TSD

I told you that engine is cursed Drop me a text if you want me to source stuff and send it on

Immediate thoughts for remote diagnostics... EP90 has a rather distinctive smell! Or try gently rinsing it off with tap water - if it's brake fluid it will mostly dilute and wash away. If it's EP90, it won't ?

Same here, no connection except a very satisfied customer... I've been using Advanced Factors ever since I bought the D3, ten-ish years ago. Service and pricing has always been excellent, and they've gone the extra mile more than once - offered to stay on so I could collect parts, or even to have someone drop parts off to me if I ended up with the car immobilised. (Luckily I didn't have to take them up on the offer either time). Hint : I think there's a discount code buried away on the disco3 forum too

Don't think it can be anything other than compression, there's only 8 things that can get in the way, and you can see them all from there The only other cause, as I've told you before, is that engine is cursed - it does nothing except produce loads of power, a bit of smoke and occasional nasty surprises

What @FridgeFreezer was chuckling about above, was that there's a very similar joint in the factory wiring loom of a Discovery 3, in the cable tray along the door sill. Combined with a water leak caused by poor plastics, it killed the central locking and left my D3 immobilised in a multistorey car park, because the only mechanical door lock is in the passenger door, which was 2" from a concrete pillar. I might still hold a small grudge about that one

Completely forgot to look at this, two days running Anyway, finally remembered to look out the loom. The diode is contained in a small plastic housing, taped into the loom, just below the relay carriers next to the fusebox. Surprisingly well done for Land Rover. In a Discovery 3 they wouldn't even have run to heatshrink tube, just insulting tape!

The fluid level bulb won't light on ignition only, just when the handbrake is applied (and the ignition is on). The electrical library says it should be behind the fusebox, and in true high quality LR fashion, it's almost certainly just a diode soldered into the loom and covered in heatshrink rubber tube. I have a '95 loom in a box in the workshop. I can try to have a look at it this afternoon. If you have a digital multimeter, it probably has a 'diode check' function (often a special mode of the continuity or resistance test). You should be able to test from the warning light connectors. With the probes connected to the black/white and white/yellow wires, I'd expect a reading of around 0.7V with the probes one way round, and maximum, or no reading, the other way round.

Not sure if the OP meant the cap for the sliding joint? That would be STC2955 / TVE100000 if the propshaft is original, otherwise too many variations to guess at. https://www.lrworkshop.com/diagrams/land-rover-defender-axles-suspension/propshafts/propshaft-rear_52612

That's right. The diode makes a one way path for the ciruit, so the fluid switch only puts on one lamp,but the handbrake switch puts on both. I'd take the cap out first, if that works, then there's no need to pull the wires off the switch, as it proves everything in one step. Less chance to break something pulling a tight crimp off a tired old switch I've done the same on my current build. I'd be surprised if it didn't work through the bolts.

300tdi doesn't have a relay for the brake check, as far as I recall. The bulb check for the fluid level is done via a diode to the handbrake switch, so when the handbrake warning lamp is lit, the fluid level warning should also light. Since you don't have either lamp working, then the handbrake circuit is most likely, but if you just take the cap off the brake fluid reservoir and lift it above the fluid, the fluid level warning lamp should come on. (You can just jumper the wires, but that wouldn't check the fluid switch at the same time) As you suggested, ground the wire at the handbrake switch, that should put both warning lights on. It's a pretty poor switch design, I'm amazed they work as well as they seem to, I've only once had to replace one.

Random thought - you replaced the warning light with a known good one, was that also LED? Some (maybe all) of the LED warning light replacements are polarity sensitive (they only work one way around) where the original filament bulbs are not. It's just possible you've been really unlucky putting the bulbs in?

This is probably down to Land Rovers wacky way of presenting wiring diagrams. I suspect you only have half the manuals and so are misreading the schematic. My copy of the 97 manual shows the black/blue wire passing through C448 pin 7, C162 pin 7, but it's only shown as a small mark on the wire representing that circuit, not the whole connector. That's the "engine harness to main harness" connector pair at the centre exit of the engine bulkhead. If you hunt out the 'Defender Electrical Library', available at all good search engines, it shows pictures of each connector, identifies pin numbers and wire colours. EDIT: Forgot to say, there should only be small differences from 94 to 97. I traced out a 95 wiring loom using the 97 manual a few weeks ago and I don't think I spotted any changes. EDIT 2: ... and if the switch is new, does it have an earth lead on its second terminal?

