Thread: cylinder balances, engine shutdown, TD5.

Originally Posted by sierrafery

You should try to measure the fuel pressure with a gauge in the temp sensor's port of the FPR though cos those injector balances are sign of fuel pressure drop, it's possible for the HP side of the pump to fail and run only on LP, even if the pump is new IMO worth a check before going further

Yes! good point. Been meaning to make up a fuel pressure gauge thingy and long enough to get inside the cabin whilst driving.

Other thing I forgot to add:
Brother said he found a logged error that injector 1 and 2 had 'open circuit failure'. He cleared it tho.. so can't confirm if it was injector 1 and 5 that he saw.
I looked into the wiring and found that injectors 2 and 5 are on a common feed, and that 1, 3 and 4 are the other common(hoping it's just a dodgy common wire).

Other thing I guess we have to be sure of is that FPR gauze filter thingy we missed when we changed the FPR.
Mongrel of a job that FPR!

see this D2a Td5 misfiring & cutting out (engine harness)

Re tank: when we did the fuel pump back in Nov, tank had only 20lt or so in it and you could visibly see diesel crystal clear, in that no fungal growth .. etc.
Old fuel pump(VDO was browned with years of immersion in diesel, but it's gauze filter was clean.

Could be some annoying contaminant in there, but not obviously visible to both our eyes. New (and old) fuel pump sound fine too, no excessive noises.

With engine off, Ign on, (eg. prior to starting) .. you can hear gurgling noises of fuel passing through the FPR/Fuel cooler/or whatever else it has to pass through .. for maybe 20-30sec, then it stops.

When engine is running right(ie. before this self imposed shutdown occurs) .. it starts and runs fine every time with about a 1/2 sec kick of the starter.
Maximum time we've had it sitting and idling has been about 10mins(for now). And a couple of those 10mins idle time, we've had it revving to about 2K RPM for about 30 sec a few times.

At the moment, I'm thinking that it's more likely a capacitor failing in the ECU, due to the time it allows you with normal running operation(about 5-ish mins).
I've had capacitors fail on other devices(PC, stereos, etc) and it's basically the same symptoms, in that you get a few mins of use and it then fails .. and this almost seems to be a similar situation.

Last Nov tho I pulled the ECU and opened it up and couldn't see any obvious swelling of the caps.

@ sierafery: mate! .. you're a legend That's the kind of info I was hoping to find when I did my search prior to posting. I guess it's all down to how what terminology is used to search.
This is almost certainly the most likely cause for his trouble. Why the length of time between drive sessions, is beyond my ability to understand in the inner workings of an ECU.

We don't have the misfiring(so I didn't type in misfire in my search) I did search engine loom tho and found a bit of info, but not that thread
Like I've said already, engine runs perfectly up until the nanocom shows erratic values for cyl balances, then 10 sec or so and death.
Ordeal to start it again, then once it starts, runs perfectly again .. and I mean good power, no misfiring nothing .. just like nothing happened and bam! .. she dies again and the process repeats.

And I reckon he's has something similar. On those couple of occasions when brother jiggled the injector loom plug and removed it and sprayed it, I reckon he's moved it just enough to stop shorting or whatever and it went good.
Something has no moved back to the bad position and causing him grief again.

Funny thing is I too had plans to bypass those 7 wires from plug to ECU plug myself and have hand written all the connections on a notepad.
Basically to achieve the same end result in that linked thread, and eliminate that section of loom from the equation.

I've prepped bro for the possibility of an expensive engine loom replacement too tho ... so he's been forewarned of the budget busting calamity that may unfold.

Now the problem is getting the time to do it. All work and no play for a couple of weeks.

That part of loom with the injector's feeds i've seen it chaffed with my own eyes too on a friend's D2 auto and got to it after much troubleshooting even ECU swap... he bit the bullet and bought a new harness

Update to this issue:


Thanks to Discorevy and JC for their steadfastness on the injector seal issue.
Finally got around to finding the time to change them, even tho they ended up being a lot easier than we were expecting them to be.
Problem was both of us syncing our free time to do them.

Turned out that No1 copper washer was the culprit judging by the carbonisation in one small spot from inner to outer edge.
other 4 washers looked almost reusable they were that good.
Didn't notice any aberrations on the o-rings either.

Anyhow, good to know that the job is much easier than we anticipated, and once again thanks to JC and discorevy for their well directed advice

Hi Arthur,
What are the cylinder balances now and does it run well.