breathing

i have some symptoms with me landy which i will try to describe and hopefully someone may have some advice..

the engine is a genuine defender 200 tdi

it is underpowerd at the mo and uphill im down into 2nd or 3rd gear and crawlin.

i have replaced the air filter,installed silicone pipes throughout neither made any difference.

the landy doesnt smoke atall apart from puff of black on start up,even at nite behind me there is no smoke screen in the other cars headlights..

another issue which my mate found the other nite is that the engine is breathing very heavy,when you remove the breather hose at the top of the engine there is a very fine mist type of thing puffing out,if you reconnect this pipe and remove the turbo pipe from the air filter the air filter puffs out the same mist.

the engine runs sweet as a nut so i cant understand whether the lack of power is connected to the engine breathing issue.

can anyone help?

wiltshire landyman said:

i have some symptoms with me landy which i will try to describe and hopefully someone may have some advice..

the engine is a genuine defender 200 tdi

it is underpowerd at the mo and uphill im down into 2nd or 3rd gear and crawlin.

i have replaced the air filter,installed silicone pipes throughout neither made any difference.

the landy doesnt smoke atall apart from puff of black on start up,even at nite behind me there is no smoke screen in the other cars headlights..

another issue which my mate found the other nite is that the engine is breathing very heavy,when you remove the breather hose at the top of the engine there is a very fine mist type of thing puffing out,if you reconnect this pipe and remove the turbo pipe from the air filter the air filter puffs out the same mist.

the engine runs sweet as a nut so i cant understand whether the lack of power is connected to the engine breathing issue.

can anyone help?

Click to expand...

In practice, all engines 'breathe' slightly because there can never be a complete (100% efficient) seal in the cylinders when the engine fires. This is commonly caused by piston ring gaps, worn rings, coked valve seats and in more severe cases, a blown head gasket (between cylinder and oil port), cracked piston crowns, broken piston rings or very badly worn bores. Blow-by seems to be more common place on larger turbo powered diesels however, and my Grandads' dealer serviced Saab 93 sport has more blow-by at 53,000 miles than my 200TDi with possibly over 200,000 miles for example, hence the reason why there is a factory fitted vacuum at the rocker cover / crank case to ensure that these noxious gasses are safely drawn back into the engine and burned.

The tell-tale sign of 'serious' engine wear can be highlighted by performing a simple test on a warm engine. Disconnect the breather pipe between your inlet manifold and cyclone breather unit. Remove your oil level dipstick and then hold your thumb firmly over the opening of the dipstick tube with your other finger blocking the hole on the cyclone breather. Have a friend rev the engine hard for five seconds and then quickly remove your thumb. Does it make a very audible hiss and / or spit oil at you? If there's no such build up of pressure in the crank case, it's not worth worrying about and I'd consider the oily mist that you see being blown out of your rocker cover to be quite normal, especially when the engine warms up.

On the other hand, if it's bellowing out oily mist and you're still worried about it, have a leakage test performed on each cylinder. Anything above 92% efficiency is good, anything below will need attention, but at least you can identify the cylinder causing the problem. To make you feel a little happier about your engine, I have blow by to a certain extent, you can certainly feel it if you out your hand over the oil filler hole, but when I had my cylinders leak tested a few weeks back, each was showing 96% +/- 1, which is very good.

As for your lack of power (if it isn't engine wear):

- Air in fuel (check pickup pipe in fuel tank too)
- Boost diaphragm actuator pipe split / connections leaking
- Boost actuator pin (under boost diaphragm) seized
- Mesh filter in return pipe bolt from fuel injection pump bolt blocked
- Waste gate stuck open / opening too soon
- Waste gate actuator allowing boost to escape
- Brakes binding
- Intercooler leaking

-Pos

cheers for that pos..at least it gives me summit to look for,apart from the lack of power uphill the enjin is as sweet as a nut and on a flat it will pull nicely..

do you fink the lack of power is connected to the breathing?

wiltshire landyman said:

cheers for that pos..at least it gives me summit to look for,apart from the lack of power uphill the enjin is as sweet as a nut and on a flat it will pull nicely..

do you fink the lack of power is connected to the breathing?

Click to expand...

