It's been winter, so the van hasn't moved a lot (either literally, or in terms of tarting it up) so I've been quiet for several weeks. She (he? it is a Tranny...) has been out usually every weekend, but yesterday I hadn't taken her out for two weeks. The battery was flat and I had to jump start it from the car to get her going. But that should be irrelevant to what happened next as there's nothing sophisticated under there that would cause what happened if the battery went flat ...
Got her started, took her out for a nice long 15-20 mile drive around and about. Running great, no problems at all. I stopped at Halfrauds to see if they had any suitable switches to replace the broken interior light switch (of course, they didn't). Got back in the van, started up fine but ... complete loss of power. Idles OK, but won't pull away. By now it was dark which at first made it difficult to see the huge clouds of black smoke coming out of the exhaust, but I could definitely smell something was wrong.
If you increase the throttle (OK it's a diesel so I know it's not really a throttle on a venturi like a carubretted petrol engine would have, but everyone still calls it that), revs climb OK till it gets to an [estimated] 1200 or so revs, and then the RACKET that comes from the engine had me convinced it might blow up on me. Sounded like the worst case of pinking I ever heard, accompanied by clouds of black smoke and no power. I managed to get it home, slowly (about 3 miles). Other drivers were not very happy.
Just about to pop the bonnet and see what is wrong. Most likely causes from what I read are:
a. Air intake blockage, either on the intake itself or at the EGR.
b. Fuelling problem, either lift pump or fuel filter.
c. High pressure diesel pump, although that's not consistent with the sudden appearance of the problem
d. Crack in intake system
Anyone have any other ideas as to possible causes?
