Defender 90 2.5 TD Smoking

First of let me say Hi to all the nutters here, reading your posts has been my hobby for the last few weeks, some of you know far too much but you offer fantastic advise

Right now down to the problem I have that I would like some of your guru advice on.

I have a Defender 90 2.5 TD 1990 19J which I just use off roading so not looking to spend lots of money on but I do have two useful hands and spare time at the weekends.

The problem is it failed the MOT on emissions, as it does tend to smoke a white / light grey smoke mainly when cold but it does smoke even when hot when you rev and then back off the throttle.

So I started out as so many others have, changed oil + filter, glow plugs, fuel filter, air filter, injectors. Still the same problem, so I checked the Injection timing by making the locking pins and everything was perfectly aligned well according to the instructions I followed in the Haynes manual. I checked all breather pipes and vacuum hoses none are blocked or split.

I'll just add it’s not using oil or water, but I decided to take the head off, checked rings all looked in good condition with no scoring on the bores, reground valves (valve guides nice and snug), replaced valve stem oil seals, lots of gaskets and push rods. Put it all back together and it fired up lovely much quieter but still smoking.

I Ran a compression test all cylinders were between 550 and 600 psi which looks pretty normal from what I can tell although I couldn’t find what the readings should be.

I disconnected the air intake pipe from the turbo to the inlet manifold while I have been testing just to make sure nothing in the turbo could be causing it.

Interestingly it produces white smoke puffs while you are cranking it but before it has fired up, while running some tests it ran out of fuel, which took me a while to realise and while I was cranking it with no fuel in there were no white puffs out of the exhaust.

This leads me to believe that it is being caused by the Injection Pump overfueling the engine would you agree? Or can you suggest anything else to try?

I have read a very good guide on here about altering the fuel metering on a 200 TDI by m0bcg http://www.landyzone.co.uk/lz/f31/defender-200tdi-fuel-pump-timing-24289.html which is something I would like to try adjusting before I look at a replacement or getting it refurbished.

I have searched the net long and hard but I have not been able to find a guide on tuning or adjusting the metering on the Lucas CAV fuel injector pump, and was wandering if anyone here had a guide or could point me in the right direction. Also if an injector pump overhaul is required, it would be great if I could complete this myself to save money, but have never touched the insides of one of these and I am unable to find a guide on stripping down and rebuilding these if anyone has one please send it my way

Does anybody know how much it costs to get these refurbished and where is a good place to take it?

Or if anyone has a old working Injector Pump in the back of their garage that would like to sell, it would be going to a good home, that would also be fantastic just let me know

I will appreciate any help and advise you can give as I’ve been trying to resolve this on and off for months now, and I’m itching to get back on the green lanes!

lemming said:

This leads me to believe that it is being caused by the Injection Pump overfueling the engine would you agree? Or can you suggest anything else to try?

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Well not to put a spanner in the works so too speak, but ......

I also get the same type of smoke first thing in the morning on start up and on overrun when cold on my tdi 200. However when the pump was checked, it wasn't fueling enough.
Bizzarly however my fuel consumption is now not as bad as it was because I don't have to keep the throttle to the floor to get anywhere.
Still have the smoking though

I also have a smokey 2.5TD with an MOT fast approaching. It smokes like yours on start up and when ticking over for a while in trafic jams etc. You're obviously not as lazy as me as I've only done an oil change and filters. I'd like to know what I can do about it too.

Thanks

D

Smoking (particularly black smoke) is usually from partially burned fuel. Whenever you accelerate away in a diesel you will tend to get black smoke, but on tick over however, this to me would be a sign of your fuel injection pump timing being set too generously.

Lemming - you said that you checked your piston rings? Did you remove your pistons from the cylinder block to check the piston rings or did you just have look down the egde of the piston at the upper compression ring? Your best bet is to remove the pistons from the block (as easy as removing the head and taking the sump off to undo them - each held in with two nuts), deglaze the cylinders and then fit new piston rings. I had recently had a compression test on my 2.5 N/A 12J engine which showed compression to be alright, but the bugger was leaking oil all over the place and really lost power up hills. Its conditioning deteriorated so I stripped it down and found four cracked pistons to be the culprit. The cracks were only very hair line on two of the pistons but huge on the other two, to the extent that when the piston heated up the crack would open and compression would be lost.

