Td5, nanocom, sensors, sanity

Evening all

Apologies for yet another thread and a long post-on issues with my daily but as we know this is the best place for wisdom and id really appreciate your thoughts.

Defender Td5 With unknown remap:

A couple of weeks ago, I lost all power. I was pulling out onto the main road and it lurched, lost power then lost the accelerator. Tps or tps wiring related no doubt. I discussed with brown, banks and others and will be running a stand-alone lead to rule out bad wiring for tps. I booked in at specialist. In the mean time, I had what felt like a fuel cut issue. Every so often I’d be driving and it would go into hardly any boost, restricted gears etc. almost like it was na.
I checked ecu red plug for oil. Oil was there, I cleaned out and fitted new harness. Also installed a cps whilst there. I took in for a code read - driver demand error and don’t believe there was a noisy crank sensor or similar. They did say there was no issue with tps though.
I unplugged MAF after issues and hasn’t been plugged back in since. It was running well after the above with no more hiccups.

Fast forward 2 weeks, the fuel pump made a gurgling horrible noise on startup and she wouldn’t start. Pulled pump and replaced with vdo unit. All running lovely again. (I have however been notice a puff of black on foot to floor at low revs in most gears)

Yesterday - I was working on the defender doing some rubber carpets. I unplugged the accelerator pedal to do it. After few hours I was finished, I started her up and it was like she was flooding. I switched off, started again. Fine. Drove normal for few miles, then once again, I had the weird 70% power nasty running business. I drove home with a view to look further today. Checked red plug - nice and clean.
Today - I pulled egr ( dual solenoid but vacs aren’t plugged into valve) which was mucky but not horrendous, dropped oil, changed both filters.
Started her up, ticking over lovely, drove down the road.
Got to my favourite bit of road once warm and planted foot. Rubbish power again. I then got to t jct for a road and it kangarood away. I pulled over, switched off. Switched on. Run normal for two mins but as soon as loud pedal was pressed enough it went into the safe mode again.

it’s become clear that I need my own nanocom. I’m going to order one tomorrow and hopefully have soon. I wanted a defender so it would be fun, smart enough for client facing yet ideal for shooting, fishing, muddy boots etc. I’m actually wishing I’d got a 300 at the moment as I’m scared of getting the bloody pedal wet or wondering when it’s going to limp on me. I didn’t want a fragile defender ffs.

Anyway, now I’ve wiped my tears. I’ve tried to be descriptive with above Incase there’s anything stand out to anyone that would upset the td5?

my current thoughts

ecu - perhaps there’s oil in ecu itself?

Boost hoses - I did check the lh one earlier when servicing but perhaps ones collapsing. Didn’t think that would cause a safe mode though...

Injector washers - I’ve a receipt for these in service history 30k ago along with o rings. I’d expect these to last longer than 30k?

Map - I cleaned this When I did cps.

Cps - crap brand, banks warned crap ones fail after a few hundred and advised to get an inter motor one which is in cubby box now.

hopefully I can report back with nanocoms arrival. I’m a bit gutted as it’s cost me in other issues mainly through the specialist whom I bought from bodging. It burnt any spare cash I had and nanocoms coming out of savings so not ideal!

I want a wet weather defender that’s not just going to have sensor issue etc and hope that I’ve just got niggles to sort prior to having a solid truck.

thanks!

I hope the Nanocom throws some light on it. It's fencing in the dark having a TD5 without one.

It's possible to have TD5 ECU faults but for them not to show up on a Nanocom. An ECU failure at the end of 2014 put me off the road for a while, but the Nanocom was reading the ECU fine. It just wasn't delivering any signal to the injectors. However, you can spot a lot of problems before they become significant. A poor injector loom gives you 'peak charge long' errors and a bad crank position signal gives you 'high speed crank error' for example You can also see the outputs from the accelerator and watch the voltages change at different pedal positions, or look at the signal from the MAF. So lots of useful stuff that can help narrow down faults.