'Like' seems somehow the wrong button to press for this post, but you know what I mean

Oh I agree there is *some* vacuum, (by definition, otherwise no air would flow in!) but I was only thinking out loud that it if it were enough to cause smoke only on the overrun because of poor seals, then the rest of the time you'd have 15psi+ blowing the other way into the rocker box, which would put a lot of oil mist into the separator and then into the air intake pipework, and a noticeably 'oily' engine. Even with the big turbo on the TGV engine, I never noticed any vacuum indicated on the boost gauge - one of the VDO ones for petrol engines, scaled in PSI on the boost side, and mbar on the vacuum side. Actually it does now indicate a little vacuum all the time, but that's because the boost spikes bent the needle smacking the end stop at 25psi I'm not sure what other mechanisms there are for overrun oil smoke (rings? turbo oil seals?), so I'm interested to see how much difference it makes. Hopefully Mikes right, especially as my shed is full of Ibexes at the moment, would have to do a bit of shuffling to get another one in there!

I always sort of assumed that wouldn't be the case on a diesel, since there's no intake vacuum to draw oil down the guides. But no practical experience either way, so

I think I know, for two reasons. One, I think you might have mentioned it recently, and two, I have a very similar looking tool in my workshop. Except I didn't need to replace mine, I just forgot to fit them at build

I don't know either! I can think of a few possibles, but my guess would be it's an overtemperature shutdown. As you know, overheat a permanent magnet motor once and it's game over. D3 (and I imagine other carswith similar compressors for air suspension) takes note of compressor run and idle times to keep the motor temperature under control, presumably for the same reason. Might be even more important when you've shut it in a fairly sealed box (as the D3 does also of course), and fitted fat power leads so there's no element of current limiting. I did quite like the other mods, more or less. My compressor in 1Bex has a similar-ish setup. It's plumbed to a small (1L?) pressure tank and manifold, with pressure switch and blowoff valve. It's remote to the compressor though, under one of the storage lockers, with airline fitting on the rear panel above the number plate. Pretty sure the compressor itself (Some name I've forgotten, from Oz) has a pad air filter as per the video, from the factory. I've never tinkered with the insides though, despite all the powdercoat falling off it still works fine after 16 years, best left alone at this point, in my opinion

I have no problem with removing the pcb, if you have reason to think it's going to improve reliability. But how can you have an opinion if you don't know what the PCB does? The problem is that even very smart people sometimes do epically stupid things, but dumb people almost never do unexpectedly smart things, so the game is rigged from the start

I watched as far as removing the pcb to improve reliability, after admitting he didn't know why it was there or what it did. Sometimes I wonder if Darwin got it wrong and it's all just a lottery.

That sounds how I picture a disco shroud would be. I can't remember the exact details, but I played with both shrouds when I made the engine mounts for my Ibex build. I think the fan sits higher in the disco shroud. Check some online pics, but from (my entirely unreliable) memory the defender shroud has the fan central (vertically), the disco one is offet upwards, and has a removeable section, where the defender one is all one piece.

This might be a daft question, but you are using a Defender fan shroud, not a Discovery one? The position of the fan in each is different, but I didn't see any mention in which direction it 'won't fit'.

I did see that, and I normally avoid anything listed as centre feed, but as said, you can just use it as a 'normal' roll. Some other makes I've had in the past the centre roll is either very thin, or not present at all, so the roll quickly collapses and becomes a useless mess. I mentioned this subject this morning to the guy who supplied my last pack from costco, and we've had 3 or 4 packs between us, and all have been useable as a normal roll. At one company, our supplier used to send a free Torq centre feed holder evey time we ordered rolls, but everyone just preferred a loose roll at the end of the bench, and the holders were usually thrown away unopened (or possibly taken home and thrown away after checking the price of rolls!!)

Tork is the brand name I've been trying to remember all day, and what I always used when I could expense the cost back to customers... https://www.costco.co.uk/Business-Office-Supplies/Cleaning-Care/Paper-Products-Tissues-Wipes/Tork-Plus-Centre-Feed-in-Blue-6-x-1575m/p/87840

The last 'proper' blue roll I had was sourced at Costco. Full sized rolls, hard paper, stable dyes. I was working in a friends lab and commented on his. Next time I visited he had sourced a pack for me. I think we split a pack of 12 rolls between us, but it's still pricey. I bought a half dozen rolls from Jawel Paints (since I was already paying shipping on a lot of cans of paint!) but the quality is pretty poor TBH. The rolls aren't as wide as the 'proper' size, they break up too easily, and worst of all the dye isn't stable with many solvents.

If you wanted to keep the counterbore small, then Reduced head / Countersunk rivnut would be less than 8mm head diameter (for M5), and nearly flush with the steel. You'll want the 'correct' drill size (rather than 'near enough'), and if you can't remove the melamine, you might have to get clever with the tooling as you probably can't get access with the rivnut tool head.