You should also find that this stops the engine from breathing so heavily (ie. blowing oily mist out of the rocker cover into your air filter) because there's no compression being lost forcing the oil up into the rocker shaft area. Your engine will then not run on its own oil and the smoke should (in theory) stop.

Worth a try!
-Pos

hey all.
having the exact same problem as you lemming, but have to agree with D, just done the oil.... (2.5TD)

Anyway, Pos, not having the resources to lift engine out can this be done from above and below?? have a lot of oil in the air filter and crap power up a slight hill.
mine is due an MOT in june, this doesn't sound like a weekend job but am willin to get the beast running smooth.
any ideas on costing? worst case cenario!!

also, a mate said i can try undoing the injector pump an twisting it with bar till it runs a lill better (reduces smoke) but only for the mot. is that of any use to me (having same issues as lemming) or would it just be a waste of time???


thanks for any advice

You can rebuild your engine in situ. with absolutely no need to remove it from your car. It's a reasonably simple process, drain all of the water out of the system, rocker cover off, rocker shaft out, exhaust and air intake manifold off, push rods out, head bolts out, head lifted off, oil drained, sump off, piston big end caps off, pistons knocked up and out! Really not that much more too it (apart from certain things like keeping everything in order and deglazing cylinders etc.) I'll write up a quick guide this weekend (as I said I'd do a short while back!).

Price wise, I was hoping to spend around £150 tops, but ended up spending £250 because I needed new pistons as the piston heads were all cracked. Considering your engine is a turbo diesel I would be surprised if your pistons don't need replacing, and the cylinders will definitely need a de-glaze. All in all you're talking £270 tops including all of the tools that you'll need.

The worst case scenario is that you'll find something terribly expensive along the way such as a crack in the main block (can happen to earlier model TD's) or a major crack in the cylinder head. The block is more worrying because there's no way round that other than to buy a whole new block, or in most cases, it's a lot easier and a lot cheaper just to buy a 200 tdi and then fit that piece by piece or as the whole thing if you fancy renting an engine hoist.

Anyway you look at it put it this way: I rebuilt my 2.5 N/A over last half term and now I've got more power, no smoke (not even when powering away at night looking in car behinds headlights) and I feel a lot happier knowing that it wont fail its test on the emissions test.

As for the twist the injection pump to reduce the timing, don't just try the method that your mate has suggested because he probably wont be your mate for very long! Best thing to do is search around on here for CharlesY and his posts regarding injection pump timing, there's a little bit more to it than just undoing it and turning it (ie. making a mark across the pump and the flange that it joins so you can reset it if it buggers up, and there should only be very slight adjustments at a time until you get it right).

Good luck!
-Pos

Thanks for all your replies! Much helpful so were other posts on the subject of injection timing.

I went down the Injection Timing route this weekend, and although I have checked it before using Locking Pins etc and it was bang on, I decided to adjust it slightly to see if it made a difference.

Firstly I scribed a mark between the injection pump and the timing belt housing, so I would be able to reposition if it did not work.

Then slackend by 1 turn the three bolds holding the injection pump and the timing case and also the 1 bolt for the stabilizing bracket above the pump.

The pump was pretty secure in place and refused to move until tapped slightly on the side with the butt of a hammer. When it moved it you could only tell this by the scribe line and it jumped about 2mm towards the engine, I believe this is retarding it? Clamed up two of the timing housing bolts and gave it a crank it fired up with a similar plume of smoke.

So I tried again undoing the two retaining nuts I had secured it with and using the butt of a hammer in between the engine and pump pushed it 2mm the other side of the scribe line away from the engine. The pump would try and jump back when I released it so I held it in place with the hammer and secured the same two bolts as before. Is this putting extra pressure on the timing belt?

Turned the key not only did it fire up nearly instantly there was a huge reduction in smoke and it ran and rev’ed fine well much better than before so I tried a bit more, I could only get about another 1mm movement on the pump so the scribe lines are about 3mm apart now. (I believe advanced but might be wrong?) Tightend up all 4 bolts that secure the pump before fully testing it.

But was a difference that 3mm has made it fires up first or second turn with a tiny puff off black smoke (Less than my 110 300TDi) and then it runs clear.

Even when very cold (I tried it the next morning) it fires up within 3-4 turns, it used to take about 20-30 seconds of cranking after 30 seconds of glow plug before it fired up.

