200tdi engines - variations

Hi all,

am currently fitting a replacement 200tdi to my defender. I got a second hand unit out of a disco and now have the engines sitting next to eachother and am looking at the differences between them. obviously the inlet/exhaust manifold and trubo are different, and the engine mounts... expected that. the interesting difference i hadnt read about anywhere is the timing belt cover and water pump housing - totally different! my original engine was a defender original it seems (11L serial number) but the timing belt cover looks more like the 19J pictured in the haynes whereas the "replacement" disco engine looks more like the right timing belt cover for the 200tdi and the bolt holes match up with what it says in the manual. I have no idea of the age of either engine and in fact the "original" engine itself would have been a replacement since its a 1984 vehicle. is it possible that my "original" 200tdi had a different timing beltcover fitted at some point? for instance if someone cracked the original which i very nearly did with my replacement engine trying to get thecover off to change the timing belt - in fact it does have a hairline crack but i'm hoping i'll get away with it!

so anybody have any in-depth knowledge about the variations between 200tdi engines... to me the block itself looks identical - are there any other differences i should bear in mind?

Good luck all!

block, head and internals are identical. differences are timing cover on defender is same as old 19j. turbo and manifolds obviously and flywheel housing.
if it were me i would strip all the original parts off the old engine and transfer to the new one. as you are fitting a new rear crank seal and timing belt and seals, (you are arent you) it would be rude not to swap the bits and keep it original!
the disco engine is actually the original 200tdi in 1989. it was modified to fit the defender in 1990.

Thanks tig, thats set me straight! I am going to change the timing belt for sure... there's a good 5mm worn off the old belt where its been rubbing against the timing belt cover and loads of fibres everywhere! any ideas why this would happen? maybe the eejit who fitted it didnt push it all the way on or could it have ridden forward somehow... how can i make sure this doesnt happen again? Also will do the rear crankshaft oil seal - hadnt thought o that! but regards the timing belt housing itself... fair bit of work involved there! all sprockets have to come off and the injection pump... and i need to get the bugger back on the road cos its a "working" vehicle. I'll probably end up kicking myself though i'm sure!

By the way that bmw lump sounds impressive! i had a 2.5TD straight 6 beamer for a while - incredible engine had done 230k and ran like a dream. Reckon it'd probably be a bit long to fit in a landy though.

All the best!

there was a mis alignment issues on some early TDi engines which caused many early failures and gave the tdi a real bad name especially with some big overland people that disowned it ever since. LR sorted most of them out and released a new tentioner with pulleys as a kit to resolve the issue 99 percent have either gone bang, been rebuilt or were sorted by LR but sometimes you get one that pops up that harm been done.

IrieLandy said:

there's a good 5mm worn off the old belt where its been rubbing against the timing belt cover and loads of fibres everywhere!

Click to expand...

As Jai has said this is a problem with early 300 TDi engines.

There is a modified timing kit avaliable. Basically in the modified kit the idle timing belt pulley has no shoulder but the crank one does have a shoulder. The better ones have a one piece crank sprocket; there are cheaper kits with a spot welded shoulder piece. These mods are to stop the belt from wandering off the side of the pulleys.