Landrover

So far all has gone well on the rebuild of the 300tdi. The new cylinder head looks to be good and has cleaned up well. Fitting the new pistons has been a little more difficult as they were very tight, but all went back together ok. Firing up for the first time was a bit of a worry. I'd glaze busted the cylinders and put the pistons in with a little grease as they were v tight, so when it finally did start to turn over it would have some lubrication. When it did fire up though a good deal of that stodgy grease burnt off with a bit of smoke. What the heck though, it fired up and I ran it for about 15 mins on tick over-1500rpm.

All sounds good eh, so why the 'but...' in the title, well after the 15 mins or so the starter kicked in (no joke it did) and everything sounded very bad. I turned the engine off, but when ever the key is in position II or III the starter engages. Suspects so far are... a trapped cable during the rebuild (though I can't see anything), a buggered starter, or switch/electrical. I'm starting with the leccy side of things as this is the cheapest thing to repair.

Posted by Adrian Hollister

With nothing much else to do in the snow, I took the my 300TDI dicovery engine apart. I have a new cylinder head to put on, so I dropped the sump off and took the pistons out as well... might as well replace the big end bearings and piston rings whilst I'm doing the head. There is some good wear on the bearings as you'd expect as they were in from new and had covered 130K miles. The only thing of note was that the piston from the number 1 cylinder had what looks like a valve mark in it.



So, I've a cylinder head from ebay in the hope that it's ok, new big end bearings and in the end new pistons (as it was only a few quid cheaper to buy them built into the cylinder.

When it warms up I'll try and put it back together...

Posted by Adrian Hollister