Fooking diesel engine faliures !

[Fastdruid]

Devil2575 said:

Would you? Mine failed at about 110k on my focus and it cost about £600 to replace including the clutch but that's hardly the end of the world. It's the only significant bill I've had on it in 3.5 years. It's also the only car that I know of, other than reading about on the net, that I am aware where the DMF has failed. There's a car park at work full of diesels yet I can only think of one 4 figure diesel specific bill that anyone has ever mentioned. Given the way people talk me and the people I work with ought to be financially crippled by our "money pit" motors

My diesel Focus Tdci has cost me less to maintain in 3.5 years than 330i and my 530i both did in 12 months and a fraction of what I spent on my 328i. Oh and it gets 48 mpg all day long.

Mind you it's dull to drive but you can't have everything.

I'm not really shocked, a couple of points.

1) Ford's are more reliable than BMW's.
2) BMW's are more expensive to maintain than Fords.
3) I know personally 4 people who have had a DMF fail, one who had a DPF replaced (under warranty at 14k), one who had injector problems.

[Mr Tidy]

StottyEvo said:

I learn the same lesson the hard way, BMW 123D 96k on the clock just over 3yrs old and it cost me £4k for a new engine.

I realised that I might as well be driving an Evo for the difference in fuel to the cost of a new engine... So I bought an Evo

I was feeling bad earlier in this thread when I read about the Z4 that needed injectors as I bought one earlier this year, but then I read it has the N53 engine - mine is a Coupe so it has the N52 so none of that S**TE on it, and all just to get the tax down one band!

Sorry to hear about your 123D - now I know selling mine this year at 81,000 may have been a smart move, especially as I get a petrol straight 6 soundtrack now!!

[nct001]

Nigel Worc's said:

CarAbuser said:

Petrol engine go wrong too.

My Z4 has a 3litre straight six and has already have the High and Low pressure fuel pumps replaced. Injectors are another part that often go wrong and cost stupid money.

My vehicle is under warranty so I don't see the bills but I would imagine the fuel pumps would each be jobs totalling £1000. Replacing 6 injectors would cost £1.8k according to one forum thread I saw.

All vehicles cost money when they go wrong. Either get a warranty or hope to get lucky and not have problems.

Yes, you have to be careful.

I chose the 2.8 litre straight six, single vanos, the 2.5 & 3.0 litre double vanos (these were E39 era) did have somewhat of a reputation for repair bills.

I had the ecu fail on my 528i, leaving number one injector fully open, exactly the same fault as has just happened on the VW SDI engine (different cause, the BMW faliure was electronic, the VW machanical), the big difference being is petrol is a very different liquid and will force itself past valves, piston rings etc, not ruin the dam angine.

There is a known fault effecting all post 2006 petrol six cylinder BMWs relating to high pressure injectors... its about £1000 at an independent for the injectors ... you can find 20k mile examples with a diesel like idle. Pre 06 cars with older type engine unaffected.


There is also a known fault with four cylinder BMWs diesel and petrol relating to timing chain... can fail from 50k miles and require replacement engine or replacement head.

Only time will tell if post 2010 models will suffer same fait, but there is no reason they will not!

I have scrapped 2008 3 series due to engine failure, it is terrible such cars are basically disposable items nowadays.


Some modern diesels aren't even great on fuel, 520d i drove last week albeit in a hurry achieved 42mpg... big deal

[Crafty_]

Adrian E said:

That sounds a lot like Audi!

Stupid thing with the oil dipstick sensors is the tube is still there to allow them to suck the oil out the top as it's cheaper than draining it out of the bottom, but they can't sell you a ruddy dipstick to fit the hole!

I have a mate who sees the worst of it. Granted it may not be representative but honestly the gap between the perception and reality of the brand is just so wide.. electrical problem ? first thing he does is go looking for waterlogged ECUs because its that common, followed by poorly terminated wires.
He had one (new) car acting weird and found 5 or 6 earth points not done up. Another car he needed to drop the head lining for an electrical problem, grab handles are now held in with plastic pushfit clips. Flappy inlet manifolds falling apart, the aforementioned piston ring issue, cam chains stretching, the list is endless He actually finds it quite depressing.

[hotchy]

This thread makes interesting man maths reading, must now go sell my diesel and enjoy driving again...

[bodhi]

nct001 said:

There is a known fault effecting all post 2006 petrol six cylinder BMWs relating to high pressure injectors...

I have a feeling this may be incorrect....as I have a 2009 six cylinder petrol BMW that doesn't have high pressure injectors. Ergo, you are wrong.

