I was out green laning today around Flintshire/Denbighshire when I realised I had water running out of my radiator! Ok no problem I got home and started taking the radiator out as I found a big hole in it where a branch had gone through it! When taking the radiator off I removed the air filter unit to fined oily sludge in the bottom of the air filter unit. I took the filter out and that was also covered in oil!

My question is this, should their be oil in the bottom of the air filter unit and also saturated through the filter?

This might explain the poor engine performance and poor fuel economy!

Any help people.

Ah yes before I forget its a Defender 2.5 Diesel (Normally aspirated)

haha, i had this problem / still do, if its breathing heavy it will pass oil down the rocker breather pipe in to the air filter , then some will be sucked back in to the engine and burned off, some will cling to the air filter and soak it , making the exhaust smoke slightly, you can disconect the breather pipe and stick it down the side of the engine , till the mot , when you change the filter for a new one and re-connect the pipe, i still havnt got to the bottom of the problem with mine, and no its not an oil bath filter , as the old series petrols were !

I am also having the quite same problem as the inlet manifold in mine seems to be getting oil and some oil seems to get out of the breather as well, this maybe due to back pressure from the rings i guess?

yes crankcase compression, got the same with mine.LEE

same here too, with some back compression and rear crankcase seal leak. the Landy drinks oil too.

looked quickly at the cost of new pistons, gaskets etcetera yesterday and should be able to repair for approx 100 quid, so not so bad. just gotta find the time.

wack a bigger turbo on to deal with the oil

funnily enough BoB the problem reared its ugly head immediately after i changed the turbo, so put the breather pipe into plastic bottle fitted to inner wing, don't smoke half as much now. LEE

bevhelee said:

funnily enough BoB the problem reared its ugly head immediately after i changed the turbo, so put the breather pipe into plastic bottle fitted to inner wing, don't smoke half as much now. LEE

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Sorry I have not replied to my own post, been busy doing tapits and finding all sorts of other issues like tapit adjuster screw snapped in half! only £2 though.

I think this will be my fix also to use a plastic bottle as changing the pistons seems like a long job! I know some of you might laugh but pistons is a job for another day as I dont have the time at the moment!

Like you all have said mine is probably the piston rings as the engine has done 157k. I have changed the air filter now. The fuel filter I am thinking was the original from when it left the factory due to the amount of crap i cleaned out of the bottom of the filter housing!

I am hopeing by adjusting the tapits, which needed alot of adjusting, and also changing the air filter my beast will be a little less thursty! before these adjustments it was doing about 200 miles to a tank which cost about £40 to fill! But then again this is my first Land Rover so this is probably normal!?