Intermittent check engine light with loss of power D2 TD5

[Pads]

Hi All. First post and thread, go easy on the rookie!

I am new to diesels and to 4WD's so am on a bit of a learning curve here, though am happy to twirl the spanners if need be.

I purchased a 99 D2 TD5 manual about 2 weeks ago and until last weekend, everything was running almost perfectly. I had a few occurences where 1 or 2 of the 3 amigos would appear for a while, but after the first few days and about 250km driven this stopped happening completely.

Last weekend I started up from cold and after driving less than 10m the yellow check engine light came on and the engine just kept idling, but pressing the accelerator didnt cause any reaction at all. It felt like it had gone into a limp mode for want of a better description (are these drive by wire?).

I stopped the engine, waited a minute or so, started up and all was good. Then about 20 minutes later it happened again while I was at speed. Light on, complete loss of power, but the engine just idles. Stopping and starting cleared it again. On my trip home it happened 3 more times, sometimes when starting from the traffic lights (annoying) and once while entering a roundabout at speed (dangerous!).

I have done some reading through the "Good Oil" section, tried some searches both here and on various other forums and have found people who have had similar though not the same issues ranging from MAFs, crank position sensors, oil in the harness etc etc and I am not sure where to start. Information overload!

The only other thing that happened was the "Water in fuel" light displayed briefly once then disappeared, but from what I have read this can be fairly safely ignored unless it stays on. I have ordered the Rave II CD to help out with any work I will need to do, but that won't get here for a while.

I also saw that it is possible to get the devices that read the codes in the computer. Are they available for purchase in AUS or do I need to look overseas for them?

So with the weekend coming up I was hoping to get some cutting edge advice from the people in the know about where to start and what to look for. Any help much appreciated, even if it is to point out what I obviously missed. :p

Cheers,
Pads

[Pads]

And now I have made a truly rookie error and posted it in the wrong forum completely... Could a moderator please move this to the Discovery 2 forum please? Thanks.

Pads

[justinc]

And I'll add this first, the throttle pedal/ potentiometer will be the culprit. To verify, 'Driver demand circuit error' codes will be found if this is the fault.

JC

[Aaron IIA]

If it still has the factory injector wiring loom, I would not rule out oil contamination in the loom and computer. Check for oil in the computer.

Aaron.

[Pads]

And I'll add this first, the throttle pedal/ potentiometer will be the culprit. To verify, 'Driver demand circuit error' codes will be found if this is the fault.

JC

Does anyone know how much a dealer charges to do this check? I guess I need to try and get my own unit to read the codes as I have read they pay for themselves over time.

Will have a poke around but until I get the Rave cd I will be just guessing, though I can check out the harness for oil.

Can I get this moved to the Disco 2 section please? I posted it in the wrong section by mistake. Cheers,

Pads

[Discobaker]

Does anyone know how much a dealer charges to do this check? I guess I need to try and get my own unit to read the codes as I have read they pay for themselves over time.

Will have a poke around but until I get the Rave cd I will be just guessing, though I can check out the harness for oil.

Can I get this moved to the Disco 2 section please? I posted it in the wrong section by mistake. Cheers,

Pads

G'day & welcome, I've got the V8 model & assuming the process of reading the codes b/w both the td5 & 4L are similar my mech asked fir $65 to read the error codes for me. I was a reasonably new customer to him & the price dropped to $50 as soon as I mentioned paying cash.
It's a rough gauge at least I guess.
Cheers

[RR P38]

Sounds like oil in the injector harness.
If you have cruise control you can pretty much drive normally once you get above 45ks, that is use the pedal carefully and then use the cruise button.
Yes it is fly by wire.
I drove like this for 200k while i was on a trip.
It is an easy job changing the injector harness 2 hrs tops, you could do it in 1 hr if you were not fussy about cleaning things up to much.
Order a new timing cover seal at the same time.
I put a wet and dry vac on my engine harness to pull the oil back out of it 10 minutes of sucking seemed to clear that, but it is the injector harness that needs changing.
You can clean them out with metho but on a time/cost basis its not worth it.
People talk about oil getting into the computer but i dont see any evidence of that on mine.

