starting troubles

having trouble starting my td5 one minute starts great and then the next it wont start so i have jump start it then its fine for a day or so. ive replaced my injector harness because there was oil leaking back into the ecu, so i don't think its that any ideas as to what it could be? also my window wipers kept jamming so i had to nudge them to get them going again and now the don't run parallel with each other and still get stuck any ideas of part i need to change?

thanks jake

The starting issue could be due to a air in fuel system issue or combustion gas leaking into the fuel rail both of which will knock these engines out cold.

Next couple of days, before you start it, try ignition on then deck the pedal 5 times. The system should go into extended purge mode, if it sounds noisy like there is air in there then I would start to consider air ingress in the system.

I would also change the fuel filter, although the filter may be fine the O-ring can start to leak causing an air ingress point.

I;d start here first before I started looking into other issues. I've been battling these issues on a TD5 Disco with a friend of mine for years. The first time for him it was the injector washers.

Re the wipers, I've had similar problems to that when the wheels in the wheelboxes were slipping on the spindles. Sounds like that's what has happened to yours as they've got out of phase. To get at them you've got to take the dash apart which is a long winded and fiddly job but provided you approach it systematically and keep all the screws safe, it's not too bad. I have effected a temporary repair on one of mine by indenting the join between the gear wheel and spindle with a chisel, which gives it a bit more grip.

TD5s are quite sensitive to any loss of battery voltage, so you can have enough power to turn the engine over but the voltage drops so that the ECU doesn't work. How old is the battery? Could anything be running it down when the car is left standing? The fact that it's OK when you jump start it from another battery suggests it might be a battery problem.