Not leaking turbo, cracked inlet manifold
Rovertech have finally managed to track the fault with their new test gear that is way more advanced than the old Autologic they were using. Southern Landrover have also been involved and everyone has been stumped until today.
The first problem was Graeme's secondary turbo valve, which was intermittently sticking a little bit but not the cause of the restricted performance.
The next problem was a faulty temperature sensor but that wasn't the real cause either.
The next problem was that both waste gates weren't working. This was finally tracked to no vacuum at the actuators, despite the brakes having plenty of vacuum. This was found to be a broken T in the vacuum pipe, which has been broken for a long time and is full of dust. For future reference, the vacuum pump is split into two independent sections, one for the brakes and one for the rest, which was confusing the mechanics also until the Southern guy found out it was a split vacuum system to ensure braking safety.
Once this was fixed the true problem and cause of the hissing was found! It was a cracked plastic inlet manifold. Possibly broken due to the lack of turbo waste gates and over pressurization of the inlet.
They now need to try to source a new inlet manifold. Since no one in WA has ever come across these problems before my car has been a learning curve for both Rovertech and the dealers and there probably won't be any parts available!
Thank goodness they just invested in the new diagnosis tool, which allows drilling right down to testing and adjusting individual components. The last 5 days since they received my car have been spent getting this system up and running and then fixing a D3 that has had problems for months and could not be diagnosed previously using the Autologic system. It has just proved its worth on my car also.
The interesting thing is that until the manifold started to crack the car was running perfectly, heaps of power and no obvious issues. The manifold must have finally split enough to generate a consistent fault which led to me taking the car to get fixed.