[strangy]

Hi Pads and welcome. It is easy to become overwhelmed with these for the first time.

I think JC has got it right.

Have a look at the "members with diagnostic equipment" Living in Sydney you will likely have someone very close with nanocom or similar.

As already mentioned by yourself (well done doing the search) and others the issue will be 0ne of 3 things TPS, Oil in the loom or Crank Position sensor.

So under the bonnet on drivers side behind the battery you will see the ECU with a black plug and a Red plug. Carefuly remove the red one and look for any oil. If oil is there use some contact cleaner (spray can from Repco Super cheap etc) Check the black one too and refit. (10 minutes effort. If the problem goes away or improves this will be the culprit. A replacement loom will be permanent cure.

The Crank Position Sensor is on the drivers side at about the 11 oclock position (when looking in from the front) on the gearbox bell housing. Reaching in or from underneath whith engine running and giving it a wriggle will usually bring up the fault if it is the CPS. (not a 100% guarantee) But saving you a bit of labour at the mechanic.

The Throttle Potiometer or TPS is harder to check without a multi meter or diagnostic equipment but as JC said will be the issue if the others come up OK.

One final thing not metioned is asocitaed with a modified ECU and poor pin contact internally. (wouldnt even bother if STD ECU)

I would suggest the hrly rate of $100 to be expected and 1/2 an hour is all that should be required.
* NOTE diagnostic tools point to the component associate with the fault and do not always pin point the fault itself, so take the time do all the checks of plugs earths etc before you change anything.

If you take it to a mech. Remember that the TD5 has specific communication protocols and not every diagnostic tool will communicate so check first.


With a little time and reading you will end up feeling very confident with your TD5.

cheers

[justinc]

Hi Pads and welcome. It is easy to become overwhelmed with these for the first time.

I think JC has got it right.

Have a look at the "members with diagnostic equipment" Living in Sydney you will likely have someone very close with nanocom or similar.

As already mentioned by yourself (well done doing the search) and others the issue will be 0ne of 3 things TPS, Oil in the loom or Crank Position sensor.

So under the bonnet on drivers side behind the battery you will see the ECU with a black plug and a Red plug. Carefuly remove the red one and look for any oil. If oil is there use some contact cleaner (spray can from Repco Super cheap etc) Check the black one too and refit. (10 minutes effort. If the problem goes away or improves this will be the culprit. A replacement loom will be permanent cure.

The Crank Position Sensor is on the drivers side at about the 11 oclock position (when looking in from the front) on the gearbox bell housing. Reaching in or from underneath whith engine running and giving it a wriggle will usually bring up the fault if it is the CPS. (not a 100% guarantee) But saving you a bit of labour at the mechanic.

The Throttle Potiometer or TPS is harder to check without a multi meter or diagnostic equipment but as JC said will be the issue if the others come up OK.

One final thing not metioned is asocitaed with a modified ECU and poor pin contact internally. (wouldnt even bother if STD ECU)

I would suggest the hrly rate of $100 to be expected and 1/2 an hour is all that should be required.
* NOTE diagnostic tools point to the component associate with the fault and do not always pin point the fault itself, so take the time do all the checks of plugs earths etc before you change anything.

If you take it to a mech. Remember that the TD5 has specific communication protocols and not every diagnostic tool will communicate so check first.


With a little time and reading you will end up feeling very confident with your TD5.

cheers

That is very good advice, all the info and diagnostic tools are available, and compared to other makes of vehicle are very cheap IMHO. Plus we are all here to help, so get to it:)

JC

[CowsGoMoo]

My 99 TD5 developed this exact issue. Not fun cutting out multiple times in the harbour tunnel.

I tried changing the throttle assembly to no avail. Ended up being spread contacts on the connector plugging into the throttle assembly.

