STOVEBOLTSLIM

Mine had a little shaving of aluminium under the seating of the shut off solenoid, it was allowing a dribble of fuel through. If I revved it after turning off the ignition key it would starve and shut down. Took out the solenoid and cleaned out the swarf from the seating deep in the FIP. Used a spot of grease on the end of my longest thinnest screwdriver to pick up the swarf, then blasted out the threaded bore with a good squirt of WD40 using the straw.

Progress. Tested leak off pipes with my old vacuum-advance test kit, they would hold a vacuum so not convinced air was entering, from the way it's laid out thought that any air would be pushed straight down return line to tank and not affect pump operation. Decided to take off inlet manifold and have a better look at the electrical plugs and glow-plugs that I could see underneath. Before I knew it, the manifold was off (plastic type so could re-use seals). Plugs were oily on outside, but terminals were clean and bright when I unplugged them so turned attention to glow-plugs. Four of the 8mm. terminal nuts unscrewed ok but two of them started to twist the terminals and I was glad I had not attempted removing the glow-plugs with manifold in place. After a closer inspection I realised the cores of the two glow-plugs had completely broken so I just slid them out, held them with pliers and got the nuts off without damaging the loom. Used a 12mm x 3/8" drive socket, just managed to engage it on the flats and removed all six (Beru 0 100 221 163) glow-plugs. Disappointingly they all looked quite new and after cleaning off a bit of light carbon and some harder white residue they appeared sound, but after testing across battery terminals there was no sign of any heat at all. Think I was confusing the current draw of the ABS pump with the plugs drawing current, so there's a reminder to be more diligent next time. Ordered new set of NGK Y-924J and repaired manky porous 3.5mm rubber vacuum hose under manifold that I think is part of the EGR system. Fitted glow-plugs and after rest of reassembly, gave fuel pump 3 runs to purge leak-off lines after disconnecting them, engine started immediately on first try, hurrah. Tried one of the new plugs across battery before fitting, was red hot in 5 seconds so all my previous 30sec. preheats before starting were just a waste of time with the dead plugs. Tried again after leaving all night, and after 5 sec. pause for preheat, started immediately. The manifold was easier than I thought to remove and refit, so was well worthwhile for the extra ease of access, and checking electrical plugs and the vacuum pipe.

What does the BECM/ECM synchronysation affect that would stop the engine starting? Answer: The needle lift sensor on no.4 injector, together with crank position sensor, calculates engine speed and regulates fuel flow from pump to injectors via quantity servo control unit and servo unit potentiometer, as pete3000 says, this also controls jolt damping (thanks Pete) If the above components are faulty there is no limp mode, ECM gives zero fuel flow = shutdown (deduced from RAVE cd manual)

Thanks Pete, have red herrings to deal with as well. Starter motor or battery seem to have lost speed and power, have 10 volts at starter and battery when cranking, understand this is the cut-off limit for ECM working correctly so bit doubtful. Swopped and charged batteries while maintaining 12 volts at connection to avoid any reprogramming/synching issues, noticed glazing inside battery terminal clamps, guessed I had baked grease on terminals while using starter for extended periods, cleaned connections and refitted recharged battery. Duh! no good. Tried 3 good batteries in paralell to give longer bursts of cranking (starter motor was recon, fitted 9 months ago) no improvement. Used 2 batteries in series wired direct to starter solenoid (not recommended, but what we used to do on Ford Escorts in my old rallying days) to give 24volt starting, with the standard vehicle battery just powering the electronics. Got engine spinning well and manually vented injector pipes but still u/s. Got more desperate, only had small amount of white smoke from exhaust so suspecting fuelling weak or airlocked tried spraying WD40 into inlet manifold after disconnecting MAF pipe and while choking inlet with my hand to check compression/suction engine fired and ran smoothly. Thought I had cleared airlock and went to bed. Next day, put wiring back to standard, engine seemed to turn over faster but no start and then soon after, no starter motor. Removed and dismantled, no brushes left and comm. had been turned down really thin during recon. process, was not impressed by quality and then noticed small flywheel in pre-engaged pinion gear was damaged around it's perimeter and had been catching on something. Looking in bell-housing aperture, the starter had been catching on the crank position sensor dowels. Removed and cleaned crank position sensor as it had metal flakes magnetised to it from starter motor. Started to track down new starter and had conflicting info about correct item, the faulty was a Magnetti Marelli with threaded fixing holes but I was not convinced that was correct. Finally settled on a used Bosch/Land Rover unit from Emmotts of Colne, arrived next day and looked in super condition, it did not have threaded fixing holes but the bolts holding the Magnetti Marelli were easily long enough to take nuts and lock-nuts. Engine spins great on 12volts only but only starts after lengthy cranking so still not there. Restarts immediately if only left a minute or 10 minutes, but after a couple of hours or overnight needs cranking. Will be doing injector leak off pipes next although they don't look bad, but I can't ignore the overwhelming opinion, hoping to find my vacuum tester gauge and investigate as I remove them.