However I have noticed a little bit of cherry picking going on now from the diesel heads - randomly trying to find a petrol engine with reliability issues. This is not that hard, all sorts of petrol motors have had issues over the years. Now let's turn it around a bit. Can we find a diesel engine designed recently that HASN'T had some sort of hidden reliability issue waiting to catch us all a cropper? I'm willing to bet it's quite a short list......

[dxg]

All this makes you wonder what will happen to all those who make a living fixing all this stuff when electric cars finally become mainstream.

I mean, mechanically the only wearing parts on an electric car (afaik) are brakes, brushes, bushes and bearings. Of course, they've got all their HV and LV conversion, motor controller and battery management gubbins, but those are literally plug and play...

[aw51 121565]

daemon said:

andy43 said:

Interesting thread.
Note most of the 'my diesel has done x million troublefree miles' comments come from those with engine designs well over a decade old.
Landcruiser, old Berlingo, 306 diesels etc have been mentioned - they'll all last forever as there's no polar bear protection anti-emissions rubbish nailed to them. If it's basic enough to run on veg oil it'll live forever.

Same goes for the Z4 petrol fuel pump problems - that'll be the N53 engine with daft high pressure fuel injection - again, designed to improve economy and emissions 'cos EU says so, but by the time it's out of warranty it's a liability.

Totally agree.

A mate of mine had a 2.0HDI Peugeot 406 with north of 350,000 miles and still going strong.

Newer diesels are a disaster area for reliabilty. Not helped by the fact that when theres a big bill looming they're sold on or traded in somewhere quietly.

HDIs are known for their low pressure (the one in the tank) lift pumps breaking up and sending shards of metal through the fuel system - cue trashed injector pump and injectors and potentially a written-off otherwise-good engine .

Yet newer diesels ARE (seriously, genuinely, honestly) riskier in terms of their potential Bork Factor than this scenario! (or ) .

[bodhi]

dxg said:

All this makes you wonder what will happen to all those who make a living fixing all this stuff when electric cars finally become mainstream.

I mean, mechanically the only wearing parts on an electric car (afaik) are brakes, brushes, bushes and bearings. Of course, they've got all their HV and LV conversion, motor controller and battery management gubbins, but those are literally plug and play...

Suspect we'll be waiting a while for them to become mainstream however, by which point people will have popped up to figure out how to fix them.

[220te]

I Know....We could have a scrappage scheme for diesel cars to save people from significant bork. We will forever remember them as powerful and elegant torque mobiles.People will remember them affectionately on an internet forum in 5yrs time and wonder why they were scrapped. :-)

[shred2bits]

2008 R32 with 46k, timing chain loose, i forgot as it was a few years back, 16 hours labour gbox engine had to be removed. Sold it to WBAC
2008 passat tdi currently on 158k with dpf driven exclusively in London juat recently got a bad idle and excessive white smoke from the exhaust. Cut out the dpf which was 40 % full and blanked off the egr 600 quid later good as gold. I have owned this car from 45k

[CTS86]

hotchy said:

This thread makes interesting man maths reading, must now go sell my diesel and enjoy driving again...

It does, if you just pick up on bad examples.

My Civic 2.2 i-ctdi (owned since new) just ticked over 188k miles today and has been pretty much faultless mechanically. In terms of the "dreaded" diesel issues people like to bang on about:

Turbo - still on original. No frightening noises from it or blue smoke to concern me that it's going to go pop in the near future.
Injectors - still all original. Admittedly there's a bit of smoke under hard acceleration, which could be down to injectors getting tired, however it has done 188k...
DMF - still on original flywheel. Had clutch replaced but as I was planning on selling the car I didn't bother to get the DMF done too (hindsight is a wonderful thing). Slight judder when I'm setting off, however it's been like that for the past 30k or so miles and doesn't seem to be getting any worse.
DPF - doesn't have a DPF, however if it did I doubt there would be any issues given thst I use the car for it's actual purpose - covering big miles.

Servicing is just routine stuff by the OH's old man every 15k or so miles and all I've done to it myself is ran some injector cleaner through the tank (once!) and cleaned out the EGR valve about 10k miles ago.

Will also add that I've just driven 300 miles home from Kent to the North West (at "motorway speeds" when given the chance) and averaged 52.4mpg over the trip.

I doubt there's a petrol car on the planet that would've cost me as little to run over the time I've had the Civic (purchase price aside) and I've either been spectacularly fortunate or there are actually some modern diesels out there that are pretty fking good and aren't going to ruin you financially.

