I went to a national park and had my car parked in a rural area for a few days. When I was leaving to go home, the car showed the "STOP" and said engine failure. After some inspection, I found out that rats ate my water pipe so the engine overheated. They also ate my a/c pipe and I think they ate some wiring as the trip computer isnt working anymore. The odometer works and the range calculator works but distance, fuel etc dont. Any ideas on how I can fix this? Also, what else should I be checking? I had to drive the car 500km in that state so I hope I did no further damage
No! Literally, the second I saw the engine failure light I noticed the car had overheated and stopped immediately. Luckily I was at the top of a hill so I rolled it down to a petrol station where a mechanic did a makeshift solution for me. He basically cut the chewed up part of the pipe and and then joined a connector to it and sealed it. I refilled the water and coolant and let it cool down for a while. Well as much as it could cool down since it was 35 degree African heat. Started the car up, no water leaking then drove at 80-90km/h (6th gear at 2000rpm) for the rest of the journey. I'm really hoping there's no permanent damage to the engine after that heat issue. I'm going to do an oil change this week as I'm worried the oil might have burnt.
The only thing you can do is change the fluids in the car. Any damage caused by running the car hot will not easily be identifiable without taking the head off, checking for bore score or similar. If you turned the engine off as soon as the temperature gauge indicated it was too high, then I imagine you have mitigated any damage as much as you could have,
Thanks! My insurer has scheduled an assessor to come see the car on Thursday. However, it is a generic assessor rather than a Renault specific one. Is there anything I should specifically be asking them to test or testing myself? So far I've got: 1a) Burst water pipe 1b) Possible subsequent engine damage as a result of overheating 2) Chewed A/c pipe 3) Trip computer wiring I've tested many of the electronics and it all seems fine so far but I'm guessing that there are some wires that have been chewed but still have some slight contact right now. Anything that I'm missing?
