Good evening,
I would be most grateful for any advice on the following.
Two days ago I was driving my car at about 40 mph when I felt a vibration from the front. I thought I had a puncture and my wife said she could smell burnt rubber. I began to pull over but the engine suddenly went into uncontrolled full revs and the car emitted enormous clouds of smoke from the back. I instantly turned the engine off and bought the car to a halt. The police arrived whilst we were waiting for a recovery vehicle and because of the position of the vehicle asked to move it to a side road. A police officer drove it very slowly and just a small amount of smoke came from the exhaust. My local garage examined the vehicle the next morning and told me that it would tick over quite nicely (albeit with a rattle from the engine) but if the accelerator was pressed the engine would go into uncontrolled full speed. (They are not equipped to handle repairs to this engine)
My local Jaguar main agent has told me I probably need a new engine and estimated the cost at about £12k.
I have noted a similar occurrence on this forum, but in my case the engine can be turned off when it over revs and it seems to idle more or less correctly.
Could anyone hazard a guess as to what might have happened to the engine and should I need a replacement engine, is there an alternative to using a main agent for the work?
Many thanks.
Car Jaguar XJ (X350) 2.7 Diesel ~100,000 miles.

 

Good Day OM

You would do better to post in the X350 subforum on UK forum JaguarForum.com rather than here (Jagforums.com it's all in the letter s !) an international but largely North American forum; the 2.7 wasn't exported to North America.

There's plenty of knowledge of 2.7s on the other one.

Cheers just now

Dave

 

Oops! Thank you for pointing this out!

 

No service lights asking for service to be done?

Usually what you're describing sounds like the classic case of many failed regens whereby the fuel is dumped into the oil and the level rises.
If memory serves at some point if it gets bad enough the car can actually fuel from this and becomes a runaway car ( several instances iirc )


There is a really good explanation in the Jaguar Technical Guide for the XJ 2.7 and X 2.2 Diesel Engines. Basically Active Regeneration post-injects fuel to raise the temperature of the DPF. This increases the fuel content of the engine oil which triggers an alarm and "Service Required" indication when a theoretical 7% is reached. This is the reason why you should never fill the sump to the maximum dipstick mark
The fuel is a bad lubricant which can cause engine destruction. There have been reports of engine runaway, too. Just change the oil if it gets diluted by fuel.
DO keep an eye on your oil levels and if it gets to the max, try smelling the dipstick for traces of diesel......an oil change would be in order!

DON'T fill your oil to the max, but instead to around the halfway mark.
I believe that a lot of stop / start / cold journeys with the car not getting up to temp has this adverse affect, not allowing the DPF to regenerate fully.
I saw a car whilst at Prestige Jaguar in Glasgow last week, stunning car......engine gone due to this issue looking at ££££ to fix.


If you find when checking the engine oil regularly as you should, that the level on the dipstick seems to be RISING contrary to logic, be very cautious about driving it until you've made some checks.

The DPF/diesel particulate filter sytem together with the EGR/exhaust gas recycling system can be operating in a dangerous mode. Very short journeys where the automatic DPF regeneration system is never allowed to fully regenerate and get the exhaust to 600*C (and therefore repetitive attempts by the ECU to do so) may produce pooling of diesel fuel in the inlet areas, esp the intercooler and around theturbos. Far too much diesel is injected under these conditions which washes down the cylinder walls in to the engine sump, hence the rising level of oil on the dipstick. There will be stored ercos in the ECU memory.

Under conditions like this, a high speed run may result in the car accelerating uncontrollably, which cannot be stopped even by switching off the engine. The engine starts to consume its own engine oil as a kind of fuel. It continues to rev. at the valvebounce limit until it destroys itself, and uses all the engine oil. The only way to stop a manual box version is to stall the engine in top gear plus force braking. The automatic version cannot be stopped at all.

These circumstances have been known in the Renault megane 1.5dCi and other models using that engine. It was caused by a faulty EGR valve. This also caused turbo bearing failure in some cases, and if the valve wasn't replaced, the new turbo would also fail after a few miles.

So if you have a diesel Jag., check the engine oil level on the dipstick frequently, especially if you do many short runs.

 

Yes it sounds like a runaway Diesel engine runaway - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First thing first, drain the engine oil, change the filter, put in new oil and fill to the low-end of the dipstick mark.

Start her up and see what happens.

If it's not feeding itself from the sump oil, could also be a jammed injector or two which is constantly fueling the engine.

Complete new engine is a worst case, if there is damage to the pistons/rings or possibly the heads, but you won't find that out without doing a compression & leakdown test. Any good diesel mechanic would be able to do this.

And should there be enough damage to warrant a replacment engine, these can be bought secondhand with low miles relatively cheap. More like £2k for an engine, there are plenty of them for sale down here because these were also used in the Ford Territory and the Land Rovers. Have a look at this one Ford Territory 2012 2 7L Turbo Diesel Engine LOW KM in Coburg, VIC | eBay

Get the car to a diesel & or Jag specialist.

Yes nobody rebuilds these engines, so chucking in a used one is the economical option if replacement is needed.

 

what Cambo said.......has to be the cheapest all round starting point and you may be lucky, fingers crossed