Engine just blew up.

proptrash · **Joined:** Mon Sep 28, 2015 5:11 pm **Posts:** 2

Was driving at 70mph, cruise on. Felt a hesitation and then all kinds of blue smoke out the back. Made it to an exit about 1000 ft down the road and put in neutral coasted to the end of the road, engine would not even crank over. Had it towed to the shop and was told the # 2 glow plug was disintegrated. That the engine was hydraulically locked up????? Plenty of oil on the dip stick. I am at a loss. Recently put the Sasquatch EGR delete kit on. GDE Eco tune, like I said at a loss. 145K on the vehicle. darn thing should have lasted longer than that. Need a new engine, any ideas for a new engine?

Mountainman · **Posted:** Fri Jan 01, 2016 12:23 am

welcome to lost! where are you located? probably just broken rockers. timing set, ARP heads studs, rockers, and a little head work, and it will probably be good for 200k more. parts about $1200. labor would be a lot more, Maybe $2k.

if a broken plug took out a cylinder, then it gets really expensive, but that's really rare.

Mike92104 · **Posted:** Fri Jan 01, 2016 1:13 am

The destroyed glow plug doesn't sound good. I'm worried that a valve has dropped. I'd recommend some exploratory surgery by pulling the head to see what has happened. A quick check to confirm or eliminate the dropped valve might be to pull the injector on the #2 cylinder. If a valve dropped, it will most likely not want to come out, or the tip will be destroyed if it does.

olypopper · **Posted:** Fri Jan 01, 2016 3:20 am

Pull the head and take a look. At least it's not a Ford 6.7 Powerstroke......that'd cost you about 17k out of warranty. You can fix this little VM a lot cheaper!

weeks101 · **Joined:** Mon Jul 30, 2012 3:29 pm **Posts:** 747

That's some bad luck. Did you have a check engine light / diagnostic trouble code due to glow plug failure prior to this happening?

Were you shown the glow plug? Do you trust the mechanic? FYI there are a couple "travelling mechanics" in this community that know these things very well and can save you a ton of money if you choose to repair it: https://shop.sasquatchparts.com/installers/

The original glow plugs were ceramic-tipped when the CRD rolled off the assembly line. They worked great in cold temps but also had a tendency to crack when they failed, sending shards of ceramic tip into the cylinder, causing devastating engine damage (destroyed cylinder liner, piston, valves, fuel injector, damage to the head, etc.) New longblocks are about $5,000+ last time I checked.

Jeep figured this out at some point and as a result the ceramic tipped glow plugs were discontinued and are no longer available. ALL replacements are now steel glow plugs. (They also happen to not work as well in cold temps compared to the ceramics.)

Bottom line: sounds like your CRD had the original set of ceramic-tipped glow plugs, one of which failed, sending ceramic shards through the #2 cylinder.

You will need a competent mechanic who knows the specifics of the CRD and access to affordable parts (geordi will chime-in soon I'm sure). Good news is, you have access to both through the LOST CRD community.

https://shop.sasquatchparts.com/installers/
http://www.idparts.com/
http://www.vmdieselspecialist.com/

geordi · **Posted:** Fri Jan 01, 2016 8:03 pm

Someone rang?

Yeah, I'm the travelling mechanic - Where are you located?

Nothing against your mechanic that you towed it to... But I can honestly state that I've worked on more of these than any shop in the USA, and can virtually guarantee that their immediate diagnosis will be overly aggressive without further inspection of the engine.

Labeling and pulling the injectors is a good thing to do right now, to get a quick look at whether there was any severe cylinder damage. Ditto for the glow plugs. Once all 8 of those holes are open, THEN try to rotate the engine. It cannot remain hydrolocked (if it even is) at that point, and if any of the injectors come out mangled or the glow plugs are broken... Then we will have more information.

I can give you directions in disassembling the top of the engine to the rocker arms for diagnostic purposes, or I can do it for you too.

Deep breath right now. It may not be as bad as you think. Having plenty of oil on the stick is good - that means the bottom end didn't starve for oil. Everything else is fixable.

KJ/toy · **Posted:** Fri Jan 01, 2016 8:21 pm

CRD Joe · **Posted:** Sat Jan 02, 2016 1:17 pm

How does one know whether you have the original ceramic glow plugs installed? Should we do some preventative maintenance and get rid of them?

olypopper · **Posted:** Sat Jan 02, 2016 2:08 pm

CRD Joe wrote:

How does one know whether you have the original ceramic glow plugs installed? Should we do some preventative maintenance and get rid of them?

Search it on this site, lots of reading. Educate yourself and take a look at what is installed in your engine.

Yes, you should get rid of ceramics is that's what is installed in your rig.

ChooChooman74 · **Posted:** Sat Jan 02, 2016 10:43 pm

I had 2 broken GPs. Lucky for me, they just banged up the cylinders. But, other stories, people had theor motors trashed.

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taroo · **Joined:** Sun Apr 27, 2008 2:14 pm **Posts:** 292

ChooChooman74 wrote:

I had 2 broken GPs. Lucky for me, they just banged up the cylinders. But, other stories, people had theor motors trashed.

Sent from my Samsung Note 4 using Tapatalk.

Darn it...just when I thought I had all the necessary mods out of the way. Also, just bought GDE Eco Tune to round out my mods. Sooo....guess I should pro-actively change my ceramic glow plugs for the metal 5v ones. Luckily I do not live where it gets really cold! I have deleted the EGR, FCV, etc with WEEKS 101. I also changed my own TB, installed ARP studs, etc.

Given that, how hard is it to change the GPs?

I am still curious if the glow plug was the root cause to the original post on this thread.

Hexus · **Posted:** Sun Jan 03, 2016 12:22 pm

The Weeks kit will make the plugs a whole lot easier.

If you do 7v, you won't have to flash your ECM and they're a drop-in replacement, Etecno. IDParts sells them now and you can still get them from overseas.

If you do the 5v, you'll have to flash the ECM.

Some say the 5v's work better, some don't like the metal ones. I've never had an issue with the 7v plugs myself, in Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, in winter time. I'm a big fan of plugging the block heater in, but my Jeep has NEVER failed to start due to cold.

Engine just blew up.

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