Disco 1 300tdi Tank filter/strainer - Do I have one?

Graham Carter said:

View attachment 139347
Thats a picture of what is in the Discovery Tdi tank. I don't think there is a strainer as such. But the car definitely ran into problems when the tank was under 1/4 full. Definitely cused by gunge somewhere in this lot.
Good luck!
Graham

Click to expand...

Oops, forgot to say it's consistent from completely empty to full, but worth mentioning, thanks.

While you have that sh1t pin out ! open the throtle up full & the pin that slides up yu sh1t pin should pop out ! & if you get a small screwdriver you should be able to shove it back in ! it should move FREELY ! if it dunt lube it with wd40 or somat like till you get it free moveing

I didn't wanna go out and play with it in the rain last night, so will try it tonight instead, hopefully the weather will be a bit nicer!

Thats a good picture, but that pin is indeed buggered. It should merely be a fine, imperceptible to the touch wear mark even after 10+ years of jigging up and down. The skinny end of the ramp is the juicy business end also - contrary to other evening activities . Looks like it was not hardened correctly or at all!

The pin that rides the wedge as Magicgrotto wisely points out should move freely also, bits of swarf and old age clog the best of us up. The first few secs of this vid show how it should operate:

If all that is merry though it's back to basics and get a boost gauge on as everyone suggests, you can buy a cheapo one for less than 20 quid and bodge it up with some cable ties to a windscreen wiper just to reduce the whats-wrong-checklist, almost any other problem (i.e poor timing, worn valves, low compression for any reason, worn injectors/FIP) *should* result in accompanying smoke of some sort or poor running elsewhere in the rev-range. (i'm assuming there's no black out the back)

Not necessarily related, but as a few others suggested I'd agree with an injector refurb, 230k miles on original nozzles is an ice age! Would be worth paying a specialist the time to clean and re-shim the innards to the correct pop pressures while they're doing the nozzles, but if you want to save the cash just go down to any bosch service center with the part number and you can buy em' direct, had the set of original injectors on my old pug done (150k) a few years back that I put 30k's worth of veg in from start to finish - quite literally night and day difference, and it was less than £140 all in if memory serves - would be more for the landy injectors but not much I wouldn't think.

Quick update - buggering around with bottles and pipes revealed the new leccy fuel pump is faulty, despite making some convincing noises!
So lots of messing about with limited bits of fuel hose to get me back to just the injection pump as the only pump in the system, but can't tell how it is as it's bloody late and I ran out of derv, so have an oil heavy mix in the derv tank at the minute to get me to the tax station tomorrow to fill up.

Then I can compare.
Original boost pin refitted and lubed, and what definitely sounds like a boost leak somewhere - nothing is obvious as I've replaced the elbow from the turbo, the bottom intercooler joint and top air hose with a siliconeCarney set a few months back.

There is some perishing to the air inlet pipe that feeds the turbo though, so I'll swap that out and compare.

Knackered so will reply properly to your post tomorrow bud
Cheers

Poor little pump didnt last five minutes then!

Veg and alternative fuels eat cheap piston style leccy pumps (the sub 30 quid chinese ones, internal seals are poor) and solid state pumps (internals cannot handle anything more viscous than petrol) for breakfast, they're expensive but I've been using the same Facet red top "gold flo" pump for years and years now and it still churns away all the slop I throw in it a treat, it's a worthwhile investment.

Was the sliding pin in the compensator housing alright? (thing that rides the boost pin). Will be worth checking if your intercooler is cracked also once you've had all the hoses off, if that's original it might be the leaky culprit

Yeah I think the pump was faulty out of the box, it's this one - link


I was looking at other types yesterday and looked at these- what do you reckon:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/262150839763

Sliding pin was moving freely, though I sprayed in some light oil lube anyway, as the boost pin area had some black oil in it, looking like a bit of engine oil.

I recently cleaned out the intercooler and didn't notice any leaks - it sat for half an hour with about a litre of brake cleaner in it, shaken every few minutes and sealed with nitrile gloves on the inlet/outlet while it was wet.

At least when the inlet/boost pipe was really oily/dirty inside, any boost leaks showed up as black oily mess on the edges on joints, but now I've cleaned the pipes, manifold and IC out I can't see any oily boost leaks!

Hmm... links not working... hold on

OK, links now working

I'm not that familiar with facet pumps, despite oming from the classic mini scene where they're everywhere on rebuilds...

What's this one like for wvo?

Aye that's the sort of thing i started with, pity nothing good in life comes cheap ey!

The bronze gear scavenge pumps are extremely resilient (the style linked) for all sorts of viscosities, they're not exactly built for a fuel system but maybe it would be acceptable? if you've got a bigger "hand held" pump for veg manufacture / transfer that'll be gear innards, my only doubt would be supply pressure and duty cycle, as usually you can't run them at 100% (i.e, switched on for hours and hours at a time). The facet one I mentioned can be had for £50-60 quid -

Facet red top

No worries about oil under the diaphragm in the compensator, always happens eventually, only a concern if there's loads.