Thank you. I am wondering if oil has got into ecu. However, I’m wondering a lot hence the nanocom! No point guessing and I don’t to do any miles this week thankfully so having a break from it as it’s got me worked up.
Yes hopefully it sheds some light. I’ve seen the nanocom shows pedal track signal etc so plan is to take it out and try and get it to go into limp mode whilst live logging. Can then share file on here also! What would be good news is if the result was black and white rather than non conclusive!

It's also about eliminating things. If you get reliable pedal data all the time, it's probably not the pedal, for example.

Land Rover TD5 ECUs are around about the sort of age where they're apt to be unreliable. After all, if you had a 15 year old computer it wouldn't be surprising if it kept freezing up when you tried to do things, and components or the board itself failed. I've had more ECU failures than I've had flat tyres in 100,000 miles of Land Rover motoring.

I don't think I'd buy a td5 if I went back to be honest.

Brown said:

It's also about eliminating things. If you get reliable pedal data all the time, it's probably not the pedal, for example.

Land Rover TD5 ECUs are around about the sort of age where they're apt to be unreliable. After all, if you had a 15 year old computer it wouldn't be surprising if it kept freezing up when you tried to do things, and components or the board itself failed. I've had more ECU failures than I've had flat tyres in 100,000 miles of Land Rover motoring.

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I’ve been doing some research/reading around testing sensors etc. @gstuart does a fair bit on his disco and A search revealed his recent thread re oscilloscope. You’d hope Nanocom would be enough to narrow it down, however, a scope would test the signal itself and also the inputs/ground I.e if there were a wiring fault.
That tps issue you had years back with chafed wires - wouldn’t a scope show interference and stuff if you plugged into feeds and wiggled wires?
I know very little re circuitry but I actually understand the basics of this and suppose td5 is the first basic ecu setup in land rovers.
I think rather than treating this as a negative (no pun intended) I may study a bit. I always dodged electronics - I passed it as a unit in mech eng years ago but god knows how.
The old mans a genius in it though so I’m sure I could get some study material then quiz him!

You can Check physical stuff like turbo wastegate not seized up with crud, take boost pipes off check condition, any map pipes or similar are connected and decent while you wait for your Nanocom. If you find the problem great, if not won’t hurt and peace of mind

RangeRoller dt said:

You can Check physical stuff like turbo wastegate not seized up with crud, take boost pipes off check condition, any map pipes or similar are connected and decent while you wait for your Nanocom. If you find the problem great, if not won’t hurt and peace of mind

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I checked wastegate for seizing and main boost hoses. Could do with checking the other vac hoses and wastegate actuator hose to be fair but would be hard to tell if failing? Thanks for advice.
I did think it was an overboost thing to start with. Now I know I’ve spent the money I’m quite looking forward to getting the nanocom and taking as much guessing out of issues as I can!!

Will also replace boost pipes with silicone in future and will be doing that standalone tps wiring as have 0 faith in the tps loom doing a loop around the car prior to coming back to ecu. I’m Going to give it its own grommet in seat box and p clip it gearbox tunnel inside the cab

At the time I had the problem with the accelerator pedal wiring i didn't have the Nanocom. In fact I'd only had the Land Rover just over a week at that point. Yes, maybe it would have shown up as a lack of signal when the fault was in evidence. Several people at the time insisted to me it was the potentiometer itself (AA mechanics, especially), but a Nanocom (or similar) would probably have helped.

Until you get hands on a nanocom you could check that the wastegate actuator itself isn't fubar.

Whip off the boost hose connection to the actuator and connect a bike pump to its input, pump it up and see if it actually moves the rod out. One of those upright pumps with a gauge on is handy to check you get good extension at ~ 18psi.

It does kind of sound like classic boost cut - hope it's this simple....

FWIW I've had this myself.

Bennehboy said:

Until you get hands on a nanocom you could check that the wastegate actuator itself isn't fubar.

Whip off the boost hose connection to the actuator and connect a bike pump to its input, pump it up and see if it actually moves the rod out. One of those upright pumps with a gauge on is handy to check you get good extension at ~ 18psi.

It does kind of sound like classic boost cut - hope it's this simple....

FWIW I've had this myself.

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cheers - that’s a great idea but don’t think I’ve got one. I’ve got an electric one though!

