Engine Failure, Con Rod Snapped, Crankahaft Seized

[Stuartie007]

Hello everyone, I have a 2009 1.8 tdci Galaxy Edge mk3, just turned 100,000 miles a couple of months ago. We were due to drive from Belfast to France, about 50 miles north-east of Paris at the end of June. We had driven 750 miles with no problems. After our first day of resting from our travels we went to Euro Disney, around 40 miles away. It was the week of the heat wave. It was around 33'C when we were on our way back from Disney and the first we knew something was wrong was when we got to a motorway toll. Put the window down and the engine sounded like a bag of spanners:-( I've heard the noise before, sounded like the big end bearings! Decided to keep driving to try to get our young children back to the euro camp rather than being stranded 20 miles away on a motor way in 30'C heat. We made it within 4 miles of the camp before she seized and got the dead knock from the con rod going out through the block. Got it recovered the next day, needless to say it couldn't be fixed in France so the insurance company transported it home, nearly four weeks later, it's just arrived back and i have it in my garage at my house. I'm going to attempt to remove the engine myself and source a replacement to put back in. Problem is, I have never removed an engine, although I usually attempt most of my own mechanical work, I have an inspection pit in my garage which will help. As there are no haynes manuals for the mk3 I have nothing to go by, although you can get one for the 2003-2010 c max which is similar so I'm going to get that for reference. Hopefully it's close enough, my friend is a ford salesman so I had him ask his mechanics and they said it would probably do as they are similar! Has anyone else had their engine seize like this? Does anyone else know of a manual I could go by to remove the engine or any tips? Much appreciated and thank you all in advance.

Stuart

[xavier]

If you have a ford mate then see if he can get you a print out from the ford internal manuals for the procedure - it'll be far more detailed than any haynes manual.

[chromedome]

I keep reading about problems with the 1.8's. Cam belts breaking at around 80k even though the recommendation is 125k. Maybe Ford should look into these failures.

 

I think these engines are made by the CPR (Citroen, Peugeot, Renault) consortium so that may be another avenue to try for a replacement.

[Stuartie007]

The belt didn't break as far as I'm aware.... One of the con rods snapped as a result in bearing failure for some reason, don't know why though, maybe it was just struggling with the heat in france and the higher motorway speeds or there was a oil starvation problem? I've just got the engine out yesterday, 30/08/15, after 3 Sundays working at it. Need to find another engine now.