Evans Halshaw/Halifax car finance - car purchased Apr 22 engine replaced Nov22 Faulty Turbo ***Resolved with Compensation from Finance Company***

[theberengersniper]

Some further thoughts:

Modern vehicles are very sensitive to the quality of oil used and adherence to specified service intervals. Although your vehicle is low mileage, it is over 3 years old, which would mean it should have been serviced several times by now. Does your service documentation include stamps to indicate this has been done? If not, that's all the garage will need to avoid this claim.

Something doesn't quite make sense to me here. I don't understand why a car having trouble engaging 1st or 2nd gear would need a new engine. Trouble engaging gears would normally indicate either a clutch or gearbox issue, not an engine issue. Is the OP certain the engine was replaced, and not the clutch or gearbox? I think that needs confirmed.

Also, if the engine was replaced, I would doubt the turbocharger was. When engines are replaced they're normally replaced as 'tall' or 'short' engines, which means they include the block and cylinder head (tall) or just the block (short). In either case, the accessories and ancillaries, like the turbo, alternator etc, would not be included and would be reused from the old engine. So even if the engine was new, the turbo would likely still be 3 years old. Still too young to have failed though, assuming all servicing was done properly.

[theberengersniper]

Ah, so there's a known fault with this engine (indicated by the Technical Service Bulletin [TSB]) that causes excessive back and forth movement of the crankshaft (end float), which was causing clutch problems, and so you needed the new engine to resolve the end float problem, which in so-doing would resolve the clutch issue. Got it.

However, I still think the lack of proper servicing, or at least the lack of evidence of it, is going to be a problem. It would be worth checking whether their systems have evidence of the car being serviced, hence the full history on the advert, and it's not just the book that hasn't been stamped. It might be worth calling in to Evans Halshaw and asking them if they have any service history on file for the car.

[theberengersniper]

I would be amazed if you're that lucky. ECU fault codes have criteria that must be met before the code is recorded, and criteria that must be met before the ECU fault light will illuminate.

For example, in most cases the engine's ECU must experience a fault several times across several drive cycles before the light will come on. That happens to guard against a transient problem causing the light to come on. 

I suspect you'll find over the next few days that light will come right back. 

[theberengersniper]

My concern in relation to you keeping the car long term is as follows:

For the original engine to have failed in the manner it did - excessive crank shaft end float - the engine bearings responsible for controlling that end float, called thrust bearings, need to have become worn to such an extent that excessive movement is possible. Those bearings are made from a blend of metals, and they're deliberately sacrificial in comparison to the crank shaft itself, meaning they are designed to wear instead of the crank. For those bearings to allow significant crank movement, a significant amount of that metallic bearing material must have been worn off.

That bearing wear is in the form of fine metal particles, or even small shavings in extreme cases, and these particles are flushed out of the bearing with the engine's normal oil flow. Because these particles are so small, a substantial quantity of them don't stay in your engine's oil sump, instead they're flushed round and through the engine with the oil, and then end up deposited in places like your turbocharger. Being metal, these particles are highly abrasive, which can lead to premature failure of other bearings and seals, like your turbo has.

If someone asked me to guess why your turbo failed, I would hazard a guess at the following course of events:

1. Your engine failed because the thrust bearings wore to such an extent that excessive crank shaft end float was possible.
2. The engine was replaced, but other ancillaries like your turbo were not.
3. Your turbocharger's lubrication oil galleries had accumulated a quantity of bearing material swarf.
4. After your new engine was installed, the worn bearing material in your turbo went to work on destroying its seals and bearings.
5. Your turbocharger fails in short order.

I realise I'm speculating, but I would suggest (having seen this multiple times) that your turbo failing is not a separate issue, but rather a consequence of your original problem.

If possible, you should try to obtain a sample of oil from your car's sump, or from the turbo itself, and have it tested for bearing contamination. If the oil supply is contaminated, that will enable you to tie its failure to that of the engine itself.

Another test worth doing is removing the oil sump plug. Sump plugs are usually magnetic and designed to capture metal particles in the oil. They don't catch them all, but again, if you see any particles stuck to it, or even a 'silvery' colour to the oil, you can link the turbo failure to that of the engine itself.

And so, if you keep the car, but the new engine's oil supply is already contaminated, you could be sitting on a time bomb waiting for something else to go.

Edited June 26, 2023 by theberengersniper

[theberengersniper]

If you can obtain a sample of oil, you will need to get in touch with someone like The Oil Lab (Google them). They will analyse your oil sample for contaminants and send you a report on its condition and what if anything they find mixed in with it.

Your oil having been changed is the reason I suggested trying to obtain a sample directly from the turbocharger's oil feed and return pipework, there's more chance of contaminants still being there than in the sump oil.

Either way, this is now a reasonably long shot because, as you suspect, a substantial amount of contaminated oil will have been flushed out with the oil change, but I would doubt all of it.

[theberengersniper]

Testing your oil with that kit will be a good idea, but remember you're not really looking for chemical contamination, it's literally tiny bits of metal you're looking for. If you can obtain the sample, in addition to your test kit, I would suggest finding a reasonably strong magnet and leaving that magnet in a cup of oil overnight. Extract the magnet the next day and check for signs of metal on it.

[theberengersniper]

Others like BankFodder or DX are better to advise you on what action you should take to chase people up, but I would suggest it will do you no harm to keep everyone up to date yourself. Personally, I would not rely on anyone else taking action for you.

If I was in your position, and I'd managed to secure agreement that Vauxhall would replace the turbocharger at no cost to me, I would also want them to guarantee me that in the process of fitting it that they were going to flush out the oil feed and return pipework to the turbo. As I'm sure you now appreciate, you need to assume bearing material is now contaminating your engine's lubrication system, so simply replacing the major components doesn't address that issue.