The engine fires no problem but if you try to rev the engine it bumps off some kind of limiter at 2000rpm. There are no errors showing on the dashboard. There is some sort of "limp mode" in the electronics? Read somewhere that there are 2 levels of limp mode (2000 & 3500 rpm) from memory. Reading this old post as my 2000 X reg 2.5 DSE cranks but won't start. Have changed dead, in tank fuel pump, after intermittent poor starting became terminal, no sign of firing now, have purged air at injectors and am working through other ideas, but as I look more at this (M 51) engine there doesn't seem much electronic control, just peripheral stuff. Injection pump is mechanical, shut off solenoid looks like my old 200 TDI type, injectors are mechanical. What does the BECM/ECM synchronysation affect that would stop the engine starting?

Hi Sheltie, it's a factory original 200TDI, the problem seems to be that there is power to the starter RELAY hidden under the dash, but this does not operate to send power to the starter SOLENOID fixed to the pre-engaged starter on the engine. If I provide a temporary earth (ie, negative connection) to the relay coil, all operates successfully. I have done this temporary connection and driven 130 miles today with several restarts with no problem. BUT because there is a diode in the original relay negative wire and I can't find an earthing point that it goes to, I am suspecting it goes back into the loom to connect to some ECU or other infernal device and I may be cocking something up long-term by fitting the direct earth. I've ordered a CD rom manual and hope to be able to glean something from the wiring diagrams but I'm not holding out much hope and was really banking on someone who knows the electronic side of these vehicles putting my mind at rest. On the bright side, I'm really enjoying the coil spring TDI experience after previous series 1,2,3 ownership. Cheers, Geoff

Nearly got home in my newly acquired 1993 RR Vogue 200TDI, filled up with diesel, got a good sting of static off the door as I closed it, jumped in, wouldn't crank. Battery good, dash warning lights on as normal, headlamps worked fine, no dimming when I turned key. Had a general look around wiggled key etc. phoned previous owner, no clues. Found starter motor behind little shield at back of turbo so I wasn't putting my bare hand in there while it's hot. Neighbour came round and gave me a pull to start and drove home no problem. Had a look today, without shop manual and couldn't find the right wiring diagram online persevered in tracing the wiring, what a bitch. The colour coding and wire gauge from ignition switch seems to change at random every few inches, found an inline 10A. blade fuse, that was fed from a connector block wedged behind the loom and that fed the switched live to the relay coil. Swopped the relay as it wasn't clicking, but no joy so traced the neg. side of the coil to a suspicios bulge in the loom that I thought might be a fusible link. This is all after removing the steering column shrouds and the under dash trim panel, how are you supposed to access stuff like this on the side of the road or worse still off-road? When I put my circuit tester on the relay neg. the ignition key span the motor as normal so I suspected failed diode (as I think the bulge is) or bad earth. Trying the tester prod on the chassis side of the diode connection still allowed cranking so I'm guessing bad earth. Tried the earth post on drivers footwell by door hinge but no improvement so there must be another earth point that I can't find. QUESTIONS: Where's the under dash earth? Can I ignore it and wire in another earth? (which is what I'm trying next) Why a diode? I don't know if there's an immobiliser on these or if the vehicle had remote central locking, but there's another under dash box that mentions radio frequency and I'm guessing the diode is to stop back feeds of voltage or current, actually I haven't got much of a clue. How can I get an understandable wiring diagram and an overview of what systems are built into the wiring loom on this vehicle? I intend to use it every day for work as a van and occasional green laning so reliability and simplicity are pretty important. While I'm fault finding I'd like to label the relays and strip out any unused bits of circuit such as remote locking. Not so many RR 200TDI's about so I'm hoping I get lucky with finding someone with a bit more knowledge than me. Any comments kids? Geoff