap fix and in the last six months the repair bills have probably equated to about 50% of what I paid for the van when I bought it used in back 2018.
 
Yeah. I do 95% motorway driving so I don’t think there’s any DPF issues. However for a time I was doing oil changes using an electric extraction pump, I now think this might have been a fatal error on my part as I suspect it may not have been extracting all the oil from the sump.
 
stuartinlancashire said:
Yeah. I do 95% motorway driving so I don’t think there’s any DPF issues. However for a time I was doing oil changes using an electric extraction pump, I now think this might have been a fatal error on my part as I suspect it may not have been extracting all the oil from the sump.
Click to expand...

That shouldn't cause the issue as many merc engine's don't even have a sump plug and have to be sucked out the dipstick tube




I assume you used to correct Grade of oil?
 
chris3234 said:
That shouldn't cause the issue as many merc engine's don't even have a sump plug and have to be sucked out the dipstick tube




I assume you used to correct Grade of oil?
Click to expand...

The difference being those engines are designed for that method of service. The dipstick tube will lead to the lowest point in the sump.

That’s not the case with the 1.3 multijet so quite a bit of old oil could have been left behind.

The irony is the 1.3 multijet has to be the easiest engine to do an oil and filter change on. I got mine down to about 10-15 min max
 
I’ve just heard from the garage and the news is not good. They fitted all the new parts but engine is knocking terribly once when it warms up. They are now trying to source a replacement engine but not optimistic, and to make matters worse they are planning to close after tomorrow as they have no work on ?
 
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