Td5 fuel lump

I let the fuel gauge drop into orange earlier. Something I rarely do on any car but I did.
It drove home fine and didn’t think anything more of it.
Just went to go to the shop and the fuel pump whine is a fair bit louder with a gurgling noise to it.
I know this is a death symptom but could I be lucky enough that it’s actually out of fuel! It’s just in orange - not red

If you put some diesel in it and do a purge you may be lucky

Thanks. I had no faith so ordered a new one and glad I did! This car has been bodged to fcuk!!


And the gauge cable!! Guessing it got brutalized by the prick who fitted it. A little twist was good enough for him though...

What a bloody difference!!!! Sings along for now lol

Interesting set of priorities on the part of the last person to work on it. It's generally a lot of work getting the fuel pump out and putting it back in on a TD5, even if you've cut a hole in the boot floor. The few minutes extra needed to fit a proper connector or solder it are inconsequential by comparison. Yet someone would rather just loosely twist the wires together in the knowledge that when they come apart you'll have to take the whole lot out again.

Brown said:

Interesting set of priorities on the part of the last person to work on it. It's generally a lot of work getting the fuel pump out and putting it back in on a TD5, even if you've cut a hole in the boot floor. The few minutes extra needed to fit a proper connector or solder it are inconsequential by comparison. Yet someone would rather just loosely twist the wires together in the knowledge that when they come apart you'll have to take the whole lot out again.

Click to expand...

beggars belief. 0 logic is there. I have a different theory. The day after I bought it I took it back to the ‘specialist’ as I filled it and diesel came out of top of tank so was obvious no pump seal present. As such, the tech whom removed pump to fit seal would have both seen the missing guard and swirl pot guard and also seen the wire or snapped the wire. I’d guess some clown snapped the wire removing/installing.
It pulls amazingly now and i only found it was remapped when I pulled ecu to clean injector loom!

Oh and that gauge was out by around 1/4 of a tank - when I fitted new pump it shot up lol

resto_d1 said:

Oh and that gauge was out by around 1/4 of a tank - when I fitted new pump it shot up lol

Click to expand...

That can be a mixed blessing. My old pump/sender allowed be to drive a few miles to find a garage once the warning light came on. Then I put a new one in and the reading was more optimistic but you didn't get any room for manoeuvre at the lower end. That was a cheap one and was replaced after a couple of years and now I have a Siemens unit that is somewhere between the two.

My Land Rover leaked fuel from around the pump when I got it too, especially when the tank was full. On inspection it appeared someone had cross threaded the retaining ring so it wasn't all the way down; at least not far enough to squeeze the seal so it was fuel tight. So I replaced the seal and retaining ring and it was much better.

Brown said:

That can be a mixed blessing. My old pump/sender allowed be to drive a few miles to find a garage once the warning light came on. Then I put a new one in and the reading was more optimistic but you didn't get any room for manoeuvre at the lower end. That was a cheap one and was replaced after a couple of years and now I have a Siemens unit that is somewhere between the two.

My Land Rover leaked fuel from around the pump when I got it too, especially when the tank was full. On inspection it appeared someone had cross threaded the retaining ring so it wasn't all the way down; at least not far enough to squeeze the seal so it was fuel tight. So I replaced the seal and retaining ring and it was much better.

Click to expand...

that’s actually difficult to do
Yeah I replaced with VDO which I think is Siemens or Siemens used to be VDO. Can’t remember. It goes really well now. Well for a defender ha!

resto_d1 said:

that’s actually difficult to do
Yeah I replaced with VDO which I think is Siemens or Siemens used to be VDO. Can’t remember. It goes really well now. Well for a defender ha!

Click to expand...

I think my current one says VDO Siemens on it. Fortunately I haven't needed to look at it for several years so I've almost forgotten. A new fuel pump makes quite a difference to the performance sometimes. When this one was fitted I noticed on some of the hills I go up regularly that I was needing to change down much later - sailing up at 30 in 4th rather than labouring up in 3rd or 2nd at 20. The injectors only have little holes in them to scavenge the fuel out of the gallery in the head, about the size of the holes in the side of Biros, so a bit more pressure makes a difference. Almost as good as a remap.