I’ve no idea what it should be running on remap as I didn’t have it mapped myself. You’d hope every map has a fail safe cut though...

Brown said:

At the time I had the problem with the accelerator pedal wiring i didn't have the Nanocom. In fact I'd only had the Land Rover just over a week at that point. Yes, maybe it would have shown up as a lack of signal when the fault was in evidence. Several people at the time insisted to me it was the potentiometer itself (AA mechanics, especially), but a Nanocom (or similar) would probably have helped.

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There was me feeling sorry for myself and it happened to you a week in! Seems it’s a good investment doesn’t it.

Yes, I've had two major problems that have required garage intervention. The first was the loss of throttle response above, which puzzled AA men and a main dealer in Shrewsbury for quite a while. The second was at the end of 2014-early 2015 when it simply stopped running and wouldn't re-start. This was the time that everything checked out with the Nanocom, but it appeared that no signal was being delivered to the injectors. I ran out of ideas and sent it to a garage. They were in a position to swap components for which I didn't have spares, so were able to identify that it was a combination of ECU, immobiliser and wiring loom problems. It was expensive, but I'd have kicked myself if it had been something simple that I'd missed.

Aside from that, all the maintenance has been stuff that I've done myself: bearings, bushes, brake pads, seals and pistons, oil changes and filter changes, two clutches (one wore out, on the other the splined centre came loose from the friction plate), slathering the chassis and bulkhead with Dinitrol, windscreen wiper mechanisms on two occasions, new steering column and universal joints, new power steering pump new engine and gearbox mounts and probably a load of other things. All stuff you can do at home with spanners and hammers.

Brown said:

Yes, I've had two major problems that have required garage intervention. The first was the loss of throttle response above, which puzzled AA men and a main dealer in Shrewsbury for quite a while. The second was at the end of 2014-early 2015 when it simply stopped running and wouldn't re-start. This was the time that everything checked out with the Nanocom, but it appeared that no signal was being delivered to the injectors. I ran out of ideas and sent it to a garage. They were in a position to swap components for which I didn't have spares, so were able to identify that it was a combination of ECU, immobiliser and wiring loom problems. It was expensive, but I'd have kicked myself if it had been something simple that I'd missed.

Aside from that, all the maintenance has been stuff that I've done myself: bearings, bushes, brake pads, seals and pistons, oil changes and filter changes, two clutches (one wore out, on the other the splined centre came loose from the friction plate), slathering the chassis and bulkhead with Dinitrol, windscreen wiper mechanisms on two occasions, new steering column and universal joints, new power steering pump new engine and gearbox mounts and probably a load of other things. All stuff you can do at home with spanners and hammers.

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I want the car as a daily driver now I do less miles and there's not really anything I want that can both take all my gear, dogs, mud etc but still look good in a company carpark. I'm a bit dubious whether I can have it as a constant daily now. Don't get me wrong - I've no issue with maintaining things that wear out I'm just hoping I can have it free of no start or sensor issues.

I would re-loom if I had to but hopefully I'm not in that position and it can be easily cured.

I just pulled ecu and despite having oil around edges on outer case its nice and clean...

Well, it doesn’t run badly but definitely doesn’t feel as quick as it did. Max boost was 1.1 bar on nanocom so roughly 16psi. It’s Remapped but I guess there’s no saying boost was adjusted in said remap.
Fault codes upon getting in was a driver demand error - already knew it would through that after the funny start when I’d disconnected it. No other codes.
Accelerator 3 pot track seemed normal.
Looks like the fault didn’t occur - certainly wasn’t any jumping or lurching.
I guess I’ll keep driving it and wait for it to happen

Atleast next time it happens you will be ready for it

RangeRoller dt said:

Atleast next time it happens you will be ready for it

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Yes mate! I have downloaded the csv viewer, formatted a sd card and once traffic has died down I’m going to try and make it happen. I’m sure last few times it’s been once it’s nice and warm and when driving spiritedly lol. Going to go for a hardwired throttle and probably a hardwired cps in screened cable next month once I actually have money to once again throw at the bastard thing