[Nigel Worc's]

I've got mine back today, £600.00 2nd hand engine, £60.00 delivery, £342.00 for water pump (VW),Belt kit (VW), & clutch (it'd be silly to have it this stripped down and not replace the clutch) , £642.81 to have it all fitted, now fluids and filers obvously & a new top wiring loom that runs through the engine to the injectors.

It's running, we'll see how it goes.

The only decent mileage I've ever had out of cars is from BMW 5 series models (E34 & 39 in my case).

All diesels I've ever had have failed big time, all except this van were company owned, so I didn't really care.

The diesels I've had fail were all at less than 150,000 miles, and were old style (even this VW SDI is old style really), but my destroyed list is an early 90's normally aspirated astra (although I drowned it in floodwater), a turbo astra with intercooler that killed itself with its turbo (both Izuzu engines)& a peugeot 405 tdi that again ate its turbo, of about 95 vintage.

My BMWs have lasted very very well,all bought second hand with about 80,000 on them, all petrols, all taken to around 200,000 miles, including a sealed for life autobox, the only non BMW I've had decent service out of was a 1999 Vauxhall Vectra 1.8 estate, I took that from 40,000 to just over 180,00, with only a battery & abs sensor.

I've had this van just over a year, I've covered 43,000 miles in it.

[mclwanB]

Devil2575 said:

There's a car park at work full of diesels yet I can only think of one 4 figure diesel specific bill that anyone has ever mentioned. Given the way people talk me and the people I work with ought to be financially crippled by our "money pit" motors

Edited by Devil2575 on Monday 29th September 22:19

2009 Skoda Octavia 1.9tdi

1. 62.5k/2.5 years old piston through block (known failure with bxe engine code)- 6k for new engine + fitting. Fortunately wasn't mine then

2. 90k dmf- 1.5k

3. 105k gearbox failed possibly related to 1. £3008

Other problems ive had with the car not diesel specific (although I've learnt that having a lot of spare fuses is useful for an older vag group car!). Note this is a car that doesn't have a dpf.

Having to drive 40k miles a year for work at near hmrc rates does put a high level of financial strain on me given the unreliability of the car but doubt anything i can afford to replace it with will be much better (& at that mileage it really does have to be a diesel)...

[Nigel Worc's]

mclwanB said:

2009 Skoda Octavia 1.9tdi

1. 62.5k/2.5 years old piston through block (known failure with bxe engine code)- 6k for new engine + fitting. Fortunately wasn't mine then

2. 90k dmf- 1.5k

3. 105k gearbox failed possibly related to 1. £3008

Other problems ive had with the car not diesel specific (although I've learnt that having a lot of spare fuses is useful for an older vag group car!). Note this is a car that doesn't have a dpf.

Having to drive 40k miles a year for work at near hmrc rates does put a high level of financial strain on me given the unreliability of the car but doubt anything i can afford to replace it with will be much better (& at that mileage it really does have to be a diesel)...

Does it have to be diesel ?

Prior to using the Caddy, I was using a BMW 528i SE auto.

Changing to the van was my idea, to save on running costs, the van has saved me about £1,300 in fuel, and cost me £1,600 or so to repair.

[mclwanB]

Honda Crv mk2 i had before that had no diesel related issues in 122k

2004 Focus 1.8 tdi before that apparently cost work 9k to keep on the road for 2 years /60k miles (new turbo at 17k, 4 alternators, fuel pump, injectors... forget the rest

Petrol car i own is 21 years old, owned for last 9 of those and up to today nothing other than wear and tear. It is a toyota though!

To summarise modern diesels (of which I'll be needing another of soon) though:-

Vag group- 1.9 bulletproof... unless it's a bxe. 2.0 cr problematic with water pumps etc. 1.6s too new to know of issues? Some dpf issues

Bmw 2.0 diesels chain snaps,can't economically check it's condition. Tend to coke up. 6 cyl diesels have swirl flaps which if not removed can cause ingestion and total engine destruction. Chain can snap but rarely. Dpfs average failure but expensive. Not really in budget

Psa diesels (& .'. Ford, JLR),- 1.6 problematic but 2.0 ok. 2.2 rare but injector problems reported. Ex bosses 2.2 Freelander borked at 98k but never did find out why, he was delighted as it was still in warranty! Dpfs average but reasonable to replace

GM and Fiat group- general advice seems to be stay away as they're often problematic! Insignia estate has a rubbish boot anyway

Mercedes- out of budget for me but generally reasonable if expensive to fix? Also really don't want an auto

Mazda- Dont even go there

Honda-2.2 rare turbos, clutches wear fairly rapidly. Just make one in a full sized estate. 1.6s too recent

Renault- not good experience with previously, rest of the cars generally more of an issue than the engine (previous incendiary problems fixed? )

Subaru- boxer diesel chocolate camshaft apparently fixed in post 2010 models but so rare that if it goes bang no second hand engines around. Friend just scrapped an 09/110k for this reason

Volvo- might be worth looking at a 5 cylinder d3 or d5?

