Stuck Injector on Series III

Recently bought a Series III Diesel (1982), for £80 , off a friend. It's in pretty good nick, very little rust etc and I've been working on it. Producing smoke (not unusual for a Landy), but this is excessive. I've slackened all fuel lines going to each injector in turn while the engine is running.

The front-most injector very little change in the engine sound when the fuel line is "disconnected". However, to check it over I need to get it out which is proving to be impossible. Anyone got any ideas?

I've disconnected all the fuel lines and screws holding the injector in. But cannot budge the injector itself. I've successfully managed to remove the next injector along but this one won't move, tried a variety of methods:

• Shaking, pushing (obviously )
• Tried budging it by hitting a piece of wood with a hammer (wood to absorb most of the shock).
• Putting a smaller diameter screw down through each of the injector's holes (the side ones) and putting washers & nuts between injector and cylinder head (so that when you tighten the screw it pushes down on the cylinder head (thus, theoretically lifting the injector free).
• Also tried my dad's grip for removing plugs, but this is too large.

Has any body got any ideas about how to get the injector out?

Many thanks & Happy Christmas and New Year.

Ed

Ed, welcome & merry seasons greetings. I'm still finding my way around Diesels & to be honest you sound way more clued up as to how they actually work than I do! However, a fairly rust free III for 80 notes? Good work, enjoy, now has someone a useful answer for the man?

try removing it with the engine hot( if not already tried)

on second thought that will probelly make it tighter, but wth give it a go..another method that might work would be to disconnect the injector ,then cover it with a cloth or towel. then turn the engine over. the pressure might shove it out

RE: "try removing it with the engine hot( if not already tried)"

The engine had been running for about 10/15 minutes (on and off) before hand while I was loosening the fuel lines in turn. While not "hot" it was quite warm to the touch.

I'm thinking it may be a good idea to nip out to the barn and flood it in WD40 and have another go tomorrow when I come back from the rally.

Thanks for the replies, keep me posted )) of other ideas.

BTW, the reason I'm looking at the injectors is because of the smoke. Is this the most likely cause or is it more likely to be the timing?

Regards

Ed

Sorry slob, read your second message too quickly, that idea about the cloth -> injector -> pressure -> shove looks quite a good one, possibly dangerous, but I like danger . Anything to annoy (can think of better words but can't remember the views of the forums) health and safety.

black smoke or blue smoke??

not dangerous if you use a cloth of suitable weight..and wear a hard hat for health and saftey reasons

Could, I suppose, thought possibly just stay in the cab of the Landy but then again maybe not, the injector'll probably go through it. I will try that anyway tomorrow when I get the chance (if I'm not forced to revise for boring A-Levels).

Had another think about the cloth thing and I don't think that it'll work because the pressure which was created by the screw method would have been far greater than the pressure exterted by the engine.

A better explanation of how this works follows (sorry I couldn't be bothered to draw a diagram).

There is ~1/4" gap between the injector casing and the cylinder head.
I inserted a smaller diameter screwed thread down through the injector casing (the two holes on either side), this was screwed into & through a washer and nut.
As the nut is tightened (by using a spanner at the top [it is one of these screws which has a built in nut at the top]) it forces the screw down through the nut and into the hold in the cylinder head (this is blocked off).
As more tension is applied then the injector should be lifted out.

Basically what is happening is the screw is acting as a worm gear. And as you should know worm gears are incredibly powerful transforming little effort into incredible pressure (in this case).

To give you an example of how strong this was when we (my father and I) managed to get the screw back out, the bottom was completely and utterly mangled by the pressure exerted.

So sorry to put a damper on your suggestion but some intuitive guessing by my father & I suggests that this method is ~100 times stronger than turning the engine over.

However: I will try your method. What I guess has happened is that the injector has become slightly twisted inside the casing.

If your two your two methods: heating and starting engine fail then I may consider carefully drilling out the injector and replacing it or dismantle the engine to see if it can be extracted that way. (Which is probably better considering I don't really know what the internal condition of the engine is in, it's only done 68k but I don't think that it's been that well looked after).

The last owner used it as a cheap alternative to a quad for herding cattle and succeeded in getting it up to 50mph in a field when he realised that the brakes had gone

Thanks again for your help I'll keep you posted progress goes so that it may serve (hopefully) as a reference to others.

like you say it might not work but what have you got to lose by trying it? prefable to stripping the engine down me thinks.
another way i thought of would be to use an engine hoist on it but that would require a lot of care and i would susgest only to be tried as a last resort before pulling head off
whatever you do i wish you luck with it and i can't wait to hear what the problem was..
good luck matey

Thanks for the good luck, of course the ultimate resort would be using our 3 ton (i suppose mini, compared to the LR3) digger you yank it out (so long as the hydraulic cylinders don't squeal like a stuck pig (especially when you try & lift something too heavy, or try and budge something as stubborn as a Landy).

Of course it'd probably be easier to fit a new engine in the mean time after repairing the damage. Do you know of any places where you can "buy one get one free" on engines (my neighbour has an ex-mod lightweight and is always complaining about the power (or rather lack of it) as well as the speed (top speed 40mph and he had to drive it down to West-Wales from Redditch (Birmingham) .

On a slightly more serious note, have you realised how amazing the hand-brake is on Landies? I was towing mine at the end of October half-term with the Same (tractor), my mum got in to steer it, put the handbrake on when I thought she was telling me to continue (I was in the Same), there was a 3/4" nylon rope tied between the 3/4 tonne weight on the front of the Same and the bumper of the Landy. It BROKE!!! Good Handbrake

BTW, what are the chances that the Landy has either rusted up inside the engine block or got completely caked up with sh*t (hence the stuck injector). Has it happened to anyone else that you know of?

