My Disco doesn't want to start...

Had no replies in the Disco forum so thought I'd stick this here for a wider audience.

Got a funny one here, disco has been running rough recently, smoking with a serious loss of power and I parked it up planning on looking at it when I got a chance. Came to look at it today and it won't start, the fuel is coming out of the injectors a milky white colour which I'm assuming is heavy water content.

Sedimentor has been bypassed by a previous owner sometime in the past, so I drained the (recently changed) fuel filter to find a 50/50 water/diesel mix. Disconnected the fuel pipe to the manual mechanical pump and stuck it in a clean can of diesel as I thought I must have contamination in the tank, and this is where it gets confusing. Have bled every join in the fuel line up to the injector pump and got clean diesel through all of them. The low pressure line into the IP was bled with clean, clear fuel with no bubbles at all, but once the fuel passes through the pump and out to the injectors it's still as white as milk and the engine won't run at all. Almost as though my injector pump is full of water.

Not having any knowledge of how the pump works I don't know wtf is happening to the fuel in it, all I can see is it turns white and the engine don't like it. Any ideas what might be going on? Has been cranking with the injectors cracked off for ages so I would've thought the clean fuel would be well through by now, so any suggestions would be appreciated!

yu wont gain anything by posting on here - most peeps run lz-live, so will see your thread in any subforum - maybe no-one has an answer for you?

Sounds like that might be the case, but I thought it would be worth a try! Cheers for your reply anyhow.

Dunno how much the IP holds or uses, but I'd keep running it till it turns diesel coloured ..

Or, could it be air getting sucked into the pump somewhere and what you're seeing isn't really coloured but a mixture of tiny air bubbles in the diesel?

TBH I've never had the IP off or checked an injector this way, but common sense says if the fuel's clean going in, then keep running it till it's clean coming out .. unless something else is getting into the IP somehow.

Paul D said:

unless something else is getting into the IP somehow.

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This is the bit that worries me, if the IP has a leak somehow that's going to be nearly impossible to find/trace. I don't suppose there's any kind of bleed screw on the IP itself is there?

The diesel was really white and opaque, even sat for a long length of time it didn't clear up as you'd expect it to if it was air. I'm hoping the IP and associated injector pipe is still holding the rest of the contaminated fuel and with enough cranking I'll get diesel through in a bit, but now the limitation is my dying battery!

Have sorted it out now, drained all the old diesel out of the tank and it came out as yellow as cat ****. Starting and running fine now with the whole system flushed out with clean fuel, any idea what might have happened to the old stuff? Can't see any leaks or corrosion along any of the fuel lines or the tank, annoying having to bin £30 quids worth of diesel cos it's the wrong colour and my engine don't like it!

Ghost said:

This is the bit that worries me, if the IP has a leak somehow that's going to be nearly impossible to find/trace. I don't suppose there's any kind of bleed screw on the IP itself is there?

The diesel was really white and opaque, even sat for a long length of time it didn't clear up as you'd expect it to if it was air. I'm hoping the IP and associated injector pipe is still holding the rest of the contaminated fuel and with enough cranking I'll get diesel through in a bit, but now the limitation is my dying battery!

Have sorted it out now, drained all the old diesel out of the tank and it came out as yellow as cat ****. Starting and running fine now with the whole system flushed out with clean fuel, any idea what might have happened to the old stuff? Can't see any leaks or corrosion along any of the fuel lines or the tank, annoying having to bin £30 quids worth of diesel cos it's the wrong colour and my engine don't like it!

Click to expand...

Has your landy ever run on veg oil?

It's only a guess but it could be that your landy has a bacterial infection due to previously being used to run veg oil.

The Mad Hat Man said:

yu wont gain anything by posting on here - most peeps run lz-live, so will see your thread in any subforum - maybe no-one has an answer for you?

Click to expand...

LZ-live? What's that??

Land Rover Forum - Live Updates

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Aha, thanks That's pretty neat.

milky fuel at injectors usually indicates a stuck nozzle so compression is entering the system