Thread: Intermittent check engine light with loss of power D2 TD5

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

@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

$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