Hi there,

I have EXACTLY the same problem! The injector below the oil breather came out fine, the other two were pigs but came out in the end, but the first one (which is causing my SIII's smoking problem) is not willing to budge!
Dont remove the rocker cover to see if that gives more leverege - it dont!

I have got so exasperated by this, I had a dream about jacking up the car, tieing the injector to the branch of a sturday oak, then letting the air out of the jack to pull it free!

WD40 and a hot engine doesnt work.

The only ray of hope is that the injector below the oil breather came out easily because it gets a little drop of nice warm oil on it occasionally from the breather, so I am thinking of using a syringe to apply a little engine oil round the injector when the engine is warm, and do this until it is warm enough (weather wise) to be outside mucking about with my landy! By which time repeated applications will hopefully have helped.

The other idea i had was to remove the mounting studs, then belt the injector as if trying to turn it clockwise or anticlockwise in its hole. I dont know how easily the mounting studs will come out... I thought that putting both mounting nuts on one stud (so they turn against each other) would be a way of removing them..

Good Luck and please post if you have any success!!

Cheers

John

Hi again,

just read the later posts! The reason the injectors are stuck is surface corrosion, two of mine had me levering on them with a claw hammer to get them free, when they popped out, they were just rusty! Not been changed in 20 years i reckon! The reason that No1 is worse is because the radiator manifold and oil filler tube prevent proper leverege. I actually broke a crow bar on no.4 before resorting to a top quality claw hammer!

ps the handbrake is excellent because it is a transmission brake, so be careful not to try and move her with it on, and definitely no hand brake turns!

John

No handbrake turns! Aww that takes all the fun away! Besides it'll be better in the Landy to pull them since the handbrake works compared to our old D-reg Nissan Sunny which we use for fun in the fields. That has had the handbrake tightened by myself but's still a bit loose for handbrake turns. BTW that Nissan although off the road is still going strong, petrol engine done 285,000 miles.

Hmm, wonder if it'll fit in the Landy...

I will try and get the time to have another go at the injector tomorrow after I come back from shooting. After that it'll be a tight squeeze what with hosting a shoot over the weekend and then back to boring school and being forced to take exams

Hi all,

Just thought I'd keep you updated about progress, been revising "hard" rolleyes: ) for exams so havn't had much time. However...

I tried soaking the injector in WD-40 and leaving, tried this several times leaving the injector soaking up to 3 days but still no luck.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll find some time to put the other injector back in and start her up to see if warming the engine has any effect. Hopefully the compression may loosen then injector slightly.

If this fails has anybody got any suggestions?

Is the next stage dismantling the engine, is this possible with the injector still in there? (I'm not thinking too clearly at the moment and can't be bothered to go downstairs, disturb the slumbering dog and get the Hanyes book out of the car ).

Ok another update

Put the Landy back together and took her outside. I let the engine warm up, while doing so my dad an I had some "fun" and took a blow-torch to the exhaust, it was difficult to tell but there did seem to be some diesel coming out, supporting the theory of a messed up injector. Also when I slackened the fuel line to the injector the smoke from the exhaust thinned out a bit.

Took it back into the barn and while the engine was still hot I undid stuff to get at the injector, by shoving a spanner underneath either side the injector was "wobbling" slightly so some progress at last!!!

While I'm typing this my genius of a father is building up a tool to allow us to twist the injector inside the engine block so hopefully that will work.

I also tried earlier to remove the other two injectors (3 & 4) but they were fairly tight, but as they seem to be working I'm leaving them there for the moment.

Now a question:

If I remove the oil-filler tube from the engine block, to have more room to work on the first injector, does it have any adverse effects? I'm asking this because from what I saw the alignment marker for the fuel pump was mounted on the base of the tube.

Again I'll keep you posted, it's a great day here so lots of work is being done on the old girl

suggest you keep it running for a bit it seems to be loosening by what you say. Pour old engine oil and parrafin tound injector base let it soak in then warm up engine

Another update: Success!!!

Dad's quick tool worked a treat, basically what he did was get ~1" tube to fit over the injector cap then weld two "prongs" on either side which he lathed down to size to fit into the holes on the side of the injector. He then put another tube inside (but not all the way) to prevent the tube buckling, as well as tempering the two prongs for strength.

To loosen he just put it over the injector (fitted a treat, down to ~1/1000th of an inch as per his usual accuracy I don't know how he does it but he can judge distances by eye down to ~1/1000th of an inch)

I will try and post some photos of it, if I get time and I can persuade him to let me take them (he said he's ashamed of the quality of the welding, but hey it took him 15 minutes to come up with the idea, find the pieces of metal and build it) and then it took another 15 minutes to get the f****** injector out (using a pipe wrench to turn the pipe).

His first idea was to weld a socket inside the tube so then a socket spanner can be attatched, we had plenty of spare sockets lying around but couldn't find one that would fit and had a 1/2" fitting (he wanted the strongest possible).

Since then there's been some developments but I'm opening another thread as they don't fit into this one.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Take great care with a stuck injector, remembering some of them are in TWO PIECES, and can separate in the middle. You do NOT want to apply so much torque anti-clockwise (un-screwing) that the two sections of the injector loosen. However, this is unlikely as they are screwed up tight.

Your task requires a lot of patience, and a FOUR OUNCE (100 gram) ball-pein hammer with a long thin handle. These are sometimes called pin-hammers.

You are going to spend half an hour tapping the injector LIGHTLY around the solid top end, as much "all round the clock" sideways but tapping towards centre as you can manage, and I promise you that IF you are patient, and IF you use a 4-ounce pin hammer, and IF you don't hit it hard, that the injector WILL start to loosen, and it WILL come out. It requires lots of patience though, and NO brute force!

Trust me ...

CharlesY