Maaarrghk!'s TD5 De-restriction bloggy fing

I got a 54 plate landmark last august and it ticks all the boxes except for 2, those being:-

1. Cheap to run.

2. Goes like stink.

Having spent a lot of the cold winter evenings wandering around this forum, I decided to put into action a step by step plan to do something about item 2. I intend to "de-restrict" my Disco.

If I get good enough result, I will be content to live with item 1 as the Disco is a nice place to be.

As I am on a very tight budget I cannot just go out and buy inter-coolers, remaps, variable vane turbos etc all at once. I have about £100 per month to spend and that has to also keep the thing up to scratch in all other areas. I cannot afford to spend thousands.

Obviously, 80mph at 3000rpm is something I cannot change, so motorway cruising speed will not change. What I am after is better accelleration for safer overtaking and better pulling power up the hills. Any benefit to fuel consumption I will consider a bonus.

The vehicle is the aforementioned TD5 Landmark with 151K on the clock and a manual gearbox. Tyres are standard size on 18" standard rims. The car has air suspension, but (oddly) no ACE.

The purpose of this blog, which I will update on an irregular basis is to look at the effects of each modification in my chosen sequence, which I hope makes sense.

The sequence of modifications will be as follows:

1. Replace filter with K&N item. £35.

2. Egr delete silicone turbo hoses. £110.

3. De-cat pipe. £74.

4. Centre box delete pipe. £54.

5. Serck inter-cooler. £350. OUCH!

6. Dyna-chip custom re-map, either stage 1 or stage 3 (turbo boost box)
£225 (plus cost of boost box).

From what I have read on here, this would seem a logical way to go about doing things.

An alisport exhaust manifold and variable vane turbo would be nice, but Mrs M! keeps losing the lottery. I give her one job a week to do...........

I am looking for up to 200bhp. 80bhp per litre sounds like it won't put too much strain on the engine or seriously reduce its life span. Plus with no ACE, I don't want to end up wrapping it round a tree.

So, I'm looking at spending £850 over a 6 to 8 month period.

That manifold and turbo would be another £1500 if I did all the work myself and I would probably need another re-map to get the best out of them. Good luck this saturday night Mrs M!

Right, so that was the pre-amble. Now to get cracking on the de-restricting.

There will be no stop watch tests or anything like that. I will just be giving a subjective view on what I percieve to be the benefits of each stage of the process.

One thing I will refer to regularly is my "test hill". I start work rather early, so the roads tend to be relatively clear on my way in. I like it that way. I cross a valley when I am nearly there, so the engine is nice and warmed up. I do this at the same time (within a few mintes) every morning.

I go down this here hill and stop at a set of traffic lights at the bottom. So then I have to go up the other side of the valley from a standstill on the flat. The hill starts to ascend after about 30 yards and within another 100 yards it is around 1 in 5 to 1 in 6 gradient for a quarter mile. It gardually levels out over the next quarter mile and I am then on a level road.

after stage 3 remap an engine build???? on 151k!!!


PS number 1 and 2 want doing other way round, get rid of EGR 1st! clean inter-cooler and fit new hoses, change ordinary air filter as K&n are a waste of money and hard work!

Stage 1. K&N Air Filter Replacement.

£35 from Paddock. Postage free cos I bought a few other bits and bobs to get the order value before VAT to over £50.

The engine felt a bit "fresher", but there was no discernable improvement in accelleration, pulling up the "test hill", or fuel economy.

The air filter that came out was a standard Halfords item that I put in when I got the car. It had been in for 3000 miles and looked OK.

Oh well, I won't have to replace it again (clean and oil every 50K) and have always wanted one.

At this point, I should mention that when going up my "test hill" I accellerate briskly, changing up at 3000rpm and can get into 4th gear. My speed gradually drops to 40mph before gradually picking up again as the hill starts to level out. That 40mph is my starting reference point.

the car i have now, i got it remaped in dec 13, what a different car! just the ordinary re map, have got a bigger intercooler, but not got around to fitting yet, but de EGR'd soon as i got it oct 12, it was sh-- up,

Stage 2. EGR Valve Delte Kit & Silicone Turbo Hoses.

Not just a blanking plate, a copmplete delete kit. That egr gubbins still partially blocks the inlet manifold with its spindles and flutterbyes, so off it comes! £28 from Paddock. £5 delivery.

