[Fazerbike]

Hi Hope somenoe can help me on this. We bought a Captiva 5 weeks ago, its a 2008 model manual. All was good until last thursday when my wife was going to work. This is what she descibed what happened.


She was travelling at about 60mph when the car started to rev really fast on its own. The car speeded up as this happened whit/grey smoke came from the exhaust there was a loud rattle the engine stopped dead the power steering and brakes also failed.. She pulls up safley in a layby. From this she tries to start the car but it wouldnt turn over.



When i get there i check the obvious things like oil leaks correct fuel and so on. But one thing showed up and that was the oilon dipstick was half way up the dipstick. Buy this time the AA arrived. He also looked at the dipstck and smelt the oil and could smell diesel mixed in with the oil.



The car is still under warranty,only 3 months was given as it was seconed hand. Anyway the AA towed me to the car dealers garage.



I spoke to the dealer the next day to see if he had any idea what went wrong, and he rekons oil and dieselhad got into the cylinders and intercoolerhence the dipstick showing a high level of oil. Anyway he said he needed to drain the intercooler and engine at take it from there.



Does anyone no the cause of this problem

 

[bigiainw]

The Captiva has a Diesel particulate filter (DPF) which takes the soot particles out of the exhaust. It uses an injection of an excess of diesel into the engine to burn off these deposits, a regeration of the DPF. Some of this excess diesel finds it's way into the sump and mixes with the engine oil. If you do many short journeys this can build up quite quickly, with the result that the oil level rises. If this happens, there should be a warning light and the oil needs to be changed.
If you do a lot of longer runs at higher speeds, it's much less of an issue and the DPF becomes hot enough to take care of the burning off phase without additional diesel being injected.



It's a well known issue with vehicles with the DPF, not just the Captiva, and has been the subject of much discussion in this forum- if you search the forum for DPF I'm sure you will find all the threads.



That said, the symptoms you describe sound very similar to the issues with renault turbo diesel engines (specifically the 1.9dCi) where the turbo would over boost, eventually causing the engine to disintergrate.

That was generally caused by a gunked up EGR valve (exhaust gas recirculation vale, part of the emission reduction system. An intercooler full of oil was not unusual in that scenario.




Hope it all turns out okay for you! Let us know how it goes please?

Edited by: bigiainw