So that'll be a Ford Mondeo 2.0 tdci or a Honda CRV 2.2 then?

[mclwanB]

Nigel Worc's said:

mclwanB said:

2009 Skoda Octavia 1.9tdi

1. 62.5k/2.5 years old piston through block (known failure with bxe engine code)- 6k for new engine + fitting. Fortunately wasn't mine then

2. 90k dmf- 1.5k

3. 105k gearbox failed possibly related to 1. £3008

Other problems ive had with the car not diesel specific (although I've learnt that having a lot of spare fuses is useful for an older vag group car!). Note this is a car that doesn't have a dpf.

Having to drive 40k miles a year for work at near hmrc rates does put a high level of financial strain on me given the unreliability of the car but doubt anything i can afford to replace it with will be much better (& at that mileage it really does have to be a diesel)...

Does it have to be diesel ?

Prior to using the Caddy, I was using a BMW 528i SE auto.

Changing to the van was my idea, to save on running costs, the van has saved me about £1,300 in fuel, and cost me £1,600 or so to repair.

Yup I know where you are coming from but petrol mpg not great on 25ppm i get after 10k. 18ppm fuel vs 11ppm certainly makes a difference, if you can find an only moderately unreliable diesel! I also have a heavily laden car over mainly country roads so a small petrol lacking torque would get much worse than expected mpg...

Edited by mclwanB on Wednesday 1st October 23:36

[Nigel Worc's]

mclwanB said:

Nigel Worc's said:

mclwanB said:

2009 Skoda Octavia 1.9tdi

1. 62.5k/2.5 years old piston through block (known failure with bxe engine code)- 6k for new engine + fitting. Fortunately wasn't mine then

2. 90k dmf- 1.5k

3. 105k gearbox failed possibly related to 1. £3008

Other problems ive had with the car not diesel specific (although I've learnt that having a lot of spare fuses is useful for an older vag group car!). Note this is a car that doesn't have a dpf.

Having to drive 40k miles a year for work at near hmrc rates does put a high level of financial strain on me given the unreliability of the car but doubt anything i can afford to replace it with will be much better (& at that mileage it really does have to be a diesel)...

Does it have to be diesel ?

Prior to using the Caddy, I was using a BMW 528i SE auto.

Changing to the van was my idea, to save on running costs, the van has saved me about £1,300 in fuel, and cost me £1,600 or so to repair.

Yup I know where you are coming from but petrol mpg not great on 25ppm i get after 10k. I also have a heavily laden car over mainly country roads so a small petrol lackung torque would get much worse than expected mpg...

Small doesn't mean economical with a petrol, they are getting too old now, but those BMW E39 528i cars were something else, so efficient and therefore economical, IF you behave ...... I tended not to.

[Fastdruid]

mclwanB said:

Having to drive 40k miles a year for work at near hmrc rates does put a high level of financial strain on me given the unreliability of the car but doubt anything i can afford to replace it with will be much better (& at that mileage it really does have to be a diesel)...

Really? I find it fine, I run a Petrol 2.5T which means I only have to get >24mpg to break even on fuel at the 24p per mile HMRC rates and it'll happily do ~36mpg on a run. I worked out a <2l diesel would have to get about 90mpg to match and while I'm sure there are a few nothing anywhere near as nice as my car does that (or it would cost a lot more to buy).

When I bought it I was worried that I'd have to swap it if I ended up doing mega-miles with work but then did the sums and actually the more miles I do the better off it works out. Even the reduced payments over 10k is fine as it means I have to do >50k before I have to self-assess (and tbh even then I'd probably have to do mega mega miles for it to be worth it) to claim tax relief (it's as little as 8k on a small diesel) and I'm better off anyway as it's only tax relief not the 21p difference I get.

In summary play the rules, actually big petrols as long as they can do >24mpg can be better than a diesel doing twice the mpg when you're getting HMRC rates.

[anonymous-user]

24p a mile will cover your fuel but what about the rest of the wear and tear costs? I suspect it's all but impossible to break even at 24p a mile in any car, over the long run.