Cataclysmic defneder failiure....Anyone want to diagnose?

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tegwin

New Member
Posts
5
Hi guys. My sister has a 300TDI Defender 90' and its been pampered and cared for very well..

However its deffinately not well...

Here are the symptoms and history..


Cambelt, pulley and tensioner changed in the lakes about a month ago, and then the vehicle used for local driving for 2 weeks.....

Then a 200 mile motorway journey home, few days rest and then a 250 mile journey down south...

Sister wakes up the morning after the journey down south to notice a puddle of coolant and engine oil under the car...lifts the bonnet and there is oil spray on the nearside under bonnet area covering the left hand crankcase and the top of the engine....

She put about 1 litre of oil back into the engine to bring it up to level again, topped up the coolant and tried to drive home...

Got about half way back, stopped at service station for M&Ms and the vehicle wouldnt start and there was a bit more oil spray... (dont ask me why she even tried to drive it...)

The vehicle was rescued by the RAC and taken to our local indpendant garage who couldnt figure it out,...they pretty much didnt look at it to be honest...

I have had a look at it and there is minor oil seepage around the cyl-head gasket, but most of the oil is on the exhaust side down the side of the crank case. There is a deffinate surface coating of oil inside the intercooler pipes.

Interestingly the engine starts fine if you short out the solenoid on the starter with a screwdriver, so I suspect that somehow the start wire has been shorted...Im not sure if its related to the oil loss problem...

I removed the intercooler pipes and ran the engine without the turbo connected....The engine is much quieter without the boost( no tappet noise) With the engine running there is some bubbles of oil being blown out of the turbo by the air movment...not a huge amount, but its there...

The turbo seems to be blowing and spools up ok...

The engine temp guage gets up to "temp" and sits there...and I cant get it to loose any more oil or coolant....

Oh, and the water pump seems to have also developed a rattle/cracking noise as it spins..its intermittant and irregular...

There is a mild blue smoke comming from the exhaust which wasnt there before and its beeing a bit sluggish...

Honestly, Im suspecting turbo or headgasket failure, but I have no idea...

Does anyone have any thoughts on all that?

I plan to take the waterpump to bits tommorow and see if thats has failed causing the engine to overheat resulting in oil purge from somewhere...


Should I just take it to landrover dealers or are there fairly east ways of diagnosing this?

I could take the head off and check the headgasket, take the turbo off and check that etc...but its going to take a while..

Anyone? HEEELLP ME lol
 
Don't take it to a LR stealer they'll rip you off big style. Try and get a compression test carried out before you start stripping it But it does sound like head gasket failure The oil may have been forced out due to excess crankcase pressure as a result of water/gas pressure finding it's way into the sump. What is the oil like is there any emulsion on the filler cap? put a rag over the exhaust and see if there's any crap coming out of the exhaust.
 
just a thought - but cud this be a similar prob to the td4 hippoos with turbo pipe clogged? Theres deffo a prob which pressurises the sump and pushes oil out the dipstick tube - sometimes violently.

Minge or Clutchdust wud know.
 
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