If your engine is worn so badly that all of your compression / combustion is lost from the cylinder into the crank case, then YES, the breathing will pretty much be a tell tale sign of engine wear and therefore power loss, an issue which you will become more apparent on hills. Generally speaking though, blow-by can sometimes look much worse than it is and it may not actually be produced as a result of a badly worn engine, your power loss might not even be an issue with worn bores / rings either and you need to single this out. I'd strongly suggest that you have a leakage test, NOT a compression test performed on all four cylinders. If one of the readings is significantly lower than 92%, or if it does not stay within +/- 2% of the readings from your other cylinders then you can begin to dismantle the engine and work from there. If however, the cylinders aren't leaking (no loss of compression / combustion) you can rule out a worn engine and that will also therefore mean that the amount of blow-by you are seeing is not a sign of engine wear, but rather just an effect of usual engine operation. After all, no combustion gasses leaking from the cylinders means no blow-by.

If you rule the engine out, you could then start looking at other components like your injectors, injection pump and lift pump for example. I have until recently been having the exact same problem you described and it took me about two months to finally fix the problem. I had gone from being able to achieve 45-50MPH in 4th gear down to 30-35MPH in third gear on a big hill near me and it was extremely frustrating. Mine turned out to be a number of things:

1) The horizontal sliding pin under the boost diaphragm in my injection pump was seized shut, which meant that the engine was not getting any extra fuel at extra boost. Freeing this up made an instantaneous and dramatic improvement.

2) My lift pump had given up the ghost and was only providing the fuel filter housing with a midgets spunk load of diesel. I whacked a Delphi pump on the side and it's made a big difference again.

3) I had a weeping injector pipe which was allowing pressurised diesel to escape before it had chance to completely lift the nozzle needle in my injector meaning the spray pattern was poor and the combustion was late.

I also removed the banjo bolt that secures the injection pump to fuel tank return pipe. The bolt is hollowed out, with a plastic mesh filter inside. This mesh was full of crap and the small pin size hole on the outside of the bolt was also blocked. Cleaning this out seems to have made a difference.

I can now pull back up hills like I could before and the engine is running better than ever. It's usually just something straight forward and simple that causes the problem, although finding it and rectifying it is the hardest part.

Have you checked your lift pump?
-Pos

cheers for the info i will work thru your points first and then go from there..many thanks ...rich

Looks like I'm going to be spending the weekend working through that list too

I thought I'd bring the Ninety into work today as I've been telling everyone how great it is since I fitted the 200tdi. I got about 5 miles from home and the power just disappeared - it didn't stop, and would tickover happily, but there was simply no power to accelerate. I turned the engine off for a couple of minutes, when I restarted it all seemed good... for a couple of hundred yards when the same thing happened again - massive loss of power. I managed to limp home at 20mph, and had to jump on my bike to come into work. So I've done no diagnosis as yet. But it "feels" like an extreme fuel starvation type of problem. Bit cheesed off at the moment!

Ian.

instantsquid said:

Looks like I'm going to be spending the weekend working through that list too

I thought I'd bring the Ninety into work today as I've been telling everyone how great it is since I fitted the 200tdi. I got about 5 miles from home and the power just disappeared - it didn't stop, and would tickover happily, but there was simply no power to accelerate. I turned the engine off for a couple of minutes, when I restarted it all seemed good... for a couple of hundred yards when the same thing happened again - massive loss of power. I managed to limp home at 20mph, and had to jump on my bike to come into work. So I've done no diagnosis as yet. But it "feels" like an extreme fuel starvation type of problem. Bit cheesed off at the moment!

Ian.

Click to expand...

Check:

Lift pump - it should launch fuel at the bonnet with the pipe between the pump and the fuel filter housing removed - even when you turn the engine over with your starter.

Fuel pickup pipe - Located in your fuel tank. The pipe can rot through closer to the top of the pipe (on the inside of the tank) or develop pin holes on the tight bend which allow air to be drawn into the system. There may also be a wire mesh on the bottom of the pipe which clogs up with a brown sludge over time. This will significantly restrict fuel flow. If there is no wire mesh, check that there are no large rusty clumps of gunk blocking the pipe.

