Following a week of it not wanting to set off first thing in the morning (I’d assumed it was in sympathy with me, or down to the cold weather), the Bongo became progressively more ill. I’m no mechanic, so I took it to one. They tried it out for a couple of days but couldn’t find anything wrong, so I went to pick it up.
Seconds after I’d started it to go home, the juddering commenced, followed by coughing, shivering, then a funereal silence. Feeling perversely pleased that I’d demonstrated that I wasn’t making it up, I left the Bongo with them to be further examined.
The next day I got a call saying that the reason it’d been misbehaving was that the fuel pump had a big leak. Apparently this causes issues with fuel not getting into the engine, which seems perfectly logical. The mechanic slightly scared me when he said that it’d been squirting cold diesel onto the outside of the hot engine for some time. I got confirmation that it would be dangerous to drive it, so it’s stranded now.
At least the diagnosis tallies with the increased smell of diesel I’d noticed a while ago. On reflection, my purchase of one of those “magic tree” car air fresheners probably wasn’t the best response to that warning sign.
Now to source a working fuel pump for a 20 year old Japanese import vehicle, and then coax the mechanic into having a go at fitting it…