Cold start problem - L series diesel

Chaser said:

I'll have 1 last attempt to convince you (and eightinavee) that it can and just might be timing.

The timing device needs hydraulic pressure to advance the timing, if static timing is out, during that initial cold start it struggles to create sufficient adjustment.

If you have a manual and the skills it won't cost you anything to check the camshaft and injection pump timing, if it's not that then there's nothing lost but your free time.

Here's a link to 2 cases in the same thread, it's a bit protracted but symptoms and cure are the same.
freelander l-series engine starting problem??

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As you say there is no cost to checking the timing - again good housekeeping if the belts are old / high mileage,so a good thing to do.If it works then he has the answer,but what bothers me is that its slowly got worse and no mention of white smoke on cranking - which there would be with a badly retarded pump,unless the belts are absolutely hanging off its very unlikely to be that far out.(Considering it was OK till a couple of months ago) So just removing the covers and seeing how slack the belts are should be enough.
I'd still like to see what the ecu is seeing as the coolant temp from cold - if its not low enough the pump wont allow a large enough start quantity to fire it up.And for some reason I think the default value if the sensor goes open circuit is 60c,which is OK for a warm or hot engine,not so good for a cold one.
At least the OP has plenty of things to check out !

Yeah cheers guys - I really appreciate all of this!

I'll get cracking on my list on will advise back if there's anything to update!

Thanks again for your help and advice.

My philosophy is always try the no cost options first.

I had a look in rave as I was curious as to the lack of a MIL with a timing fault, couldn't find any mention of it specifically but noted that if timing........... "differs by a substantial amount, the ECM will assume a fault exists and reduce the amount of fuel injected"........ Not a good situation for cold starting.

@Chaser - No cost options and a bit of time are always preferred yeah! Can you recommend anywhere online to get a run through on checking the timing?

Chaser said:

My philosophy is always try the no cost options first.

I had a look in rave as I was curious as to the lack of a MIL with a timing fault, couldn't find any mention of it specifically but noted that if timing........... "differs by a substantial amount, the ECM will assume a fault exists and reduce the amount of fuel injected"........ Not a good situation for cold starting.

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Rave info is not complete,and even Topix can be sriously lacking or downright wrong - try changing the fuel pump belt on a TDV6 and you will see what I mean. SIDS documents,(Systems information documents ) were alot better than Rave,but were never released to dealers even.I was given several in confidence on the understanding I didnt bandy them around.They even give snapshots of crank sensor waveform traces - Rave never got antwhere near that.