It is possible for an intercooler to have hairline cracks that only leak under pressure, but if you can hear the leak at idle its almost certainly a collapsed hose or split somewhere. Does it smoke once you get your right foot down? Did you check the boost reference feed to the FIP yet? (The little hose that goes around the rear of the engine, bronze T'd off of where the waste-gate actuator is connected to the compressor of the turbo). Might also be worth seeing how well the waste-gate actuator works while you're rummaging over there, if it's stuck partly shut that might be contributing to the problem.

Aye the old school facet silver tops are the go to of anyone working on their old carb powered petrol burners! Not very BMC, leyland or rover original mind you

Ok, so I've got a boost gauge on order, I'd better have a read around for the other bits to pipe the waste gate up to the manifold too, as that's a mod that's been on my list a while.

I've got a spare IC so I'll add that into the testing

Did you ever have any lucky there @Saltlick ?

Sorry the boost gauge arrived Thursday, but I've not had time to try and plumb I in yet, but I get the cheap lecture pump replaced with another faulty one! So they will both be going back.

In the meantime I went over all the fuel lines again and added a non return valve and now have a solid air free fuel system, just without a lift pump at the moment. So without air ingress it's better but not yet right, though how much of that is due to the lack of lift pump I don't yet know. Gotta work tomorrow so won't be able to do anything with it for a few days as I also need to sort out the wife's eurobox Octavia which is possibly jealous and now having all sorts of issues of its own, quite possibly down to ring gumming

Will post up some findings as soon as I can though, thanks for all the helpful suggestions/advice so far!

Bugger on two counts then...

Off topic, is the eurobox a 110hp non pd later variable vane 1.9td? (equally this applies to the 90hp i suppose) I had one of those on veg and although it ran superbly on all sorts of muck it did grubby up internally very easily. As shockingly un sympathetic as it was I found the permanent solution was to drive it like I'd stole it everywhere, all the time - redlined a few times a day once warm, never driven less than 10 miles at time. If it's down to 3 or less cylinders on start up and loads of blow by, you might be able to save it with some strong esters, such as brake cleaner - tip about an inch or so into an ideally warm engine - take the plugs out of course to get it in, leave it overnight - drain it and the oil out next day, refill with any old cheapo oil and then take her out for some of that Italian business mentioned earlier, preferably with some temporary homebrew water injection if it's still bad.

You essentially need to get some high and consistent heat cycles to help keep the rings and valves clean - lots of brief spates over 600-700c. This turns the unburnt fuel to "dust" if you like, and stops it building up in the first place

Unrelated, but change the lifters when you change the cam belt on the vag 1.9tdi's - or before 130-140k miles - that's how mind munched an engine anyway. (possibly related to the thrashing ey lol?)

Bloody Nora, that's exactly the trick - a 110 non pd as they are apparently better veggers but very durdy...
Sterling advice there with the brake clean soak and water injection - that's my new plan followed by ragging it over to yours with some beer st this rate

Aye the direct injection, two stage injectors and VNT turbo make them great on the veg, I think the problem boils down to the fact you don't need to really work the vag lump on a daily basis, plenty of low end grunt to get you by without much right footed input, which inevitably leads to grotty innards.

Best way with the water injection I've found (permanent basis), is buy just the "devils own" methanol injection nozzle, (15-30 quid) (one with a high gallons per hour rate), and couple it to a 12v water pump out of a caravan / motor-home shower (20-40 quid) , these usually have a modest delivery rate and operate between 60-100psi, which is perfect for the meth nozzle mentioned. Then either tap the nozzle into the inlet manifold or boost pipe connected to the manifold depending what you have to hand, & rig it up to a boost actuated switch (20-40 quid) that engages at about 1bar (max boost). Couple that lot with at least a 10 litre water tank in the boot, anything less and you have to refill it painfully often. You can also use the setup to fumigate all sorts of chemicals into the engine as well if needed. I used to run a 20% methanol / 80% water mix, found the meth improved the flame front propagation from the pilot injection and cleaned up the main burn, but anymore than 20% upset the lump at high speed and the high delivery rate needed for the steam cleaning effect of the water.

In a temporary pinch for a big steamy clear out, you can jubilee one of those plant mister nozzles onto your garden hose, take the inlet manifold hose off and rig it up so the engine is drawing the water mist from the hose in while running - then use a couple of bricks to wedge the accelerator down to around 2k - 2.5k RPM, and leave it for as long as you can afford to neighbor rage-wise. You want enough flow to produce some white smoke at the exhaust, and so that the engine is only fractionally "quenched", in that after a few seconds of drawing the water in the revs don't drop more than a hundred or two, and don't show signs of dropping further. Best to keep an eye on the proceedings as well.

Hah aye it was a good guess, I've already made all the veg mistakes over the years already mind, so it wasn't a guess born of any intelligence!

Trouble is the damn things are so fragile and picky, I've been running the disco on veg for about 7 years or so now, and this is the first major issue with it and it's on twice the mileage of the bleedin skoda, plus the disco is a 1996, Vs the skoda at 2002 and I was expecting a lot less trouble...

Aye they are much more so than the old merc 60x series engines, most of the old PSA diesels, perkins in the old rovers and the few prechamber beamer bangers, it's the old trade off of working on a finicky engine in a good shell or working on a rotting senile old car with a more tolerant lump