According to my wife, an aspiring private pilot who just flew trans-continental flight in a single engine, there was nothing amiss. A Time for an Oil Change reminder message briefly came on two days before the vehicle’s demise. On the morning it refused to start, she cranked the motor for me to hear over the phone. It sounded fairly normal if somewhat free turning - like as if compression is low or a couple of spark plugs were left unscrewed. Truthfully, it was difficult to tell over the phone. As for the drivability or unusual sounds, nothing was out of order. Although she is not a mechanic, she is a fair car buff. And she is in tune with cars she drives; for example, she noticed slight surging while driving on NJ Tpk years ago and immediately pulled over, saving the vehicle from potentially extensive damages that its broken timing belt could have caused. From what I can gather, the van just refused to start on that morning.
Congrats to your wife for being aware of problems that occur. The majority of people turn the radio up and nail it.
A broken timing belt or chain will definitely cause an engine to sound like it’s free-wheeling. While it’s not possible for me to do, it would sure be interesting to look this vehicle over and get a better handle on things.
I’m having a hard time seeing an '08 with very low miles shucking a belt or chain and at this point I can’t say as I buy into the bad gas, fuel, or whatever they call it problem.
I wished I could be of more help but there’s just too many unknowns on this problem. With no prior bad running problems, no noises, etc. then I would be leaning towards an electronic fault but that’s only a wild guess.
One thing that could cause a vehicle not to start and which can also cause the engine to sound like it’s free-wheeling is this. If the vehicle had an electronic fault in the ECM, etc. which was causing the fuel injectors to remain open all of the time instead of being pulsed then this could lead to excess gasoline being dumped into the cyinders. This excess gas can wash the cylinder walls down and cause low compression. This could cause a failure to start along with an engine that appears to be free-wheeling.
An example of low compression due to fluid would be a lot man at a dealer I worked for who would not leave the starting fluid alone in cold weather. He would go through 3 or 4 cans on cold mornings (unnecessarily) and one could smell Ether all over the lot. It was a running joke that if he lit a cigarette out there the entire dealership was going up in a fireball.
They had a Dodge, low miles, that would not start one morning and after it was pushed into the shop I discovered it was literally reeking with Ether. Compression on all cylinders was in the 60-75 PSI range and an engine will not run on that.
A squirt of oil into each cylinder bumped the pressure back up and the vehicle started and ran fine.
After that, his Ether privileges were severely curtailed.
Ether is not the problem here; only using it as an analogy but excess gas could be.