If I could agree a new turbo, and if they would flush the pipework while fitting it, then I would consider keeping the car, with one crucial caveat. I would want to know if the replacement engine, fitted as a result of the Technical Service Bulletin (TSB), contains updated parts to mitigate the same original failure from happening again, or else you could find you've been through all this hassle only for the original problem to come back in another x-thousand miles.

[theberengersniper]

18 hours ago, Martin244 said:

could the possible oil contamination be anything to do with the replacement vac pump needed too?

Hi Martin,

No, the vacuum pump has no lubrication feed, at least not from your engine's main oil supply. It's lubrication is self-contained.

The vacuum pump is normally responsible for evacuating the vacuum side of your brake servo, reducing the amount of pedal pressure you need to provide to make the brakes work effectively. In some cases, in cars with hydraulic clutches (rather than cable operated), the vacuum pump can also be responsible for a similar function there, reducing the amount of clutch pedal pressure you need to exert to disengage the clutch. I assume your vacuum pump was replaced as part of your engine/clutch change, as would be good practice.

[theberengersniper]

I see by looking at your invoice that a number of 'seals' have been replaced, but it's clear that although evidently Vauxhall's parts system refers to these as 'seals', many of them are in fact what would more commonly be referred to as 'gaskets'.

I'm pretty certain what was replaced with your vacuum pump was in fact its gasket. If the pump was removed as part of the clutch replacement process (and remember, the clutch needed removed and refitted to the new engine, even if they didn't replace it, so they still need to effectively perform a clutch change as part of your engine change), even as part of a diagnostic process, they would be obliged to replace its gasket because these things are almost always single-use items.

The same applies to the line that reads 'Turbocharger seal'. In order to fit your original exhaust and turbo to your new engine, they would have been obliged to use new gaskets for those, hence the lines in your invoice. Same with bolts etc. The bolts that attach your engine's flywheel to the crank shaft, and clutch to your flywheel, are also single-use, hence their presence on the invoice.

I haven't seen anything on that, at first glance, I'll check in more detail later, that causes me any concern. In fact you could view it as reassuring that they're following the service procedure.

[theberengersniper]

Your diagnostic report has a few different faults in it, but the one we're currently interested in is the code P0299 - Engine Underboost. 

As the name of the code suggests, that means your turbocharger is not providing the boost pressure it should do. In case you're not sure what a turbocharger is, it is in the simplest terms a shaft with an impeller on each end. One impeller sits in your engine's exhaust flow, and is turned by the force imparted by the exhaust gas leaving your engine after combustion. Because both impellers are attached to the same shaft, the exhaust impeller turning also turns the impeller that sits in your engine's air intake system. That impeller is responsible for compressing the air entering your engine above atmospheric pressure. That rise in pressure and air density means extra air and fuel can be squeezed into the engine's cylinders, providing a bigger bang and hence more power. That's ultra simplistic, and in fact it's a lot more complex than that, but it gives you a basic picture.

The pressure the turbocharger achieves over atmospheric pressure (1 bar) varies by engine, but it'll be somewhere in the region of 1.3/1.5 bar). If something goes wrong with your turbo, for example, if the turbo bearings and contaminated and damaged (like we suspect they have been by engine bearing debris) then the turbo will not be able to spin freely. If it can't spin freely, a lot of that exhaust gas energy has to be used to overcome the excess drag or resistance, rather than being used to spin the compressor, and hence, the boost pressure produced by the turbo is reduced.

If that boost pressure is reduced, your engine will detect that loss of boost. The loss of boost means your engine needs to restrict the amount of fuel being injected, it produces a lot less power, and if things get really bad, the engine will enter a 'limp mode' to protect itself. This is what has happened to your car.

It seems to me almost certain that bearing material from your thrust bearings has caused your turbo bearings to fail through oil contamination, and as a result, your turbo cannot produce the boost it should, and hence the fault code P0299 has been recorded.

In my view it's now crucial to your argument that you obtain these oil samples, and in fact I would now want an independent engineer to inspect and diagnose your turbocharger itself.

The chain of events is quite clear in my mind (and I think I'm right), but we really must set about proving it. Your oil test and magnet experiment is the first port of call. 

[theberengersniper]

The bearings in your turbocharger are fed with a constant supply of high pressure oil that serves to both lubricate and cool the bearings. The oil is pumped into your turbo via either semi-rigid metal pipes - similar in appearance to brake pipes - or via braided flexible lines. The garage will certainly know where to look for these. There will be two of them; one is the feed line that brings fresh oil up from the pump, and a return line that takes excess oil back to your car's oil sump.

I would ask the garage to draw a sample from both the feed and return line, which they can do by simply unbolting each line one after the other and letting the oil drain out before refitting it. The reason you want the sample to come from the turbo is because we suspect that's where the biggest concentration of debris will be now, if there is any. Your recent service will have replaced the oil in the sump, and the oil filter, both of which would have been our first port of call had that service not happened, but then you were in a catch 22.

While that's happening, I would suggest it would be worthwhile spending a bit of time considering whether you want to have the turbocharger itself investigated and its cause of failure independently assessed. If you did that, you'd be hoping the engineer found either actual bearing debris in the oil system, or obvious bearing damage.

[theberengersniper]

@Martin244 - I'm just catching up with this thread after a time away, and it's wonderful news to see that things are now being sorted for you!

If you think the advice you received here was valuable, maybe you would consider making a small contribution to the site. The whole site is run for free and by volunteers like the ones you engaged with here, particularly people like Bankfodder, DX, Honeybee etc. Any contributions make the costs of running the site that little bit easier to meet. If you feel like that's something you'd like to do, you can find the orange 'Donate' button by scrolling to the bottom of the page.