d22 runaway

so today this happened... i cleaned the turbo area a bit with brake cleaner and apparently some fuild got trapped inside. went to start 2 hours later engine revved to the moon and then shut down by itself. had no chance to stop it since it was only for 5 seconds and then died. now starter will turn over the engine but wont start. i let it rest for a while but it wont start. engine sound hasnt changed. i feel like killing myself at the moment. what am i in for? new engine? new turbo? work piston rings or bent valves? kill me please...

I've only seen brake cleaner cause an engine to falter, I didn't think it burnt well enough to cause runaway

wd-40 can cause ignition on petrol engines. maybe this runaway issue caused the engine to flood with fuel from the injectors. maybe left for a day all could be fine again.

Leaving for a day and doing an ECU reset may work?

Brake cleaner is volatile, it will combust but I'm not sure if the flashpoint is low enough for glows to ignite it.

If the engine still turns over, I'd start with the obvious (and cheap!) things to check first.

Primer bulb - does it go firm?

Any cables come loose in the "event" ? Thinking about earth point on engine & ECU, MAPS connector, CAS?

Can you smell unburnt diesel in the exhaust now?

Remove glow plugs - compression test on all cyls ok?

That's a start, anyway. Not intending the pun of course!

I'd start with cracking the injector lines and seeing if it's still pumping fuel and then do a compression test on each cylinder. Can you see if the cams are turning thru the oil filler cap? Try disconnecting the battery to clear any codes.

thanks for everysingle imput guys. starting with the good news it runs and runs well. when the mechanic came to check he just block the intake pipe with his hand while i was pumping the accelerator pedal and it came back to life, while it was dead before trying that. fuel supply was good even after the event since the fuel filter primer bulb would go firm everytime after 1 push even when we were turning the engine over without it been able to fire up. apparenlty what we think is that my idiotic move of using brake cleaner in the intake pipe wasnt enough to rev the engine so hard (like 6-10k revs) to start breaking things but it was definately scary. seems i got lucky. we changed oil and oil filter to be sure and run diagnostics via Nissan Consult which make back clear. what i can do now is run it for a while and we want to check 1st compression in case my stupidity ruined piston rings or valves a bit, and 2ndly take the timing cover of in case the chain jumped a teeth or two, highly unlike but i want to be sure. hopefully i got lucky, and for now all i have to say is f@ck DIY i am not even gonna replace burn bulbs from now on. thanks again for every single input and i would appreciate further comments until i have information about the status. feel gutted and lucky at the same time. and an idiot. scariest 3 seconds of my life, panicked mostly took the key out but obviously it kept running. my friend says i should have jammed 5th gear in but it all happened to fast

Great to hear that it's running again. Maybe not all of the cleaner had disappeared? Anyway, it's over.

Internal combustion engines CAN rev much higher. Current F1 tech revs at around 15,000rpm but I've seen them revving at 18,000rpm (special fuel required, extremely short stroke). Our engines are limited to 5,000rpm (governed) because diesel can't combust in time to finish by the end of the power stroke if it's revving much higher. The Audi R18 in contrast revs at about 5500rpm peak. Diesel just doesn't burn fast enough to go much higher.

The result is you probably didn't damage anything. Excellent!

For those interested in overrunning diesels - even in a full overrun (crankcase oil being pumped out the PCV into the intake causing uncontrolled combustion) it's easy to stop with the bonnet up - pop the PCV off (don't try clamping it). If you have a snorkel, just put something solid over the intake to starve the car of air. You'll probably see your air hoses collapse as it struggles to breathe, but you'll save the motor!