Car broke down, possible cause?

Rroff · 13 Jan 2020 at 20:29

Orionaut said:
VW Diesels??

We have all kinds of vans at work - though VW and Mercedes diesels are the most used.

acemastr said:
My useful input: Don't floor an engine if it's cold.

I'd have thought it would just go into limp mode though with the relevant alert lit up on the dashboard either until reset or the car detects a relevant reset condition rather than the dash go crazy and car stop entirely.

Bug One · 13 Jan 2020 at 20:32

Hmm, I've got 3 guesses.

Boost pipe popped off the inter cooler.
Someone weed in your fuel tank.
The sudden acceleration scared a small mouse hiding in the engine bay, causing it to bite through the cables coming from ECU.

andy_mk3 · 13 Jan 2020 at 20:43

Rroff said:
I'd have thought it would just go into limp mode though with the relevant alert lit up on the dashboard either until reset or the car detects a relevant reset condition rather than the dash go crazy and car stop entirely.

It wouldn't do anything. A cold engine will perform like a warm one pretty much. It's just not good for the engine to hammer it from cold.

Rroff · 13 Jan 2020 at 20:48

andy_mk3 said:
It wouldn't do anything. A cold engine will perform like a warm one pretty much. It's just not good for the engine to hammer it from cold.

I was meaning if the engine being cold was a factor here in why it died completely (which it shouldn't unless it was suddenly fuel starved for some reason due to being cold).

beachBOYken · 17 Jan 2020 at 12:19

jsmoke said:
Fuel side issue probably.

MagicBoy said:
Check the fuel filter first...

UPDATE

It was indeed the fuel filter according to the garage, so thats been replaced.

MagicBoy · 17 Jan 2020 at 14:50

Glad to hear it's something simple.

Bad batch of fuel?

beachBOYken · 18 Jan 2020 at 08:46

MagicBoy said:
Glad to hear it's something simple.

Bad batch of fuel?

Not sure.

The car is a 2009 reg, the car actually didn't have a service last year, it did have an MOT but because it had only done very low mileage we skipped the service.

I think the fuel filter is something that is changed on a service, but only a major?

Phemo · 18 Jan 2020 at 11:43

Sounds about right but depends on the car’s service schedule. I know on my Ford diesels (S-Max and Mondeo) the fuel filter was meant to be done every 3 years or 36k miles and on my current car it’s meant to be every 40k I believe.

Also depends on whether or not the place servicing your car really ever bothered to do it or not.