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Bit of a story: On Sunday my 2l diesel Kuga started to have an intermittent throttle issue - roughly every 10 mins of motorway driving the throttle would stop working for 5-10 seconds, then work again. Happened on cruise as well. Couldn’t get it seen at the local garage til Monday, so didn’t use it, but yesterday needed to. It got worse, then I got the dreaded ‘stop now, overheating’ message. So I did that and called the AA.
When he was checking, the coolant was empty, and he noticed the engine mount sheared. He thought the coolant leak and the throttle issue was likely because the engine was moving due to the broken mount, but wasn’t sure. Got towed home.
That’s the context. So, garage just called to say the coolant leak was in or part of the cooling EGR? At least I think that’s what he said. That will be expensive! He quoted £1100 for the labour, engine mount and EGR thing. He also said this might not fix the throttle issue - apparently no fault code has showed for that, only the overheating issue.
Any experts to help me understand?
Thanks in advance! Feeling the pain of a bill that big 😢
I've no idea, but faced with a four figure bill that might not fix it I'd be wanting a second opinion.
Mmm my bosses Kuga needed a new engine due to a coolant issue. Seems quite a coincidence..
His was only just out of warranty and it cost loads.
Jeez I hope not @dogbone ! It's the bit about the EGR and coolant system that I don't understand. Why would it suddenly dump all the coolant? It was an hour into the journey, so it would have overheated much sooner if there hadn't been any in there, so suggests a sudden event that caused it?
I'm not querying the garage particularly - we've used them a fair bit and I've no reason to doubt them. He did say they'd replace the mount and the cooling system, then test drive it to explore the throttle problem. It's a 2016 model and it's done 130k, so it's fairly worn in (!) - we've had it since it was 6 months old, and this is the first issue it's had.
The EGR (exhaust gas recirc) valve is usually water-cooled; if you have a leak on the cooler it can dump your coolant quite quickly. This can be expensive as it's sometimes a one-piece unit (cooler and valve) and can be a sod to change, hence high labour costs. My van's a good example, gearbox had to come out to get at the EGR. The throttle issue could also be due to the EGR malfunctioning, they don't always give a fault code.
I imagine that it's similar to this https://bulletproofdiesel.com/blogs/diesel-tips-info/egr-cooler-what-is-it-and-why-it-fails
Ford also combine oil and water cooling on some cars (e.g. Fiesta) that exchanger breaks down and gives the oil a good soaking and emulsified oil clogs the block
Ahh, thank you - that’s really helpful, I understand that!
I'm no expert,but do have a 2017 Kuga with the 2 litre diesel.
I understand that the egr (exhaust gas recirculation) uses engine coolant to cool the exhaust gases, if the egr cooler fails, then engine coolant can disappear out of the exhaust. I'd imagine this can be a pretty quick process,so no surprise that you have no coolant left.
Based on this I reckon your egr cooler failed causing your coolant to disappear,and probably either the resultant overheating or more likely a load of coolant going through the exhaust system caused the throttle issues,or possibly the coolant went through the cylinders,in which case maybe there is more damage?
I suspect the broken engine mount is unrelated to all this.
Assuming the overheatingl/loss of coolant (big assumption) didn't cause any more (currently unknown) damage then it should be a case of replace the egr, replace the engine mount and everything will be back working again.
Again, I'm no expert on this engine,but just did a bit of googling about how the egr works on this engine.
I'm relatively new to the Kuga-owning world.
What year / model etc is it ?
I can certainly agree with several of the earier posts- losing coolant and the engine mount are probably 2 separate things.
I have read many a post elsewhere on a Kuga forum about the flakey ford-cut-corners engine mounts on them. So quite possibly the engine mount has been deteriorating for some time.
Getting this diesel Kuga was possibly against my better judgement after a bag-o'-shiiite diesel Zafira. All the claptrap added to manage emissions is a PITA and the source of all the unreliability (EGR being the prime example - and often a pricey component to renew, in the hundreds of ££ fornthe part (one on a VW Passat at my local trustable non-dealer garage was about £4-500 several years ago just for the part, for comparison).
BTW. The engine mount is probably NOT sheared. Either the rubber element has deteriorated and its fallen apart, or the casting has failed in fatigue.
https://flic.kr/p/2o3F81i
That’s the engine mount fail in the picture.
Thanks to all of you, this place is always superb with knowledge of all kinds of things and it’s really appreciated! It makes sense to me now which really helps with the stress (if not the big bill!). Just hope there isn’t more engine damage I guess, but we won’t know that til it’s all back together…
I've got a mk1 Kuga and do enjoy a good tinker. I filmed an engine on buggered mounts as I drove it years ago, the amount of movement and vibration the engine was seeing was alarming!
Cars are tightly packaged these days and it's possible the EGR valve or it's plumbing was hitting something nearby to break itself whilst the engine was having a dance courtesy of that sheared mount.
In general I find Forscan software (free for the basic one and reasonable for the full fat one) with a Tunnelrat ELM327 USB adapter great for having a look at what's happening, made jobs like diagnosing why the DPF wasn't cleaning itself much easier to do (broken pressure differential sensor in my case) without resorting to playing parts bingo.
That said if I could afford it I would let a trusted garage sort it out, I changed the flywheel and clutch last week and not because I wanted the sense of satisfaction, more because I'm skint.
I’ve got a mk1 Kuga and do enjoy a good tinker.
We now have friends on Nottingham. Next time we are there I’ll pop in for a tune up 😀
Ford also combine oil and water cooling on some cars (e.g. Fiesta) that exchanger breaks down and gives the oil a good soaking and emulsified oil clogs the block
So do other manufacturers. It's not uncommon.