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Dorian
11th June 2017, 09:25 AM
Have been waiting until the insurance stuff was cut and dried until I posted this.

Thursday of the big wet we had in SE Qld (before Easter), was traveling to work on the freeway heading south. The Defer (MY13) lost power and the engine light came on. Was able to get to the LHS side without too much bother and being within 500m of an exit ramp limp mode-ed off the freeway and found the first place that looked OK for a tilt tray.[bigsad] Turned the car off and looked under the everything for a sign of the trouble. Couldn't find anything so after about 10 mins thought I'd try starting before calling the RACQ. Car started fine but engine light still on, turned it off waited for a minute tried again no engine light, drove off all seemed OK. On the way to work, stopped at SBL to get the error code read and cleared. Oddly enough I'd had the car booked in for a service with him for the following week.

ECU showed P228C-77 without looking it up again it was something like " actuator at full stroke but pressure not in range within time allowed". Hmmm -- assuming that it's talking about the fuel system, had SBL order a new VCV and fuel filter.

Drove to work and later, home, no problem. At home plugged the ultra scan back in and set it up to show the fuel rail pressure, next morning drove to work, and sure enough on the same stretch of road same problem, fuel pressure was somewhere north of 25K psi. After a few more trials determined that the engine light would come on only when the engine was fully loaded.
Saturday morning rocked up to SBL to put in the VCV, MR had supplied him with a 2.4L VCV, so up to MR who apologized but said the VCV can't be your problem because 2.2's don't have that problem (understandable and turns out they were right). So short of this neither MR or Land Rover had a VCV in the country. Nine day wait to get one in from the UK, didn't order it as thought that I needed to do a bit more research.
Back home to change the fuel filter. Filter off, tipped it into a container as I like to see what comes out.

Container on right is identical to the one on the left but filled with fuel from a Jerry.
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So going back a bit, we'd gone to Noosaville for 4 days the week end before. I'd filled up on the way. On the 3rd day I'd had a feeling that the car was a bit sluggish and thought it may be blowing a wee bit more smoke than the wee bit it usually does and on the 4th day it seemed to have trouble towing the boat back to Brisbane. When I'd filled up it was bucketing down, so I don't know if the water was in the fuel or got in during the fill up, I'd like to think that it wasn't in the fuel but can't see how it would get in while I was filling up. The scary part is that after I had the first Engine light on I'd filled up again, so this picture shows the result after 40L of clean fuel was put in with the watery stuff.

After a chat with a few people, I called my insurance company, who eventually fixed it. The work they did (not in order) included a full fuel system clean, replaced the tank pump, HP fuel pump, VCV, 4 injectors, Pressure Sensor, the fuel filter again and a few other things which had to get replaced in order to get the fuel pump and injectors changed over. The process going thru the insurance company took just under 6 weeks.

So for me, lessons learnt ? - Don't have an insurance claim in the week after a major flood or hope to get anything done the week before Easter. I'd like to say check the fuel filter drain for water on the first sign of problems but in reality if I had caught it earlier I might have been left with a fuel system that worked but not very well.

I have installed a Diesel Care secondary filter and will also put in the water alarm kit into it. I've got the filter in but am yet to install the alarm. The thing about the filter that I love, is I can see the clear bowl from just under the drivers side door.

For those who like to know these things the Siemens part numbers for the bits are
Pump A2C59517043
Injectors BK2Q9K546AG.


Cheers Glen

Dorian
16th July 2017, 07:25 PM
So today started to do a bit of prep for a 4 day week end coming up next week. Trying to sort out a problem I was having with the central locking, when I spotted this.

This is a pic of the secondary filter I installed a month after Easter. Have put around 4 tanks thru it and part way thru the 5th, I refill about the 55 - 60l mark usually, so say 200 to 250l or there about.

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So I drained the secondary , this it what it looks like in a small jar. Disregard the large pieces of dirt as they are from the container I drained it into.
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There is about 5 ml or so there.
So I thought, if the secondary filter is showing water then the primary OEM filter should be full of water . Lets drain that.
Surprise surprise, the OEM filter has bugger all water in it. (Again the crud is from the containers )

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There would be less than 1/2 a ml in that jar.

When the insurance company did the work on the system, I know that the tank has been taken out and cleaned and all of the other systems flushed so there should be no water left from the original incident.
I know that fuel will accumulate some water because of condensation in the various tanks etc and I guess I've now got a bench mark of 5ml or so in 200l, assume that this amount of water is OK for longer term exposure to the injectors.
But I am quite astounded that the standard 10 micron filter is so much poorer at taking the water out compared to the 2 micron. I thought that the water separator function of the filter was a section at the bottom of the filter housing that let the water drop out of the fuel and collected it in a bowl. Given the actual size of the standard OEM filter is at least twice the size of the secondary filter I thought the water trapping efficiency would be better, not 1/10 of the secondary filter.
Anyway, I'd better get the water alarm in.
As a byline my fuel consumption seems to have dropped from 10.3l/100km (ish) to a little less than 10/100, I assume it's the brand spanking new injector system doing this.
Cheers Glen

edit, attachments hopefully