So the story goes like this…..

I was driving my brothers car to my friends house where im currently working on my land rover defender trying to get it back on the road.

Going along at 60 on a dual carriageway and the revs start increasing, so a take my foot off the accelerator but they continue to climb. I indicate to pull over and change out of gear (in hindsight this probably wasn’t a good idea) meanwhile the revs increase until the engine redlines and white smoke starts billowing out of the exhaust. I pull over and turn off the engine, but it carries on so i get out of the car for fear it might catch alight and after around 20 seconds it dies.

The car is a Fiat Doblo 1.3 2004 model diesel. Its got around 75,000 miles on the clock. It was bought secondhand (about 5-6 months ago) so i guess we don’t have a leg to stand on in terms of a refund.

But is it worth me enquiring with Fiat? It seems at least it could be considered as a possible recall issue or safety hazard? There were no signs that anything was wrong, no engine lights on or high temperature. It was actually pretty scary so if i could avoid the same happening to others that would be something

Diesel runaway !

Bit late now but if it happens again

High gear and dump the clutch and hit the brake or block the air intake with an old jumper or fire a co2 extinguisher into that area if your parked up

Worn rings or. Cracked block letting it run on its own oil

As a defender owner im surprised you havent heard of this before ! Not sure on layout of the fiat engine but on landys its due to worn rings pressurising the crank case meaning oily fumes are sent down the crankcase breather and withotu a catch tank the oily fumes enter the air intake , oil passes through the filter and is injected into with the air

Usually stopped with a big bang when the engine throughs a conrod signalling the end of engine

its been running on engine oil rather than diesel.

in a turbo diesel could be the oil seals.

could be an expensive fix though im afraid 🙁

google “runaway diesel”

The car is a Fiat

Thats your problem

Yep, def run away diesel. A van of my dads did it when the turbo packed up, luckly I knew what was going on and managed to stall it with a high gear and brake.

As for getting any joy from Fiat I wouldn’t even bother trying!

Not chance of anything from fiat due to age. Other than rings you should check the crank case ventilation filter and turbo.

No common issues on these engines other than timing chains on high mileage, high revs in vans.

Turbo shaft seals I bet

Turbo Shaft Seals like nearly everyone else is saying.

Or some numpty has simply put too much oil in it…!

Buy a van

When my XM’s clutch cable broke the AA refused to use their towing dolly to get me home. Tilting the car up that steeply with the engine running, to power up the suspension, sucks oil up into the air intake and the engine feeds off the oil. I’d never heard of it before.

Im curious how your car would fair going up cairn o mount mcmoonter !

My Pug 306 Turbo diesel did exactly this revs went up to red line and dumped 6 gallons of diesel on the M6 in the space of a mile!
RAC came out lifted the bonnet and replaced the missing blanking plug on the end injector that recirculates the diesel that has not been pushed into the injectors and returns it to the fuel tank, cost 75p.
Check out the cheapest option first.