Hoses came from Derby Performance Hose and were £60 plus £12 for a nice set of wide stainless hose clips (MUCH better than jubilees) and £5 postage. The rubber hoses on the car looked like the originals, which may be starting to de-laminate internally. It made sense to replace at the same time as deleting the egr.

I cleaned the sensor in the manifold, but did not clean the inside of the manifold as, to be honest, it wasn't that bad. Some have remarked that it may well clean itself in time now the egr has gone.

Performance much improved! For a few days I was driving it like I'd nicked it. An extra 2 to 3 mph up the "test hill", taking longer to slow down and starting to pick up speed sooner. Still in 4th gear though, but this is the sort of improvement that I was hoping for.

Accelleration noticably better both rolling and from a standing start, but still not a "road burner" by a long chalk.

Latest information is fuel economy. I was getting around 22.5 to 23mpg as most of my driving is local, up and down hills (and gears) with crap traffic conditions on my way home from work. 30mpg is possible on a motorway run. I am now getting around 25 to 26mpg. Bonus!

I was not expecting to burn less fuel as my driving style is one of making good progress safely.

Sadly, I will not have any motorway figures as it is not my holiday season yet. Those will only come when I am coming to the last items on the list.

Money well spent I would say.

I can now quite honestly say that the car could now handle an extra gear and not just for motorway work either.

You'll notice the biggest improvement with the de-cat and intercooler
Also sounds brilliant with de-cat and center box removed

I've everything you've planned done to my 110 as well as the Alisport manifold and VNT and it goes like stink

I done an EGR delete, de-cat and fitted a bigger intercooler to my Dad's Discovery and he found a huge difference, feels much easier to drive and pulls from low down effortlessly whereas before, you had to keep it up around 2K plus before it got going and was very laggy. I must still get his re-mapped though.

Thanks for your early comments Discodrivercumbria.

Re-build at 151K? Nay Lad - it's just run in! Seriously, I have ran it bog standard for 6 months and had a look inside the top end. All seems well.

Any reason why you went for the re-map before the intercooler? Won't you need another re-map after the intercooler in order to get the best out of it?

I did the air filter first as it was cheapest thing on the list, I was broke and the weather was foul.

DaveM. Thanks for the encouragement. De-cat is this or next weekend. Intercooler is after that as I have a tax rebate coming. Good to know that I can expect a good improvement from both.

Mine was originally chipped too with a generic re-map for apparently around the 180bhp mark (This would probably be with an intercooler)
When I got mine, it had an EGR delete, re-map and center box removed. It went pretty well but I still wanted more.
Next thing I done was fit a de-cat and it felt a good bit more responsive and sounded much more throaty too which is nice.
Fitted the intercooler then and it definitely pulled much better especially in the top end and was able to maintain speeds while towing much easier too. Fitted the silicone hoses at the same point.


Last bits I fitted was the VNT, alisport manifold and boost box. It pulls like crazy from pretty much idle revs and the hissing and noises that goes with the VNT are lovely but I'm not really sure is it worth the £1500 outlay... granted, I've been making mine quicker bit by bit over the last year so I probably don't notice differences as much so I'd like to get a spin in a 110 with similar gearing and the basic mods again to realize the difference.
My map is probably the weakest link now too however so I need to get a new one soon to match all the mods
I fitted a K&N filter too as it kept trying to pull the standard air-filters apart inside the airbox after fitting the new turbo!

Passengers say it's very quick and can genuinely feel being pushed into the seat when accelerating when being a passenger so I'm probably just gotten used to it really
Next plan though when I can afford it is fitting the VNT and manifold to my Dads Discovery and maybe the Alive equal length manifold and the larger VNT. Will need to sort a second air-intake or second snorkel, new airbox, oil catch tank and few other bits for that however so will be a while yet before I cross that bridge.


Definitely EGR delete, de-cat, intercooler and re-map though would be the top of my list if I was doing anything for more power on the TD5



As for needing an engine rebuild? Mine has 183K on it. Had 157 when I got it and I work my cars very hard and with the mods it should be making at least 200bhp!
I'd love to do a 2.8 stroker at some point but it starts perfectly every morning and no smoke (not even much black stuff) or any symptoms of needing a rebuild any time soon.

