Turbocharger

The handbrake drum isn't catching, is it? It does sound more like a bearing issue but let's look for an easy fix first...

Well, Tim and I did the south of France (some of it) in soft tops this summer, and it was good, but I take your point re dust. The hard top certainly seals better than the canvas but we certainly wouldn't asphyxiate overnight with the doors shut. I understand the accepted African method is sides rolled down, back rolled up and both front vents wide open. And accepting that everything unsealed will be dusty

I do have a lockable shelf over the rear load bed, and it kept everything fairly secure when we were in Europe. Is Morocco much worse? Especially since I anticipate we'll be sleeping with the cars, but I would like to leave it if we head out to explore any towns. James - Aircon? Let's just carry on as if I don't have aircon...

I'm considering a trip to Morocco in due course, and I have two types of roof for my car. The soft top was great in Spain and the Pyrenees, roof on and sides rolled up, so that's my preference. A hard top would be more secure (and easier to put a roof tent onto) but am I more likely to bake to death?

This is *just* what I need to make me pipe my winch back up... I'm in.

Just to close this out I stripped off the timing belt and found that the crank nose bolt must have been slightly looser than spec, allowing the pulley to chatter. The wear pattern on the pulley suggest that it had been moving slightly - not enough to wear the crank but the woodruff key had milled a perfect slot into the pulley (which explains why it took a bit of swearing before I worked out how to slide it off)! I replaced the pulley and the key itself, though the crank and keyway were undamaged. Now it's back together it's running much more happily and starts on the first turn.

My brother called me, he'd put £5 of petrol into an empty tank on his 300Tdi. I told him to brim it with diesel and it'd probably be ok, but he said he couldn't - he'd put a fiver in because that's all the money he had

I made a mount to hold my 10" Android tablet on the dash, Google nav and Backcountry Navigator are my weapons of choice - BCN is compatible with European maps to and stores offline or loads live (incl OS mapping) as required. As a bonus the camera on the back also pokes over the top of the dash so it'll video forward too -though I wouldn't recommend looking at it and trying to drive, too scary! Udderly - I work in Bristol, give me a call if you want to see what it is and how it's working.

A volunteer for a thankless and under-appreciated role - thanks for stepping up!

It's certainly not best practice. Though the breather should be above the fluid level I'll bet the filler tube isn't - the dipstick obviously isn't and I expect you'll blow bubbles. Better to disconnect it in my humble.

Thanks guys - six(!) hours of battering it including my neighbour aiming a punch while I hit it with some conviction eventually budged it. Running much better now the pump and cam aren't 11 degrees retarded. I'm looking forward to seeing the mpg come up from 20mpg!

After suffering poor starting and finding the injector pump was running retarded, I tweaked the timing but it seemed odd that it had slipped. Sure enough, the movement was due to wear on the inside of the crank timing pulley - witness marks and lots of rusty powder suggest the crank bolt wasn't quite tight. Luckily the pulley is much softer than the key so the crank is hopefully undamaged; I'll replace the key of course - if I can get the blighter out! Obviously I've hit it on each end, tried to pry it up, doused it in penetrating oil and even used some choice words, but it's still stubbornly attached. Any ideas?

Hurrah! After lots of head scratching and wonderings about the combination of symptoms I decided to check pump timing... but the pin wouldn't go in. Eventually I got the pin to fit after I'd retarded the crank by about 11 degrees! I slackened the three books on the pump pulley and moved it to approximately the right place - much better. It seems I'd forgotten how much faster it used to be as it degraded slowly over several years. Only recently it became obvious that it was dropping down to second gear on hills, even though the exhaust temps were as high or higher then ever. It steps of from standstill with much more vigour now, and I'm hoping I'll see more than 20 mpg too!

I had a dashboard catch fire when trying to start the engine once - the chosen earth path was via the speedo cable, and they're evidently rated for a little less than 200 amps...

If your engine hasn't been modded then you'll see asymmetric wear on the back edge of the timing belt - it rubs on the housing so the casing would be full of rubber shreds and the teeth start to overhang the back of the belt... until it wears too narrow and snaps. The issue was that the injector pump vibrates and pulls the belt out of line. The kit was a bracket to brace the back end of the pump to the block to stop it all waving round. If it all looks fine in there, it'll be ok for another good few thousand miles with a new belt on it.