When I originally stripped the head, I had to replace the push rods as they were all bent, some quite bad. After reading on here that this happens if the timing belt snaps then I’m inclined to believe that this has occurred at some point in the past and maybe the belt could be a tooth out? As I’m at maximum adjustment I’m going to check this out next weekend.

When cold it still had a little white smoke coming out on start but it doesn't fill the street like it used to lol and clears within a minute. So took it for a quick spin around the block and when first opened up it smoked blue / black smoke but soon cleared I put this down to it sitting on the drive not being driven for 3 months. No knocking was heard and it pulled in high gears so I don’t think it’s too advanced. It ticks over much smoother than it ever has.

Once back on the drive I continued to rev it up and back off like they do for the MOT emissions test and no smoke was visible, well maybe a tiny amount of blue on the let off which is most likely to be slightly worn rings, but not noticeable, fingers crossed it should pass now. Just a bit of welding on the rear cross member now and it should be in for MOT next week

thanks pos.
Really unsure as to which route to take. i am 95% sure that the engine needs major work. it has been looked after by the previous owner but no evidence of engine work (if it ain't broken...) no harm in looking tho but will probably start wil injection system.. if that doesn't happen i will look for a 200tdi, although i do like the lil 2.5.. that is purely a cost verses time aspect with my mot cumin in june..

Pos- if you do a full write up of engine breakdown would you send me a copy, haynes book is good but doesn't highlight problems that 'real' folk come across.


cheers guys

I'll join the smoking randomly club too.

I have changed the injectors and that improved the smoking all the time situation.

Now though, it smokes in traffic. Bugger

Looks like i need some make it go juice.

Yeah i'm gonna join this one too! 2.5 td 110, just changed oil n' filter and now got incredibly oily smell coming from exhaust! disconnected breather to find (lots of) oil smoke coming from it. Wasn't doing it before oil change... any suggestions? Aside from those above. Ta.

Did you put the right kind of oil in ethan? Specifically for diesel engines, mineral or semi-synthetic and about 10w30 - 15-40?

TheVengefulElephant said:

Did you put the right kind of oil in ethan?

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ffs nelly - he sed he changed the engine oil! - or is that a noo type of injun?

if he had put in fully synthetic engine oil designed for high performance petrol engines then im sure it would have some effect.

My 110 used to have a smokey TD in it, now its been converted to a disco 200tdi. I cant recomend enough how much hassle it will save in the long run, these engines have a long history of reliability, and 19Js never seem to work properly. If you keep your defender gear box it is reasonably simple to do. You will need a disco-defender front down pipe (about £80 new on ebay), and you will need to eather move the radiator back, or re-work the radiator pipes. (Youll need the discos radiator). Once its done, you should have a much faster, more reliable, relitivly smoke free, less diesel greedy landrover.

whooooooooosh!

explain to him - will ya Sean.

To be honest... yeah! although I have used far cheaper oil than i usually would. Live in t'sticks, went relatively local, cheapo no brand 15w 40. Which, even before i posted had decided to change again at the weekend, involves a schlep into Sarfend (Southend)! gonna go for some Castrol Magnatec Diesel 10w40 (semi-synthetic) which is what i use in my other vehicle (Iveco 65-12)........However, do you think oil quality would make a big difference? am always learning! All the best, E.

Cheers for all that! am new 'ere as you may 'ave noticed....... anyone got a 200 tdi for sale??! ta-ta.

Thought i should add.............. 111000 miles still pulls well, smokes just on start up and occasionally when i overtake a Subaru WRX (just kidding)! she don't make any funny noises and all round been a good 'un. so the oily smell is a bit of a mystery.......... we'll see.

DON'T PUT MAGNATEC IN IT!!!

Just to get that clear...


Use the cheapest most cheerful oil you can and change it often.

I just took the ****e magnatec outta my 300 (well, i say took, it emptied itself in car park the other day)

I put halfords special in it, SOOO much quieter, less smoke, less rattles..!

DONT go down the fancy oil route, with ANY old engine, unless you are doing it from new!!

That was all..
Boydy

Oh - and depending on how much a lot of oil smoke outta the breather you mean, the engine is probably worn out.

By a faint haze, thats ok. Change the air filter.

By literally a cloud, then the piston rings/pistons are probably goosed.

How bad is it?