poor starting

only recently my freelander td4 has struggled to start, can be cranking for a while before it starts up. other times it can start up straight away.

Thinking of changing the glow plugs and relay just curious on other things it could be. (don't want to be changing glow plugs for no reason)

car smokes a fair bit on start up which is new and runs a bit lumpy, after a minute is absolutely fine


2003 freelander td4

Could be air in fuel system. You can check the glow plugs with a multimeter

I'd be inclined to replace the relay first as last.
It's not unknown for relay contacts to become pitted and oxidised especially those that are switching fairly high currents, resulting in either intermittent operation or unacceptably high voltage drop across the contacts.

In the current warm weather, the glow plugs aren't used to start a TD4. So that would discount them for the time being. Non starting TD4s are often attributed to fuel faults. The high pressure fuel pump regulator O rings can stop it starting, if they split. Also low HP pump pressure will cause sluggish starts. The rail pressure sensor can give trouble with similar symptoms. It's best to see if any codes are logged, before randomly replacing bits and pieces.

test the injectors and check the clamping brackets for cracks or breakage had a similar problem starting from cold would have to crank for short time and other times start first time but when hot after long run
would refuse to start but if left for 10 minutes would start ,had injectors changed started first time every time,but later had problems with lumpy running when cold and black smoke found the injector clamps had been over
tightened causing one to break allowing the injector 1 to lift and another that was cracked