guys this happened a few months back, i bought a replacement engine from ebay £500 all now working as good as before, ,
have a look under the thread , engine sounds like a hedge cutter
here is the story:- i was driving along about 50mph, and all of a sudden there was this ticking noise, and lost all power ,the engine stopped,
i had to be recovered home by the AA, there appeared to be no compression ,
on investigation , i eventually found the exhaust cam sprocket had come loose, so set about retiming the engine, there was no valve damage as these engines seem to be valve safe,
after a lot of messing about i eventually get the engine to run, although it sounded really bad ,it sounded like the worst case of diesel clatter i had ever heard,all injectors were then removed for testing all working ok , after running it for a short while the crank pully then decides to fall into two pieces ,this was replaced with a new one, the engine started again but still clattering , i gave it a few revs thinking do or die , and bang that was the end of that,,, a snapped crank,
i actually think the engine had been running for this short time with the crank in two pieces or cracked and the big end had been keeping it in place, causing the sprocket to become loosen , when the engine was removed and stripped , there was no damage apart from the crank, the valves pistons and everything else seemed perfect condition, , so i guess its just one of those things