smoking landrover

After 18 months of messing around and an astronomical amount of money spent on two sets of injectors, a
turbo and more sensors than you can shake a stick at, was still unable to cure the smoke problem.
In desperation (after all the so called sound advice from everywhere and everybody) i put my
Freelander 1 td4 into Stratstone Landrover. Low and behold, they found the problem straight away. It turns out it was a split inlet manifold gasket, (not air intake manifold, just to avoid confusion). So, Expensive, yes, was it worth it, Yes! Could have saved a fortune and god knows how many hours of wasted time by not listening to all the so called good advice. DIYers beware!

How can it be a split inlet gasket, if it's not the inlet manifold? There's no gaskets anywhere the inlet tract anyway, it's all sealed with large O rings.

What did LR do to find the fault so quickly? If it was that obvious, then it should have been picked up earlier.

A split O ring seal should have been obvious while all the other work was being done.

bluegrass said:

(after all the so called sound advice from everywhere and everybody)

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Childish comments like that won't help if you want future advice.

Advice is free and at a distance. Finding faults is totally reliant on the person working on the vehicle to actually use there eyes.

For the record, split inlet O rings isn't common and should be obvious to anyone pulling the inlet manifold off.

A smoky Td4 can have many causes - injectors, turbo, sensors, boost leaks... I’ve not seen a split manifold O-ring on here before. Yours was an unusual fault. I’m not surprised that some free advice from strangers on the internet, who can’t see your car, and who are trying to guide a non-expert, didn’t help in this case.

A boost leak that is enough to affect fuelling should make a hissing or whooshing noise, which is presumably how your LR garage found it. So rather than asking why we didn’t find it, why didn’t you find it? You’re next to the car, after all. I bet a boost leak was quite high on the list of suggestions, but you’re the one who has to find it, not us.

I’d also bet that diagnostics were suggested. Did you have a go at that before whacking on two sets of injectors and a turbo? We can make suggestions as to the cause of your problem, but only you have control over the process of problem-solving, and of your wallet. If you try to fix a car without a diagnosis, only by throwing parts at it, you’re bound to waste money and time.

We didn’t help much in your case, but there are many on here who have been helped in the past, and will be in the future. Diagnosis from forum advice requires careful thought and observation on the part of the OP. Just have a think about who exactly is to blame for your wasted money, before you write passive-aggressive posts at 2 in the morning.

I’m going to hijack this thread if you don’t mind and ask for some advice re: smoking; I’ve just fitted an EGR bypass, and replaced all the hoses with DPH silicone ones. Just went to start it up, and through 2000rpm smoke appears from around the EGR area.

I suspect I have a dodgy injector (metallic ringing noise at 2000rpm and lumpy idle, decent amount of smoke on start-up) - I will try and take a video to show, but even with someone revving the car for me I can’t see an obvious place where the smoke is coming.

Can anyone please offer a checklist to follow to try and pin this down?

It may well be that it’s always been smoking, I’ve just never revved the engine with the bonnet open before.

There's a bit of flexi exhaust pipe that links to the EGR that you also fit to the bypass, has it sealed correctly, also it's not unknown for this pipe to split/break when messing with it to fit the bypass.

longdog said:

There's a bit of flexi exhaust pipe that links to the EGR that you also fit to the bypass, has it sealed correctly, also it's not unknown for this pipe to split/break when messing with it to fit the bypass.

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Are you referring to the vacuum pipe, or the part which is clamped in place using the jubilee clamp? Both seem okay, but will try plugging up the vacuum pipe as it’s a bit too short to fit easily on the mod.

Nodge68 said:

How can it be a split inlet gasket, if it's not the inlet manifold? There's no gaskets anywhere the inlet tract anyway, it's all sealed with large O rings.

What did LR do to find the fault so quickly? If it was that obvious, then it should have been picked up earlier.

A split O ring seal should have been obvious while all the other work was being done.



Childish comments like that won't help if you want future advice.

Advice is free and at a distance. Finding faults is totally reliant on the person working on the vehicle to actually use there eyes.

For the record, split inlet O rings isn't common and should be obvious to anyone pulling the inlet manifold off.

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How very dare you Nodge.
Of course it was your fault for not using your spidy senses to correctly diagnose this chaps fault remotely, unseen, unheard, with dodgy/little/none (delete as applicable) feedback from the OP.
You should have known it was a none existent part causing the problem and magic'd it better with your laser eyes.

+1 on the sentiment of this!

Everyone can identify with the frustration of trying to track down an elusive fault, but you have to help yourself to get help from others.

To have been through such a long "journey" trying to resolve a problem and not know all the bits on first name terms, points to a lack of self help. To still have a fundamental lack of understanding whilst blaming others is pretty poor.

The thread i posted on this subject was not meant to be taken personally by anyone on this forum as a lot of advice was given by
professional mechanics. Some of the replies here have as i have said have been taken in the wrong text and should be thought over
more carefully before posting such personal comments as "childish" ? Think before you get that personal

bluegrass said:

The thread i posted on this subject was not meant to be taken personally by anyone on this forum as a lot of advice was given by
professional mechanics. Some of the replies here have as i have said have been taken in the wrong text and should be thought over
more carefully before posting such personal comments as "childish" ? Think before you get that personal

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bluegrass said:

After 18 months of messing around and an astronomical amount of money spent on two sets of injectors, a
turbo and more sensors than you can shake a stick at, was still unable to cure the smoke problem.
In desperation (after all the so called sound advice from everywhere and everybody) i put my
Freelander 1 td4 into Stratstone Landrover. Low and behold, they found the problem straight away. It turns out it was a split inlet manifold gasket, (not air intake manifold, just to avoid confusion). So, Expensive, yes, was it worth it, Yes! Could have saved a fortune and god knows how many hours of wasted time by not listening to all the so called good advice. DIYers beware!

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I'm not sure how we were meant to take the original post other than personally. I've reposted it and highlighted the bits where you had a pop at the folk here who had tried to help.

Yes, the tone of online posts can be interpreted in lots of ways, because they’re missing the usual social cues, etc.

Oddly, all the replies to your post have taken it as criticism. Perhaps it was the general references to “so-called sound advice” and “so-called good advice”. If you’re having a general rant about DIYing, but not taking a pop at the forum, say so. We can’t tell what your voice and body language are doing.

And don’t forget - Stratstone Land Rover had the advantage of being able to rule out the things you had already replaced. There’s many a thread on here where a garage has thrown lots of parts at a car, only to find something simple after much wasted money.

guineafowl21 said:

Perhaps it was the general references to “so-called sound advice” and “so-called good advice”. If you’re having a general rant about DIYing, but not taking a pop at the forum, say so.

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That's what got my goat.

guineafowl21 said:

And don’t forget - Stratstone Land Rover had the advantage of being able to rule out the things you had already replaced.

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Don't forget that Stratstone also had the vehicle to look at, not some vague description of the fault over the internet from OP. The OP is responsible for looking at the vehicle, reported back what he/ she has spotted. If he/she doesn't notice a leaking O ring and proceeds to replace injectors and all manner of other expensive items, then who's to blame?

I know who isn't to blame, that's for sure.

bluegrass said:

Think before you get that personal

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Ouch!

You should have thought that before you worded your first post. And then again with your 2nd post - all you had to do was clarify the situation - not make make "personal" statements because YOU made a hash of your first post and got the sort of replies the wording of the post deserved.