Okay so some context which was missing when I wrote this thread and at the time the engine "broke".
I was living in Bellville and had signed a lease in Sea Point for a gorgeous apartment. At the existing house there was a lot of space to leave the car standing but the new place did not have that. From the moment the car broke it became a burden so when we moved I had it flat-bedded to a workshop in town to diagnose the engine.
They had it for 3 months (which suited me) but could not diagnose the motor despite ripping it to pieces and re-assembling it like shit again. They also slapped me with a MASSIVE diagnostics bill despite not diagnosing anything and frankly I didnt want the car back after they worked on it and I had nowhere to go with it.
We were in the break even / positive with the finance on the car and I really didnt want to pay the workshops bill as they had only made the car worse and charged me for the privilege. They would not release the car and with no idea what was wrong with it I contacted MFC and asked them if I could surrender the car, send it to auction and they settle it with the money generated. They liked this idea, I signed a form and 3.5 hours later they had forcibly removed the car from the workshop and confirmed it would go on auction.
It went on auction and I considered it a sad ending to a otherwise unreal and brilliant ownership experience until I got a message on facebook..... The guy that bought the car on auction had found me (not difficult given the car had a following of over 13 000 odd people) and he wanted to know why the injectors were causing issues, the car was smoking and why it had no coolant in it etc. Of course, the issues it had were 110% a result of the poor workmanship by the workshop, my gut feeling about them ruining the car was spot on but my question was quite simple - How did you get it to run?!
Well, folks.
It had no diesel in it.
Yes, thats right, all of this because the car ran out of diesel.
Hindsight I recalled after talking to the new owner that a few days before it broke down (sorry ran out of fuel) I had filled the tank but the gauge had not reflected that. I still went back to the garage and asked if they had actually filled the tank and the next day the level corrected itself. So what happened is that the X1 has two fuel tank floats and the one float had gotten stuck. The cars gauge had been reflecting a quarter tank when in fact it was empty.
Two workshops in total were unable to diagnose that it simply had no fuel and the 2nd workshop ruined the car entirely.
So there it is - I sent a car to auction because it ran out of diesel and nobody - Not even me, could figure that out.
