Thread: A mate's TD5 woes

Originally Posted by zelko

G'day mate

Has he checked the fuel pump, mate of mine had similar problems, sluggish for a while until eventually pump packed it in due to letting tank get below quarter. Pump needs to have fuel around it so it doesn't overheat.

Zelk

I'm fairly sure only the V8 has the fuel pump in the fuel tank.

Of coarse i could be wrong

Baz.

Originally Posted by runger

hi, and thanks for starting this thread frontier, hopefully someone here has had this problem and also it may help someone in the future.
i be the owner of THE discovery with the problem. ill try give a detailed account of whats happened.

i bought the car second hand at 80 odd thousand ks. i got an extended dealer warranty because id heard of a few issues with these cars.

after driving it for 5 thousand kilometres i noticed the engine to miss a beat or two. seems like no bang in the cylinder to me.
so it would disengage from the drive train and then grab again so that your car would drop then surge back and forth. sometimes just once and sometimes a couple of jumps and sometimes you would get a whole flurry of them.
then it got worse.
see i took this for a drive once with a trailer, on a long trip unloaded initially. i refueled at a metro. petro deiesel. the car began jumping around a fair amount about 100 ks into the drive. i kept driving to meet a deadline. and sometimes it would clear for a hundred ks or so only to come back more feircley. it got much worse about 400 ks into my drive.
once i picked up the trailer load and came home it got even worse.
to the point it was like driving a milkshake sometimes.
it was just so erratic you could not predict when it would occur or for how long.

i got home, unhitched the trailer left work, took a corner and hit the blinker and the car slowed down to an idle.
it had no acceleration but for standard idle speed in first gear. flat to the floor would give less than a thousand rpm..
i found if i turned the key off then back on i would have my pedal back again.

it took em a while to find the problem (one problem) but landrover service of artarmon found i had a leaking wiring loom. oil from the head travelling up and shorting out the wires. they wanted to charge me 1200 for that fix job but i made mention of the warranty and all was cool. they covered parts and labour.

a few thousand ks later i began to get the same misfiring off my cylinder(s). only maybe once or twice per drive. they advised me that the loom was indeed changed, it had a newish manufacture stamp on it and that they have never had to replace a loom twice. i checked it for oil aruond the loom near the battery compartment computer and all was ok. they said that the oil dosent go into the computer so that was fine.

i drove it to them and was happy to find it misfire repeatedly in a flurry going up a big highway hill. it sucks taking your car two hours away for service and having to go back another day to pick it up...to find that they havent fixed the problem really and i was glad it was showing some evidence recently.

they could find nothing wrong in way of error codes. the short test drive yeilded no misfires. i convincd them i was not crazy and they gave it to a worker to drive over the weekend. he told them it never stopped. which wasnt the problem so often and the first time i ever felt the misfires i wondered if it was my foot on the pedal...
i assumed he got a good run with no misifres.

a test for biodiesel or bad fuel had yeilded no poor result.

they filled it up with new fuel and i never had the problem again for atleast 5 tanks worth of juice when i changed to shell from caltex.
then it stayed around a while, misfiring ireggularly.
a week or so later it misifred three times on the way to work. and twice as i took corners with the blinkers on it went to limp idle mode again.
by now it was getting dangerous as my car could go back to idling in front of other cars on roundabouts and things.

the mechanic had it go back to idle speed on him and get stuck there when putting it up on ramps. he mentioned that it is a likley a electrical problem not a fuel problem, apparently the check engine light came on too.

oh yeah and also one night after it was misfiring i could not even start the car after i turned it off. no engaging off the engine starter motor. i clutch started it to get home.

i took it back to landrover.. they found an error code suggesting a problem with the accelerator unit. it apparently would be the reaosn for the misfires and the limp idle mode..

which they changed, then told me that my warranty never covered the parts. apparently the parts were $ 578. i didnt have my papers to check the fine print and payed the money to get my car back, i was more so over the moon happy that it would now be fixed!!

then i saw the invoice was for parts.. $260 and then the rest was labour. ???
so i was ****ed off but hey i now had my landrover back and it was going to be all smooth motoring from now on right???

well i was wrong. ten minutes into the drive back from the service department the car begins to misfire again...

ill call them again monday but i they mustnt know what the misfire is about. i had spoken to the mechanic there too last time and he didnt know.


