Thread: My (more than usual) sluggish 300tdi

Thanks for the reply Pawl,
Re the pump, I'm getting hot egts so I assume that it's getting fuel ok... But I'm sure there's more to it haha.
Have checked valve clearance in a long time so I'll do that. While the rocker cover is off I may as well check the torque on all the head bolts.
I'll clean the inter cooler, replace the the pipes, new exhaust... Then I'm pretty well out of ideas - and cash!

I'm with pawl on the head bolts. Don't touch them. The symptoms you're describing aren't a typical head gasket issue, so I would be hesitate to start playing with such things. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. You dont want to add to the list of problems. Part of the difficultly here might be that you have more than 1 problem... Adding more will make it a nightmare to diagnose.

Valve clearances are a good one.

Have you taken all the intake and turbo hoses off and looked inside them? I still say that's a easy and $free check before anything more serious. Blocked intake or blocked exhaust sound plausible, but I have no idea how an exhaust gets blocked. Intake hoses can come apart inside though.

Yeah I took them off, cleaned them out. They seemed in tact, but I don't have a whole lot to compare them to. They did however feel "warn" or brittle. I'll be replacing them anyway. The main intake hose from the air filter to turbo looks like its being sucked in, as in, the walls of the hose are coming together. If that is a result of it being weak and not coping with the sucking force from the turbo, my guess is that will drastically reduce intake capability. Sound legit?

Need more time at home to actually get my hands dirty!!

Edit: re exhaust, I think the cat converter honeycomb can break down, but the aus diesels don't have one! (Afaik)

Originally Posted by Flexual

Yeah I took them off, cleaned them out. They seemed in tact, but I don't have a whole lot to compare them to. They did however feel "warn" or brittle. I'll be replacing them anyway. The main intake hose from the air filter to turbo looks like its being sucked in, as in, the walls of the hose are coming together. If that is a result of it being weak and not coping with the sucking force from the turbo, my guess is that will drastically reduce intake capability. Sound legit?

Need more time at home to actually get my hands dirty!!

Mate, what you have there is a delaminated hose! This is quite likely a large portion of your issue. I was having high EGT's and seriously performance when I had intercooler\turbo hose issues (one of mine was starting to delaminate, the other had a hole). Swap them out with a decent set of silicone ones and you may find most, maybe even (hopefully) all of your issues gone!

The silicone hoses will stand up to a pretty damn good workout, plus, they are pretty to! I got mine from British 4WD in Tasmania via their Ebay store. They are reasonably priced and the shipping was quick. Three choices of colour as well from memory.

I cleaned my intercooler out with some carby cleaner at the same time as I did the hoses, wasn't heaps dirty, but the carby cleaner in the bucket at the end was still pretty dark.

Good luck,

Chris

Thanks Chris I hope you're right!
I'll report back

^ x2!!!!

That hose is almost certainly the problem, quite possibly the entire problem.

Also, I will refer you to post #2 in this thread.

Haha yeah yeah I did go through and inspect them at that point, but not really being aware of what to look for I guess I looked passed it. I didn't see any delamination, but without having seen it before, I wasn't what I did or didn't see.
The hose sucking in was only noticed this morning!

Yeah fair enough, I've never actually seen one either, just going on theory. Not long after I purchased my Disco I purchased a set of silicone hoses and haven't touched them since. They're not that much more expensive if you buy online, so I would definitely recommend them.