Crankshaft pulley failure on 07, 2.2 Diesel engine

[Kev Behr]

Hi, new to the forum.

I have a 07 Citroen Relay with the Transit engine, it's in a self built Motorhome with about 120k on it, about a year ago the crankshaft sensor went while out for a run, I got recovered to agarage, didn't know at the time what the problem was, it went from the transponder to other stuff I won't bore you with but eventually it was back on the road with a decent sized bill, part of the bill included a new Cam chain cover etc, I have used the same garage for a good number of years and have a good relationship with the owner and the lads in the garage, and never any problems.

However, after the above work was done it was sat on the drive for about 9 months while I slowly, very slowly finished the interior conversion.

Finally at the beginning of May this year we managed to get away in it for the first time properly, we did a weekend shakedown a month or so before to make sure everything worked inside the van, we did about 200 miles.

So off we go up into the wilds of Scotland all is well for about 1500 miles, and we're on our way down, I'd been checking the oil and water every few days as it was a new to us vehicle and I had no idea of oil or water consumption, anyway, one night after we'd stopped for the day I lifted the bonnet to find oil everywhere, words flashed across my mind that I won't post here as we still had a week or so of the holiday we'd saved for two years to have, as I am retired and our lass isn't in the best of health, anyway, choices, do we ring the breakdown crew and go home early or top the oil up and limp home, we chose the latter and got down from just below Skye to Kilmarnock, checking the oil every 40 miles or so, we bough a couple of gallons out of a 200litr drum for a fair price, but Kilmarnock is where the steering pump belt came off, we were in the town center, a good point to be picked up so we rang the breakdown company and got recovered to the garage mentioned above.

They lent us a car and we got out gear out of the van and went home,

A couple of weeks later I rang and they said to come over and look at the van, a mechanic showed me the pulley and explained that they'd never seen it happen before, the rubber between the halves of the crankshaft pulley had come apart enough for the inner pulley to become a big hole saw and they showed me the cam chain cover with a big ring partially cut out of it which gave us the massive oil leak.

Now I don't want to rip off the garage, as I've always been treated fairly in the past, it is one of the biggest in the area, I just want to know if you think the bill is fair both in the amount £396.31 + VAT, and also if I should actually be liable for it at all, I expect a duty of care and that bearing in mind the low mileage between them working on the van and it going wrong in the same area previously worked on, is it not reasonable to expect a well trained mechanic in a garage which does a lot of commercial vehicles, campers, motorhomes, trucks and cars to be aware of this particular problem, it seems to be easily found on the net, so should they have been aware of the problem and advised me when doing the fist job that it was about to fail, as they must have handled it at least twice, maybe even used puller on it making it go even sooner.

Thanks for reading this sorry tale.

Kev

Bill

Steering pump pulley £32.48
Steering pump belt £16.78
Alternator (damaged when belt came off) £16.96
Crank Pulley £78.00
Timing belt cover £72.09
Labour £180.00
VAT £ 79.27

Total £475.58

[ake]

Crank pulley failure is not uncommon, mine went on my motor home at around 60k, fortunately it never did any damage

No puller is needed to remove it

The prices you have been charged seem almost too cheap! The crank pulley from Ford is over £100
I guess they must have fitted a pattern part

[motorman116]

I am in the trade, and have seen quite a few crank pulleys fail I have just replaced a crank pulley, tensioner and aux belt on a Focus c-max today as it had completely fell apart.

[TripleSix]

Crank pulley failure is common.
and until it actually falls apart its hard to spot.

I've not heard of one attacking the cam cover before but hey ho!

you've got a good value garage there, I paid about £92 +vat for my pattern crank pulley...

[blue estate]

So don't they work on fords much then as I've had my focus crank pulley go as well as 2 transits

[Kev Behr]

Thanks for all the replies so far.

I should have mentioned this in my opening post.

I was hoping for replies from people acquainted with this particular engine only, preferably from actual ford mechanics, so I could get an idea of what I should do, as said, I don't want to challenge this bill if it actually was impossible to spot a pulley with problems, but they had an opportunity to check it when they worked on it previously, having removed and re-fit it, should they have been able to tell it was about to pack up if they actually looked at it, or even replaced it as a precaution, was it put back in ignorance of the failure possibility?

[Mr RVM]

You can just about say that dual mass crank pulley failure is inevitable (ive lost a few) the posts above also confirm it so a mechanic that states he has never seen it before is either bullshitting or has been avoiding the dirty jobs all his career, its a really common occurrence Especially on Peugeot's (as a taxi driver in the past I heard of loads of them going on experts and 406's) also T4 VW's I'm not suggesting they knew it was about to fail (its not always obvious at a glance) but never seeing one before is highly unlikely in a workshop

[Wadey]

I would agree they are quite common and the price they are changing you for the pully ain't bad it might be genuine peugeot beleve it or not there a lot cheaper from pug then they are from ford witch makes no sense at all

[Clarkey1988]

I've changed quite a few pulleys on various cars. It's not always an easy thing to spot. Most make a noise before they fail completely. It's possible there where no signs of any sort of damage. As for wearing away the cover you've been really unlucky usually they just fall apart and drop onto under covers or the road below.

[taz666]

the fwd transit and rwd transits do have crank pulley failures and as the 2 pulleys are different the fwd pulley when it fails does actually touch the front cover and if left will rub all the way through it