ANY THEORIES??

thanks in advance.

I'd be looking at getting it too someone like Bruce Davis, Graeme Cooper, Peter Davis at Roving Mechanical, too me it sounds like a communications fault (canbus) could be the crank sensor, fuel sensor or oil in the harness again, there are 2 sections to the harness.

One other theory could be, the fuel filter, sometimes when it gets changed the rubber seal in the centre of the filter gets stuck up in the filter housing, when the new filter is put in with it's seal and the old seal still stuck in the housing from the old filter you end up with a gap, because it can't be screwed all the way it doesn't seal on the outer of the filter.

I got stuck on a big mother of a hill and it was doing what you described, missing stopping and a bugger too start.

Baz.

From the symptoms, I would suspect the TPS (throttle potentiometer), assuming it is not oil in the injector harness.

Has the fault ever caused total lack of throttle control (idle only)? If it has, a yellow engine warning light should have lit up, and a fault code will be left in the ECU, to allow easy diagnosis using Testbook.

Usually after turning it off and re-starting, throttle control will be regained.

My Defender had exactly this problem, while under warranty, and the problem was fixed by replacing the throttle pedal assembly AND wiring loom.

Cheers,

Lonel

do me a favor, drop the intercooler to EGR fitting intercooler hose off and eye ball the EGR side of business for lots of oil/soot.

you might be having an amalgamation of faults (as per the PM I replied to for you from Frontier1)

pay close attention to how it happens and how frequently it occours once the tank is below 1/2 way as after that point you start to uncover the fuel pump inside the tank.

The other thing to try is with the vehicle canted over hard away from the filler neck side of the vehicle (Ie high side the filler) tip a jerry into it untill the tank is absolutely no questions asked full to the brim and theres a miniscous hanging over the filler. Once youve got it that full start it up and eye off the fuel, if it starts bubbling at you you have an injector thats unsealed, If the problem occours more when the engine is cold then leave it sitting over night angled over and fill it then check it in the morning, ditto if its hot then pull up and do it as quick as you can.

Im not saying that this is definately going to be the problem but the info does help in fault finding.

Originally Posted by Redback

I'm fairly sure only the V8 has the fuel pump in the fuel tank.

Of coarse i could be wrong

Baz.

Pump is in the tank on a TD5 aswell.

At least with a disco you can change it without having to drop the tank.

Edited to add, Is the earth between the chassis/body and the engine/gearbox ok. I haven't had this problem on a Land Rover, but I have on a Lancia, and it would only happen occasionally under hard load, and it turned out to be the earth lead between the engine block and the shell.

Bloody frustrating.

If you have had a new fuel pump I wouldnt expect it to be that.

Lionel, When you say they changed the Throttle pedal and the loom, do you mean the full bulkhead loom? The throttle loom is an integral part of the main bulkhead loom.

Thanks everyone for coming to Runger's aid, I told him this was the forum to belong to!

My 2002 TD5 Disco, is running like a dream so far although it's only been a couple of months or so but I have already had that "3 Amigo" thing when driving down to Melbourne. However I just pulled over, switched it off, then back on and it was fine. Was towing a trailer at the time, have heard that it can do it when towing.

Anyway, with a few mentioning the fuel pump, has anyone pulled down a TD5 fuel pump (the one in the tank) ?

I would like to check one out (in particular the actual pump section), so if anyone has a busted one that they want to get rid of let me know and I can throw some bucks your way for postage, etc.

Can't find one at a wreckers.

I'm just wondering where Landrover got the pump from originally as I am sure they didn't make a completely new pump just for their TD5 or as it was secretly called "STORM". Shame they didn't go with that name!

Cheers, Pete'

Yes Frontier, I have a pump assembly here which I have just replaced with two new ones ( another story ) and have wondered about checking for chang over of pump only.
It appears that the pump is easily removed from the housing I would imagine than Australian fuel Injection service would have a pump to suit if they were given the tech requirements.
I will never get around to finding this out so if you want it I can send it.

Originally Posted by Redback

I'm fairly sure only the V8 has the fuel pump in the fuel tank.

Of coarse i could be wrong

Baz.

Redback

Fuel pump for TD5 is in the fuel tank as well as for the V8's.

Zelk