If I was to pick one thing out, the oil light takes maybe a second to go out in the mornings when started compared to my Dads Discovery which goes out almost immediately once fired however I had to rebuild his engine completely a year or so ago so I'd expect his to be far healthier
I service ours every 5000 miles.

Thanks for all that information DaveM. Good to know that I am going in roughly the right direction with my sequence of mods.

To be honest, I don't really expect the centre box delete to have much effect other than making the car sound more powerful. I have never had a centre box in bits, but suspect that there might not be much in the way of baffling in there. Correct me if I am wrong here, but my money is on it being more of an expansion chamber for the escaping gasses than a restriction due to its humungus size. I will fit the delete pipe as it is cheap, but may remove it if it upsets young 2 year old master M!'s enjoyment of The Prodigy.

I note with interest that you seem to agree with my reservations about getting a re-map done too early on.

If I were able to afford to go with my heart on this, I would love to go down the VVT route as it just seems such a logical way of adding the best flexibility over the entire rev range. The standard VVT on my old modeo 2.2 TDCI worked a treat - so much so that the engine management was set up to cut the power a bit in first and second gears.

Maaarrghk said:

Thanks for your early comments Discodrivercumbria.

Re-build at 151K? Nay Lad - it's just run in! Seriously, I have ran it bog standard for 6 months and had a look inside the top end. All seems well.

Any reason why you went for the re-map before the intercooler? Won't you need another re-map after the intercooler in order to get the best out of it?

I did the air filter first as it was cheapest thing on the list, I was broke and the weather was foul.

Click to expand...

your rebuild will be after you do a stage 3 re map! too much to ask for a old engine to take, a stage 1 is most go for, i had it remapped cos it was dead! pulls great now, but nowhere near the old silver 1 i had, x reg 2000, the old ECU, that car went like stink, got around 30- 33 mpg from that, a good car but sold it as back chassis was going to go, so let somebody else weld it!!
i don't want mine as a racing car, just to pick it's feet up when it's needed!

Thanks for your words of caution DDC. I will certainly take the advice of Mike from Dynachip regarding the best course of action before going ahead with the re-map.

Stage 3 and the first snag.

Nice day today, so got the Disco up on my rather short ramps with the intention of installing the de-cat. Manifold bolts a bit tight for a wimp like me to crack off, but off they came with a bit of grunting.

Off came the cross member at the back of the transfer box and the joint between the cat and front silencer was a doddle. Likewise the rubber hanger.

Ooops! Wrong cross member! It's the one below the bend in the down pipe Stooopid! Got the 10mm socket on one or two of the bolt heads on the correct cross member, but they won't play today. Even with a hexagonal Snap-On socket, they were right on the point of rounding off. Odd, as they don't look to be particularly corroded despite their age.

So it was mission aborted for today using plenty of Plus Gas as covering fire for my strategic withdrawal. I will sneek under there with the Plus Gas again every night this coming week, but must admit to being rather apprehensive about the tightness of those bolt heads.

I think I will have to scrounge some robust axle stands to get the car further off the ground so that I can get an impact driver on there and get a good swing with the hammer. I may even use an old half inch drive socket and short extension piece and give that a good crack first without actually trying to turn the bolts, but not sure if that will slacken or tighten them due to the bolts being flanged. Would I just be making the bolt flange tighter against the cross member?

Food for thought over the coming week.....

Are you swinging on the nut. Or the actual bolt?

Still don't agree that a rebuild will be essential when you go to a stage 3 re-map. There's TD5s with over 250bhp with massive turbos and 1.5-2bar of boost and they don't sh!t themselves.
intercooler, unrestricted intake and exhaust and re-map for around 200bhp will have no effect on it. It's how you drive and maintain the engine too.

Loads of power from mods and then drive it like a #### by jumping into it in the mornings and foot flat to the floor before the glow plugs are even gone out not to mention engine warmed up properly, full power right upto when you shut the engine off and almost redlining it constantly every gear change and then not servicing for double or triple the usual intervals and crappy oil at that.

If an engine has lots of power and it's driven with half abit of sense, it might even last as long or longer than a standard engine as it has much more power than it needs to get the job done rather than being put under pressure.