Fuel line - Blow it through with an air line between the fuel tank and the lift pump to dislodge and remove any solid crud. My lift pump failed when I had a few small rusty scraps of metal from my filler neck preventing the pump diaphragm from operating correctly.

Fuel filter housing - Check that the filter housing has no leaks, especially around the bleed bolt - fit new copper washers if you feel fit.

Fuel filter - Seems obvious but I went through three in two weeks when my tank was full of rotten filler neck pipe and salty brine from the roads. They don't take much to clog up, especially when you consider the amount of fuel that's been drawn through them.

Injection pump - Slacken the bleed nipple on your injection pump and let the engine run. There should be no bubbles present. If there are any bubbles. you have air getting into the system somewhere between the fuel pickup pipe and the injection pump.

Fuel return lines - That run across all four injectors and back to the injection pump / fuel filter housing. They can clog over time and this will effect performance somewhat. This line really needs to be as clear as the supply line. The injection pump delivers a far more than adequate quantity of diesel to the injectors most of the time and it needs somewhere to go.

Other than that, check your air filter and / or any turbo boost pipes for delamination. Turbo diesel engines (19J) also suffer from a split / torn boost diaphragm. 200 and 300 TDi's provide easier access to the diaphragm if needs be. See this guide to help you if you're a TD man:

Replacing a 2.5TD boost diaphragm - LR4x4 - The Land Rover Forum

-Pos

Seems like a few of us are having probs with the 200 conversion then ... mine just seems gutless off boost ( me thinks ill be playing with the pump on the weekend ) .

sypher said:

Seems like a few of us are having probs with the 200 conversion then ... mine just seems gutless off boost ( me thinks ill be playing with the pump on the weekend ) .

Click to expand...

so far ive resisted tweaking the pump as it doesnt smoke atall at the mo

wiltshire landyman said:

so far ive resisted tweaking the pump as it doesnt smoke atall at the mo

Click to expand...

Don't be afraid to play around with the boost diaphragm, you'll need to remove it to get to your 'full fuel' pin anyway, something which I'd suggest you check because it may well just be seized. It can be put back exactly as it was before you started if you're not happy with the results and it wont suddenly start producing loads more smoke either. Freeing up the pin made a very substantial difference to my power and performance and it's really quite a simple job to do. I noticed that in one of your other threads you said that you can see a pipe being sucked flat, is this still the case?

-Pos

Went out for a quick test drive when I got home from work - all back to normal! Part of me is relieved that it's nothing terminal, and part of me is now paranoid wondering when it's going to happen again. Really not sure how to proceed now, as without the engine misbehaving it's gonna be difficult to suss out what went wrong.

Ian.

wiltshire landyman said:

it doesnt smoke atall at the mo

Click to expand...

You could see a mouse fart before mine would smoke ... Id like to see a wee puff now and then but not like this LOL YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Im also looking to retro fit the Discos RPM guage into the 90 to see whats what .

Sorry Hi-jack over

instantsquid said:

Went out for a quick test drive when I got home from work - all back to normal! Part of me is relieved that it's nothing terminal, and part of me is now paranoid wondering when it's going to happen again. Really not sure how to proceed now, as without the engine misbehaving it's gonna be difficult to suss out what went wrong.

Ian.

Click to expand...

Last time this happened to me it was a rotten fuel tank and a blocked fuel filter!

Seeing your pics out playing it looks like you got your prob fixed Wilts .

Update on mine after adjusting the fuel pump due to it being gutless off boost .

Adjusted the the diaphram and the stop screw = have LOADS more power off boost now and the drivability is soooo smooth , the turbo now spools up sweet and progressive , where before it was nothing then bam .
It was difficult to drive smoothly before but not anymore - Great results from a hours tinkering and adjusting to get it spot on with minimal smoke .

sypher said:

Seeing your pics out playing it looks like you got your prob fixed Wilts .

Update on mine after adjusting the fuel pump due to it being gutless off boost .

Adjusted the the diaphram and the stop screw = have LOADS more power off boost now and the drivability is soooo smooth , the turbo now spools up sweet and progressive , where before it was nothing then bam .
It was difficult to drive smoothly before but not anymore - Great results from a hours tinkering and adjusting to get it spot on with minimal
smoke .

Click to expand...

na its still the same...gonna get a look at it this week sometime