Very poorly 200Tdi...help!

Hard-Drive said:

Video, you can see the smoking dipstick tube at the end. It actually sounds fine to me...TBH my phone has made it sound a bit more rattly and whiney that it sounds in real life.

James, from your comment above, are you saying it's unlikely to be the turbo? TBH I had a turbo go on an Audi, and yes, there was oil and thick white/blue smoke absolutely everywhere, and it had chronic power loss. I'm just not getting symptoms as bad as that. HGF then?

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Hard-Drive said:

My Landy has been faultless recently, however suddenly today I have big problems. It's a 1986 110 that's been converted to a Disco 200Tdi. Conversion has been done "properly" with full Steve Parker bits on the intake and exhaust side. Always pulled like a train, if a little smoky under load.

Today I started it and it seemed a bit rough at tickover the moment it fired, with a noticeable vibration. Drove off, thinking nothing of it, however I noticed very heavy smoking under accelerartion (more black than blue, but definitely a smell of burning oil)

I nursed it home carefully keeping revs and boost low and it made it. I have digital gauges for water temp, oil temp, oil pressure (as well as standard fit oil light) and turbo boost. All stayed normal on the way home. It was a little lumpy, and although I was being very gentle, there was still power there by the feels of things.

Under the bonnet it's thrown a lot of oil out of the dipstick. There's also a lot of oil in the pipe that runs from the air filter to the turbo. There's a lot of oil everywhere and very little on the dipstick. Water level looks a bit low, although may have been like that before. I can't see any evidence of oil and water mixing...header tank is clear and no mayo under the oil filler cap. Cap was very smoky when I took it off.

My 110 has always like to "mark it's territory" in the dripping oil department, but this is a whole new thing, there's oil all over the alternator, chassis, wheel arch, everywhere. Something has obviously just let go in a big way overnight. I know I should check the crankcase filter on the side of the head, however if that was blocked it would cause oil spray from the dipstick, but would it cause the excessive smoking and rough running?

Head gasket? Knackered piston rings (suddenly?) Turbo?

Help...needless to say I'm absolutely gutted...any help or pointers would be much appreciated.

Thanks

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Hard-Drive said:

Thanks James (as always!)

Am I right that the shopping list is just a top end gasket kit? The head bolts are re-usable? If when I lift the head I find no nasties I may do the timing belt at the same time (and I was looking for an excuse to fit the Steve Parker bottom hose too, so perhaps this is it!)

Any makes to go for or avoid (it's a 3 hole gasket on at the moment)

Interestingly just found this on the Glencoyne website...these are my symptoms to a tee...

"Perhaps the most common failure point is between one of the cylinders and a pushrod tube (again, usually number four cylinder). This gives you a whole variety of alarming symptoms. The engine will run very roughly, blow oil out of every single joint and seal, and if you remove the oil filler cap huge quantities of smoke will belch out. At higher revs the engine may also start to 'run away' due to oil being drawn into the affected cylinder. A fair few people have been persuaded to pay up for a reconditioned engine on the strength of these symptoms, when all that is needed is a new head gasket."

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Hard-Drive said:

So...some spare time today so bit of an update. Here's how my day went...

Drove into my garage under it's own power but really lumpy...

Took it all apart...

Erm, yeah, that's knackered then. However no mixing of oil and water at all.

This was the head around the blow. Looks eroded in the pic but after cleaning up it's fine.

...however the bad news is there is this crack between the valves on cylinders 2 and 3. This is 3 and is worse than 2.

I used a long rule and a 0.08mm feeler gauge and the head does not seem warped at all (unlikely as it never overheated). Soooooo...the big question...what do I do? Just stick it back together with a new 3 hole gasket? Or strip the head and get it welded and skimmed? I've heard 200Tdi heads are basically impossible to get hold of now, and as clearly fluids aren't yet mixing, perhaps it's better the devil you know?

Other less important questions...
One of the "inners" came out of the no1 glow plug and it came out in two bits...does that mean it's knackered?
The injectors are covered in carbon...do I do anything whilst they are out, or just give it some injector cleaning additive when back together?
Bores etc all look good...should I be doing anything or just leave alone?
Haynes manual is going on about DTI and piston protrusion to decide what size gasket to use...any truth in this or just go like for like (and yes, already bought a 3 hole gasket...)

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Hard-Drive said:

Right then, update time. I took the head to a specialist local firm (very well respected, lots of enormous vintage engines from Bentleys, Simplex etc in there too) and they have pressure tested it and said it should be fine with a skim and new valve seats. They also do a lot of LR stuff and said I could in theory get it welded, however it puts a lot of heat in the head and if it were "theirs" they would not bother with the welding. To keep the costs down they suggested I remove the valves and do a basic decoke, and they will machine it from there.

Question...I picked up a nice Sykes Pickavant 039900 valve spring compressor from eBay for a fiver but it's the wrong shape to do the job. Can someone tell me what type it is I need for the 200Tdi head?

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