Pajero Owners Club of South Africa

Hi Guys,
I have a strange situation here. Was driving at about a 120km/hr, and my car just somehow lost drive. The motor over-raved. Obviously i panicked pushed the lever into neutral, turned off the motor and rolled to a stop. This is the second time this has happened. The fist time it happened, i was driving much slower and when it stopped and i could not figure out what had happened, i simply restarted the car and everything worked fine and was able to drive home without any problem.
The strange thing before all this happened was that, i noticed that when i engaged reverse, both the reverse and neutral selection light were on but it reversed without a problem. see pic above.
I ignored the warning :
By the way when the problem occurred today and after turning the car off. I couldn't start it as everything just seemed to have died!
I took off i the negative battery terminal. Reconnected after 1 minute and it came back to life Drove very cautiously and it raved up again, switched off again, restarted and drove in "sport mode" where one manually nudges the lever to shift up or shift down. I managed to drive up to the office in that mode.
Anybody experienced this before? Any idea what is happening?

pull the dipstick and see if it is overfilled. It may be diesel in the sump causing a runaway.

If the engine oil is not diluted with diesel,check the atf level.

If the level is also fine, I'm afraid it seems like your valve body is packing up.

Hi Marius,
Please educate me. what is a valve body?

limuman wrote:Hi Marius,
Please educate me. what is a valve body?

If you remove the gearbox sump you will see the valve body. It's easy to replace but the valve body is expensive.

It's job is to control the flow of ATF to the various bands and clutches.

Thanks Marius. will check all the symptoms and will come back and update.

Hi Marius,
It was exactly like you said. Pulled out the dip stick and the motor was literally drowning in a mixture of oil and diesel. There was probably more diesel than oil in the crank case.
The problem was the eye bolt on injector 1 had been skew threaded and basically it was no sitting flat on the return pipe and was letting out the diesel into the crank case. I got a new bolt and all seems okay for now.

Thanks alot Marius! You served me alot of trouble.
YOU DESERVE A BELLS!!!

You are extremely lucky not to have lost the engine!

I hope you drained off the oil and replaced with best quality 15W40.

Monitor the oil level meticulously, to make 100% sure the problem is solved.

will do Marius. Thanks a million again.

That problem has killed people in the past as it can cause a diesel runaway (google will reveal many stories). Glad you caught it.

As my dad mentioned, changed the oil, and then change it again after 500kms. Keep a very close eye on it to make sure the issue is resolved.

Thanks alot guys. I had heard about runaway diesels before but never thought i would experience one myself and i can tel you it is not a pleasant experience.