Question for you diesel owners

[whiskychaser]

Some more info may help decide the issue: The driver states the car started to cut out, he looked down, noticed the high temp gauge and pulled onto the hard shoulder. He left it to cool for a while then removed the rad cap to help stop it boiling up. Then he drove it the rest of the way to work. My estimate is he drove for about 20-25 minutes from cold before the problem, the last 15 being on the motorway. And a further 10-15 minutes to get him to work. So no low battery and no problems with injector pump - which I'm guessing is chain driven anyway - or it just wouldnt run.

My opinion is that the engine was 'picking up' due to overheating. I do think it would be handy if the motor DID cut out to save you wrecking it - rather than giving you a low coolant warning after it seized

[Ferret]

Isnt this the key to it...what drives the main injection pump???

The main injection pump is run off the timing chain, wheras the water pump is run off the auxiliary belt... if that makes sense. If the timing chain went, yeah the engine would just stop dead with a loud bang as the physics of an interference engine with no timing chain ran their natural course.

For whatever reason, the system's overheated - and something I've just remembered about my old 205 diesel - if you overheat them they massively lose power due to the combustion going screwy... or something. Heat plays a large part in a diesel engine as there's no traditional spark - just the air charge being hot enough to detonate the directly injected diesel.

I do remember having driven my 205 TD around for a day with no coolant in it, refilled the coolant and it gave me another 2 years of happy service without cooking the HG. Go go peugeot with cast iron block and cast iron head!