losing all power and stalling

hi at a loss on this, father kindly (?) gave me his freelander to drive as he felt it was too much for him. He neglected to mention it's a pile of <bleep>, spent more in garages on this car in the past two years than any car I've ever had, still got more faults to clear (from squeeling wheels (diff?) to brakes binding on (common fault I've been told) , to a leaking tailgate etc etc) however, this latest one is kind of more important, be sitting at lights minding my own, ticking over lovely, go to pull off, and suddenly it starts as if I've asked it to pull off in fourth gear, then stalls, re-start and give it high revs and it goes fine, I'm now driving it on high revs on pulls-off's etc rather than risk it going in a safety critical situation (like when it totally failed coming off a motorway sliproad). i mght add it can happen if for example you go round a corner and apply throttle on the exit...it suddenly starts all the dugh, dugh, loses everything then totally stalls..(occassionally i can save the day by dipping the clutch and giving it a juicy bit of throttle..it revs up and away we go)..despite the fact your going at say 30mph at the time.....re-start and your away again....anyone any ideas, as if i see one more mechanic, drawing in breath when he realises i know nothing about motors then deciding how much he can shaft me for I'll be doing time for murder.:doh:

just in case petrol 1.8, S reg on second K series engine...(first one blew at 60K) currently sitting on 120K

fuel starvation i would check first but not being a freelander owner it could be any thing, but there is a lot of threads on here and people having problems with fuel pumps

Could it be fuel starvation if it revs high off the clutch? Sounds like a confused ECU having issues with a change in demand. Any codes showing at all? Maybe a dirty injector? dunno :s

Give it him back

As near as dammit identical to what mine was doing last month. Turned out to be what the mechanic called "lazy fuel pump". New pump fitted and perfect ever since. Had it done at an unofficial dealership, total cost £402-91, ouch - (pump £255-36, diagnostics £35-00, labour £60-00, VAT £52-59). As this is the only repair bill I've had in the last three years I can't complain, well I could but it'd be a waste of time. If I had been sure it was the pump I'd have done it myself but didn't want to risk being wrong/out of pocket.

might be worth changing fuel filter first, unless you have history when it was changed

Good point freelance, I forgot to mention it :doh:, might save a lot of his money.

sounds more like the vcu is fooked and is causing the engine power to be sucked up by the drive train to me.

I would clean the fuel filter, it is only metal mesh after all

Sounds exactly what my old series started to do after we put a new fuel tank on ... I say we, a Landy specialist put on ... ran fine at tickover, and on full throttle until it had to drive loaded, then it'd cough and wheeze and die, until clutch dipped and revs would soar ... occasionally have a trouble-free drive (for swb S3 values of trouble-free) and it'd pull anything, but mostly scared that it would die when pulling out of tee-junctions or roundabouts!

They hadn't cleaned the tank first so years of dust and sh1te clogged the fuel pick-up in the tank.

Cleaned the pickup, swilled the tank out, added another in-line filter with removable screen and all was well so long as we kept the filter screen clean. Took about five/six tanks full and god knows how many cleans, but eventually we got it to run clean petrol through and all was well ... )