Hey Guys and or Gals.

A few weeks ago my brother-in-law offered me his Turbo Diesel VW Jetta. It's a 98 model and only has about 115,000 miles. Just wanted to share that first off.

Upon doing research on the car and joining the TDI forum I found a phenomenal article particularly pertaining to the TDI Jetta's and how the diesel engine can "run away". For those of you as dumbfounded as I was when I heard this basically what happens is a seal or bearing fails in the turbo charger. When said seal fails, motor oil gets sucked in through the turbo, into the intake and burned in the combustion chamber just like diesel fuel (hey it's all "oil"....) and can spike your RPM's and eventually kill the motor very quickly.

SO that being said... has anyone ever come across this in their career, path of life, et. al regarding our powerstrokes???? If so what have you done to stop it? On the write up for the TDI's the author posted a second youtube video of a diesel mechanic talking about powerstroke runaway. He claimed he's only seen a few 7.3's have this happen and more 6.0's. That being said, there is still a good chance.

This got me thinking; what the hell on god's green earth would you do if your powerstroke 'ran away'? Are there any writeup's on this site? From what I've gathered just killing the key won't completely stop it so long as the engine is still sucking in motor oil. If you have a manual you can always put the vehicle in high gear and dump the clutch stalling it.... but on an automatic trans???

Just thought I'd ask and hopefully bring this to the attention of those out there who were oblivious to the phenomenon. It's worth looking into and knowing how to stop it even it it's a 1 in a million chance. Personally my truck is getting up there in age (about 175,000 miles) so who knows what condition the turbo bearings are in if it's a stock unit.

I hope I didn't scare anyone, I just thought it's better to be prepared than do damage control.

 

I have seen a 8v 92 detroit with misadj racks but it was the moron adj fault.

 

Suffocate the engine??
How would you go about this?

 

never saw a PSD run away, but i have had cummins, detroit, mack, and cat diesels run away.
i was able stop all except for one mack by using the brakes to slow down enough to bog it out.
the one that did not die sheared a key way on the injector pump and took off. 3800 rpm instead of 2300. i almost had it stopped, when the clutch let loose at around 500rpm. it spiked rite back up to 3800 and stayed there until the belts broke, and then the engine heat seized about 10 minutes later.
on tear down, even the cam and crank were blue from heat.
the whole engine went into the scrap heap, the block cracked from overheating.

 

I believe Travis and Cody know the gentlemen that owns this truck.


Check out this video on YouTube:

 

Blocking the intake air off to the turbo is best way to kill it. Check out this video......

 

Bill, I'm pretty sure Cody said whatever they put in front of that Cummins turbo, it sucked right in.

 

Yeah, you gotta use something rigid like a piece of plywood or something like that.

 

Guess I need to go throw a few heavy duty "rags" in my diesels. Watching those YouTube vids are kinda scary!

 

Wow that's crazy. I've heard of this happening before but never a PSD. I know that would scare the you know what out of me if it ever did happen. I pry wouldn't know what to do. Lol

 

Here's a PSD....

 

^^^ not gonna lie, that makes me want to cry.

 

Clipboard.

 

LOL! Yep, that would work good!

 

Bill, you sure that's not a cash-for-clunkers kill?

It looks similar to the video I saw of what they did to the cash-for-clunkers turn ins. Added something to the fuel and ran them at redline until they seized.