Hi - Hope one of you experts can direct me to a solution. I have a 96 TDI ES Automatic.
Head gasket blew on me in France, had it replaced and head skimmed. Seemed ok but ocassionally (Maybe once a week) she'll mis-fire, not sure if it's fuel starvation, or maybe even the geabox hunting for a gear. I've had a 'local garage expert' look at it for me (He's into off roading with a landy) and he cannot pinpoint the problem.
Any ideas ?

most likely is fuel problem or an air leak somewhere.
then again it could be an electronic gremlin.

i reckon this is a **** in the fuel problem. diesels don't actually misfire. thats a special treat kept only for petrol engines.

Fuel issue I would have though, check the tank, drain if need be not a bad job if you run it down to a few gallons, keep it in something reasonably clean, filter it befor pouring back in if you suspect its quality.

Then pour some fresh stuff through the filler and let it come out the plug to remove any debries, parafin will do.

Replace fuel filter, once tank re-filled, bring some fuel through on the lift pump and pull the pipe off so it can squirt out, then connect it back up beed what needs bled, nothing if its the 300TDI, 200 I am not sure about,however prime the fuel filter, saves battery cranking while it fills.

Some may say that is too much work and may not sort it, but its worked for me.

to bleed a 200tdi there is a lever on the pump.

There is a lever on almost all diesel engine lift pumps, this is the lift pump manual priming lever used to prime fuel lines, but in the case of the 300tdi (fitted with a standard lift pump with lever also) you can turn it on with a completly empty fuel filter, empty pipes full of air and it will self bleed.

With the 200tdi I am not sure if it will do this or you have to undo nuts and unions all over the place and pump that lever to get air free fuel spilling from them all, the injector pump bleeding will require that the ignition is on to lift the fuel shut off valve.