The center box will make a difference to performance. Turbo Diesels need as little as restriction as possible in the exhaust so the closer you get to a straight pipe the better for power. A 3" pipe straight off the back of the turbo and out the wing would give the most power possible but would be a little hard on the ears


loads of WD-40 and the some blows of an impact socket might help the cross member bolts. Only really need to get 7 of the 8 of them out... as there's always one that's a pita. last one just has to be abit loose so you can rotate the cross member out of the way

Thanks DaveM. You've made me feel much better in so many different ways!

I have to admit to being "a bit af a lead foot" although I prefer to call it "making good progress", but I do have some sympathy for my engines and no longer do the boy racer bit. I can't afford an engine re-build.

It's great to be getting both the encouragement from yourself as well as the words of caution from DDC and I will be asking Mike at Dynachip for his advice when the time comes for the re-map. I figure that he would not risk his reputation by giving bad advice for the sake of another few quid on one job.

The good news is that I am storing a 4x4 granada on my drive for a chap over the road who is also into his (Jap) 4WD's. He has lent me a re-chargable impact driver, so I will carry on with the nightly doses of Plus Gas on those cross-member bolts before attacking it again next weekend. Weather permitting.

hey i didn't want to scare you! ever engine is different! back in the days of non turbos, farmers round where we live were putting em on, fords 8210's MF 698's, some engines would take it, some would not, trying to get extra horses out of old engines, too much power for them to take, we had a 698 tubo'd 125hp on the shaft, 99hp before turbo, it went like a train, chopped grass for fun, bit of black smoke out of exhaust, then some had problems with blown engines on there tractors, so caution to the wind!!

Caution to the wind eh? That's the spirit!

I'm sure that you were always just trying to caution rather than scare me and it is appreciated.

Still, re-map is still several months away yet and there is plenty of time to see how the other stages affect how the engine runs and whether they highlight any problems that might need sorting before going "all the way".

Stage 3 (De-Cat Pipe) - Fitted at last!

And about time too!

Circumstances, weather and some titanium cross member bolts with toffee heads conspired against me. I ended up using the old hot spanner to get the back 4 bolt heads red hot, making them easier to whack off with the big hammer and chisel. Front ones were a sod to get the chisel square onto, so I just melted them off.

Whose bright idea was it to fit 10mm heads to M8 screws instead of the usual 13 or 12?

Then it was a case of chiselling off the captive nuts (easy as they are just ultra sonically welded to the back of the plate) and pushing them out of the gaps in the corners of the mount plates, before replacing with copper-slipped stainless replacements with 13mm heads.

Cracked up the engine and immediately noticed the turbo whistling - it never did that before! Got me a bit concerned that did, so I asked the question on another thread and got the answer that I was hoping for - that the lack of restriction due to the absence of a clogged up cat was allowing the exhaust gases to exit quicker and the turbo to spin as quickly as it should do. Good. Or perhaps it's just whistling because it's happy about being a turbo.

I stored the old cat pipe in the shed over night and when I moved it in the morning (the pipe, not the shed) a lump of coal fell out of it!

While there was another noticable power increase, the thing that I noticed most was how smoothly the power was now being delivered. The engine had seemed a bit harsh after the egr delete, but this is now almost gone - in fact smoother than before I started the de-restriction.

Strangely, the turbo whistle is the only increase in the vehicles noise that I have noticed, although the engine does have a nicer note - just not any more noisy.

Took it up the "test hill" and there was no further increase in the minimum speed, but again it was shedding speed more slowly and picking up sooner as the hill started to level out.

So another good result for a £74 outlay.

Finally, fuel consumption. 25mpg. A tiny drop from what it was with just the egr delete, but only to be expected with the increased overtaking ability and having the confidence to use it.



Anyroadup. I was lucky enough to have been a good boy whilst self-employed last year, putting away 25% of my pay each week to pay for tax, NI and accounts. This resulted in a somewhat larger surplus being left over due to the Accountant doing his job right. With this burning a hole in my pocket, I was able to order that Serck intercooler from Paddock. Which was nice.

However I will not be fitting it until I have first done the centre box delete (now on order) as the idea of this exercise was to do the cheaper things first and look at the cumulative effect when having to do things on a tight budget. I do twitch a bit every time I pass the intercooler, which is still in its box, un-opened.