In general what happens is 5V is fed to the potentiometers in the throttle. As it is depressed one sensor will read from 0V to 5V and the other will read from 5V to 0V. At any position the voltage read from both sensors should add up to 5 V. If it does not correctly add up to 5V the ECU assumes there is a problem reading the throttle position and flags the fault and drops the engine back to idle.

Early D2 had a 2 track throttle, later they changed it to 3 track. Just have to be aware if replacing the assembly.

[justinc]

My 99 TD5 developed this exact issue. Not fun cutting out multiple times in the harbour tunnel.

I tried changing the throttle assembly to no avail. Ended up being spread contacts on the connector plugging into the throttle assembly.

In general what happens is 5V is fed to the potentiometers in the throttle. As it is depressed one sensor will read from 0V to 5V and the other will read from 5V to 0V. At any position the voltage read from both sensors should add up to 5 V. If it does not correctly add up to 5V the ECU assumes there is a problem reading the throttle position and flags the fault and drops the engine back to idle.

Early D2 had a 2 track throttle, later they changed it to 3 track. Just have to be aware if replacing the assembly.


Correct, but 2 track not available anymore. The 3 track is fine, it just doesn't have connections for the 3rd track in the early plug. It's only a prob if you try to fit a 2 track pedal to a later one.

And yes, I have heard the pins can be a problem, definately worth giving them a little tweak. Carefully.

JC

[Pads]

Thanks all for the replies, exactly what I was hoping to get! Now it is up to me to go and check all this out. I found to my dismay that all the parts places seemed to be closed on the weekend!

I guess that is what happens when you have had a late model car for over 10 years and not had a single issue. Back to the real world! :) In truth that is partly why I purchased a Land Rover so I could get a little dirty again. We will see if I have bitten off more than I can chew.

Oh and I do have some multimeters and saw a link to a video somewhere around here on how to test the TPS, so I plan to have a crack at that too. Loom first though as that is easier methinks. The post by RR P38 is interesting and would seem to indicate that if the problem *doesn't* occur while using cruise control that it is more likely to be the TPS and if it does than it is not. Not a lock I know, but seems like a good indicator.

Looks like I have my work cut out for me tomorrow. I will let you know how I go. Cheers,

Pads

[RR P38]

With the diagnostics nothing actually showed up that pointed to the injector harness having a problem when i had my limp home problems.
So i wasted $50 having it checked out.
My harness had a 2006 tag on it so i guess 4 years was a good run.

Go easy on the bolts on your timing cover, use a tension wrench.

[CowsGoMoo]

Mine didn't shut down when on cruise control. The Check Engine light would still light amber but I could continue on cruise control. Soon as I took it off cruise control the engine would go to idle and I'd have to restart the engine to clear the fault.

[Pads]

Update.

Pulled out the plugs on the ECU and spotted some oil (ECU only held on by one screw, is this normal?). Didn’t seem like much but a good spray with some cleaner saw quite a bit of blackish stuff come out of both the red and black plugs, did the ECU too.

I decided to try and see how hard it was to pull the loom out, but after pulling the battery out and discovering a hell of a lot of corrosive type sludge in the bottom of the battery box I got distracted. 3 out of the 4 bolts were badly corroded at the bottom of the battery box, got 3 out in fairly quick time, but the last one was bad, after a about ½ hr of work I got it out with an 11mm socket (not bad considering it used to be 13mm!). Took it all out and thoroughly cleaned it, the battery and below where the box goes.

Found some replacement bolts (had to replace 4), lucky my dad has a large box of random bolts that have accumulated over the years! Put it all back in, coated the bolts in fish oil (just in case) and for the time being put the stuff on the battery bracket and bolts that converts rust into a paintable surface (forgot it’s name) and put some vaseline on the battery connections so for the foreseeable future there should be no further rust/corrosion in that section.

In the meantime I looked at the loom, and it looked reasonably complicated to just pull off with no documentation on hand (wires converging into larger looms, then splitting out to many different places. This will change soon when my Rave CD arrives), so for the moment I have left it place. It had some yellow electrical tape on it in places so I think it has been worked on before.