Making progress but not out of the woods yet. I changed the front two injectors for a couple of spares I have - no difference - so swapped out the rear pair. It now starts on the first turn, though it's still misfiring a little when it's cold.

Oh aye. Senior moment there... Decking the block would raise the CR (which is lower than it otherwise would be by design due to the anticipated turbocharging) - but you're probably right, likely to be not worth the effort. Make sure that the inlet side is clean and well flowed of course, match the ports to the manifolds and take any flash off the castings, it's more critical if you're not pushing the air in with a turbo.

Yep, the piston bowl relates to the combustion type (DI vs IDI) and injector position / spray pattern. If you went all-out for reliability you'd run it naturally aspirated. You could increase the compression ratio by skimming the head for better efficiency since you're not running "external compression" with any boost - up to 21:1 would be fine. I'd set the fuelling level by using an EGT gauge to ensure it remains reliable. Otherwise, build it up in a neat and tidy way with quality components and you should see 150,000 miles without opening the engine again.

But if he's not running a turbo, there'll be nothing heating the air up so no temperature difference to cool it down. If he's going to run the turbo but at lower boost (probably the way I'd go with this) then I'd definitely fit the intercooler too.

I don't think there's any disbenefit in running a unit as a 200Di, though you could use the turbo, intercooler etc at a low boost to reduce stresses in the engine. The combustion principles are the same so there's no need to look for different head flows, different pistons or similar - the turbo'd air is just more dense to allow more fuel. As far as derating the engine goes, just disconnect and blank the boost compensator on the injector pump and it'll fuel it correctly as an N/A engine - though you might be tempted to tweak that later for a little more power, until it begins to produce black smoke.

After a long and confusing story, I have a K-series engine which needs a new VVC cylinder head because the liners have indented the lower face of the head, so it's likely that the head's lost its heat treatment and become soft. I'm going to run a hardness test on the head I have but, assuming it has lost its treatment properties, where can I get a new head? 1 - there are second hand heads on ebay - no thanks, probably the same issues again 2 - there are "remanufactured & pressure tested" heads from companies on ebay - sounds good, but how can I tell if they're not just second hand heads which someone's jetwashed? 3 - the official VVC head is around £1k new - scary money. What I need is option 2 from a reputable company - but who's reputable? Someone like Turner Engineering would give me confidence (but they can only supply the non-VVC head as used in a Freelander, and they're out of stock anyway).

By far the worst damage I've seen is the ability for the whole car to turn my bank balance from a black number to a red number, quickly and frequently. Seems Lisa's profile has disappeared from LinkedIn, but I think we can read between the lines.

Once it's running and the misfiring clears (takes 30 secs or so) it pulls as well as it ever has, though I generally don't thrash a cold engine. I'm going to swap the injectors for some spares I have, and see if that makes a difference at all.

Yep Mike - checked them all individually while they were out to do the compression test, all glowed red hot within 5 secs of seeing 12v. I'm using a flylead to give them power manually but even after 30 secs of heat before cranking it's coughing, misfiring and chucking out white smoke for another minute or so before it settles down.

Starting remains an issue - I'm now looking at the fuel system so I'll get the injectors away for reconditioning. Since December I have: 1: checked the compression on the car - all cylinders showing 320psi +/- 10%, so I don't see a problem there. 2: the heater plugs are all working individually, and I've rigged a wire to spark them up. 3: 15 secs of heater plug makes it start more quickly (though still some cranking required), but there's a substantial cloud of white smoke on startup (think "military tank smokescreen" density) and it's misfiring very badly for the first 30 secs of running. If I drop it to idle immediately while it's running on 2 cyls it'll stall - and then needs more cranking before it fires. I'm thinking that the cold-start advance isn't functioning - easiest swap is the injectors (though it seems odd that they're all u/s at the same time), then I'll check the pump timing, then consider swapping the pump but by that point we're into bigger money. Anything I've likely missed before I head down this route? In better news - the electrical starting issue has been resolved. The battery was knackered and the earthing was poor, both now rectified.