96 300tdi auto engine braking on steep decent?

after some advice ,last couple of off road courses ive been too when decending a steep slope my engine braking doesnt seem to operate ? im in low box, difflock and 1st gear but when decending instead of goin down gingerley it seems to want to speed up a little ,best i can describe it is like someone is pushing behind while you get a small whine from the box, on smaller slopes it seems to work fine but on the more severe ones it seems to quicken,which i then want to brake but that could be dangerous! any ideas of what to look at or check?????

Low ratio, transmission in 1st, it will whine like a whiney thing and speed up until the engine maxes out, but wont go any faster. Just think what your top speed is if you floored it on the level locked in 1st and low, not that fast really, it just seems it with all the noise and a 45 degree slope.

I know it sounds awful, but its much more controlled than using the brakes.

wor e sed ...

If you're going to brake, do it early so speeds don't build too much too quickly, but come off the brakes if any slip happens .. indeed on very steep, very slippery slopes a squirt of throttle can be used judiciously to straighten things up wgen they slide - even when only using engine braking!

will have to work with it then,just thought it might of been a problem as my mate has a 300 manual and when we were doing a decent over in wales in the summer i seemed to decend a lot quicker and we were both in low box first gear difflock and let the trucks decend themselves but i was moving a hell of a lot faster,didnt know if it was a clutch problem or something you could adjust? if not il just have to get used to the white knuckle rides

Is your mate a Disco as well?

AFAIK 1st in a Disco is about half way between 1st and 2nd on a defender.

autos wil decend faster than manuals anyway due to how the autos use the oil to transmit power through the box, i drive an auto and am prepared for the lack of engine braking - although im prepared to be proved wrong

yes both discos mine a 96 auto with edc and his a 97 manual

kevin cottrell said:

mine a 96 auto with edc

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Err

Do you mean low gear - my 96 auto just has gears, no edc !!

ok how do you prepare for it ? grab the wheel tighter and pray

kevin cottrell said:

ok how do you prepare for it ? grab the wheel tighter and pray

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... take a spare set of underwear, or prepare to go commando ..

would givin it an oil/filter change make any diff? mine was great in low 1st and no lock, thats a v8 so diff box?

what i ment is mine is the auto box with edc (electronic diesel control) it has nothing to do with the gears i do know the difference between low and high box just wanted to let people know which model of disco it was incase there was a common problem with them

kevin cottrell said:

what i ment is mine is the auto box with edc (electronic diesel control) it has nothing to do with the gears i do know the difference between low and high box just wanted to let people know which model of disco it was incase there was a common problem with them

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Wasn't implying you didn't know - just wondering what I didn't know!!!!!

Nobody's told me about edc on my 96 300TDi auto - should be same as yours!

edc is fitted to all 300 autos AFAIK, apparently gives around 10bhp more than manual...

I hate the way the auto box decends, although i'm getting used to it. It does stop accellerating eventually!

whats an auto box with edc ? wot is it ? wots it do?

edc is the very first ecu ,s what land rover experimented with before developing and expanding them which became the td5,its a electronic way of delivering the right amount of diesel to the injectors from the pump or so i believe and also measures the air flow to the turbo,someone more technical may be able to expand on it.
so what i can gather then is auto box are more of a white knuckle ride!

EDC stands for Electronic Diesel Control and was, as previously stated LR's first foray into ECU-controled diesel engines.

Non-EDC engine 111bhp, EDC engine 120bhp.

Part of the reason for the greater power was to offset the autobox losses - EDC was available only with a slush box.

On EDC-equipped cars there is an electronically controlled pump, a fly by wire accelerator pedal, a MAF, a crank sensor and one or two other sensors, iirc.

It works very well in my experience, my '98 Disco auto EDC achieved an average of 33mpg over 15,000mls of varied driving in 12 months.

cheers for the detailed explanation big lad but how did yours descend steep slopes ? did it go gingerley or try and race down like mine :confused2:

thebiglad said:

It works very well in my experience, my '98 Disco auto EDC achieved an average of 33mpg over 15,000mls of varied driving in 12 months.

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My '96 auto and my lead right foot got 19mpg out of the last tank

how wud hill decent low 1st compare with v8 auto? i was surprised how good mine was but have nothin to compare it with