Mates car died!

obi_waynne

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My mate has a Saab Diesel. The oil light came on! The dipstick showed that the oil was empty. He poured in 1 litre, nothing on the dipstick so he added another 3 litres.

Then the car started to overrun after he turned it off. Revved itself silly and belched off the oil filler cap and started throwing metal shards up through the oil filler cap like a volcanoe!

The recovery man said it was because the oil had been overfilled!

Any thoughts on what the problem was? It's going to need a new engine though! No doubt about that one!
 
Did the engine smoke at all? Sounds like the oil was sucked up through the breather into the inlet causing the engine to rev out of control. Bottom end can suffer as the piston is dredging the oil and frothing it up causing excessive crankcase pressure.
 
Ain't got a clue. T9 Might have an idea. Either that or he hasn't replied yet because he is still wiping the tears away after hearing of a Saab's death. :D
 
This could be attributed to turbo seal failure, which will cause the engine to draw oil from the bottom and burn it as fuel.

Sticking it in 5-6th gear and releasing the clutch should stall it.
 
The overrun will be due to excessive vacuum somewhere.
Used to happen on carburettor fed engines and in my experience it was the vacuum that kept it trying to run.
 
is it the 3 litre? They are renound to be trouble (an Isuzu engine) The 2.2 is meant to be problematic if used only for short journeys (they coke up) but great for high mileage and the newer 1.9 is meant to be great,
 
No I wasn't saying it will be a carb. I'm just saying that's what it was on a few of my cars.
I was referring to vacuum.;)

At least a petrol engine won't run on engine oil though :)

Overrun on petrols (carb or mechanical injection) with mechanical ignition too used to be very common. My Dad's Maxi and Fiat 131 both used to do this prodigiously.
 
well i feel the moral of the story is dont buy a diesel :lol:

sounding like it, if i came and saw this car i would think this would be due to overfilled oil, but if it was showing empty then its pretty hard to over fill unless he was really unlucky when he added a ltre and it was just under the dipstick not to be touching on, adding the extra 3 ltres would probably be enough to cause this i think?

or maybe the turbo shaft gave way and was sucked into the engine, with the oil and maybe this could have caused it?

other than that im stumped :confused:
 
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I don't think it could be over filled surely if he checked before filling it up. Even if he over filled it it wouldn't blow itself up within a matter of seconds the engine would drive relatively normal for a good 30 miles before realising it was dying.

I think it is more likely the turbo causing the issue. The shards of metal is a bit of a mystery though unless the turbine has went totally ape and decided to commit suicide by jumping into the combustion chamber but that would be a longshot. Honest answer I have no idea what it would be apart from some fault in the turbo which may have casued it to rev like a screaming banshee and then self combust?
 
it happened our (kills me to admit we owned one) hyundai matrix. over filled with oil only a small bit. ran it for 20miles or so then took off for space. filled the rev clock in a sec and kept revving on. what happens is too much oil gets up into the rockers and ends up getting into the blow pipe which is running straight into the inlet pipe. it takes a second for it to light but when it does the engine rev's really hard pumping more oil up into the head, thus into the inlet, thus into the engine,creating viscous circle. the only result is oil pump being put under extreme pressure ending in near future failure. if anything else happens its due to the massive stresses and strains under high rpm's
 
I've over filled my oil before without realising it and I've never had a problem with the engine. Mind you now though I take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again....

You're supposed to check your oil every week,
Also when I fill the oil up after dropping the old oil out I put about 3 litres in first then after that it's 500 ml at a time or there abouts... I fill it to just under the full line then after a couple of days I check the level again a top up if needed....
 

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