The good news is that after putting it all back together the problem has not re-appeared after approx 20kms of stop start driving. It occurred 3 times inside of 5kms before that. So I think I have temporarily fixed it and also identified the culprit. I didn’t have the right type of torque wrench (mine had no holes in them) to open the ECU and check for oil there.

So short story is I think my problem was oil in the loom. I now need to work on a more permanent solution to it. Anyone got a ballpark on what it costs to replace the loom (just the parts, not labour)? I will re-read through the threads on this now and see if I can possibly recondition mine and fix it permanently (saw someone had used an epoxy to stop the oil). Also thinking on an ECU upgrade for Xmas, though not sure if this will cause me more trouble at the moment...

Thanks for the help guys! I will surely be back as there are many questions still to be asked (only just worked out the little black box near my shin while driving are electric brakes! Still don’t know how to use ‘em or why though! :))

Pads

[RR P38]

The parts, Harness and the timing cover gasket are about $120.
Yep normal that there is only one screw holding the ECU, somebody else has been at it.
If you have cleaned the oil out of the plug on the drivers side (front) of the
timing cover that should see you ok for a a week or 2 it just depends how fast the oil is migrating through the harness.
Have a look in the Good oil on this site there are some good tutorials on how to do the job, i would rate it a 2-3 out of 10 for difficulty.

[discolaw]

Replacing the harness with an LR one means it will probably eventually leak again. What you need is a harness modified to prevent leaking. I didn't know about them being available when I changed mine but I'll know for next time. I believe you can get them from MR automotive in Brisbane (Redcliffe)
Cheers Discolaw

[Pads]

@RR P38
$120 odd is not too bad, I was thinking it was over $1k, but now I understand that there are 2 harnesses, the injector one (in the engine itself) and the ECU harness (this is the expensive one). I think I will look at flushing the ECU one and replacing the injector one and maybe flushing the old one as a spare.

@discolaw
I was looking into doing that myself, but if there is already one that has been modified, and presumably better than I could do it, then it is worth checking out. Thanks.

Any one know if there is something like this in Sydney? If not I will look up Mr Automotive. Cheers,

Pads

[justinc]

$120 is for the AMR6103 injector loom, inside the rocker cover. You will need a new rocker cover gasket aswell.
Use CO contact cleaner to clean the ECU plugs, and the plug at the front of the head where it goes up into the rocker box. Search here for 'oil in loom' fixes, it has it all there.
You do not need to replace the complete engine harness, just clean again at least once after replacing the injector loom.
There is no need to open up the computer, oil in there will not hurt it.

JC

[CowsGoMoo]

My shut down issues went away for 6 months before returning..... :angel:

[Pads]

I have just purchased the injector loom and timing cover gasket. They should be here tomorrow, in time for me to get my hands dirty over Xmas! :D

I ended up going with discolaw's suggestion (thanks!) to get the pre-sealed injector loom from MR automotive in Brisbane. I figured the extra $$ (only about $30) would be worthwhile it if lasts a few years extra.

I spoke to Dwayne at MR and he said that they don't guarantee it will be permanent, but haven't had to replace one they have done yet. Good enough for me. He also mentioned he didn't think you needed to flush the ECU loom, but that if you were to check and clean the plug at the ECU every week or 2 (which is a 10 min job) that eventually the oil would stop coming (assuming you have replaced the injector loom of course). Sounds reasonable, but I will see how I travel.

Also thanks to RR P38 for pointing me in the right direction with regards to part no's and places I didn't know about to purchase in Sydney, plus even going so far as to give me some in person tips later in the week. Cheers,

Pads

[discolaw]

If you are not on to it already make sure you check out Mr. U. Panzers site for his v. helpful step by step tute on the job.
www.discovery2.co.uk (http://www.discovery2.co.uk)
cheers Discolaw

[Pads]

If you are not on to it already make sure you check out Mr. U. Panzers site for his v. helpful step by step tute on the job.
www.discovery2.co.uk (http://www.discovery2.co.uk)
cheers Discolaw

Thanks that is a nice guide. Pics and everything! Now I just have to do it. Cheers,

Pads