about to get expensive

[Ruuman]

Hi all,

after a great days offroading my 200tdi finally had enough, after a huge hill climb at full throttle there was a loud noise that almost sounded like a dump valve. it turned out to be the turbo bearing having so much slop the turbine blades were hitting the outer casing and grinding metal on metal.

I decided to remove the turbo from the intake and run the air-filter directly to the inlet and used a cable tie to keep the waste-gate open. I was worried the engine would start running on it's own oil.

now on the way home the oil pressure light started flickering, I immediately shut off and topped up with oil and the problem was gone. 15miles down the road it happened again. topped up and the light went off again.

Now two questions, firstly I'm guessing the high oil usage is down to the turbo bearing being so shot it's losing a ton of oil from that circuit and filling up the inter-cooler. The engine wasn't blue smoking so I don't think it was being burnt.

Second question, what's the best option. The engine is getting on to 180k miles, whilst high it sounds fine and it's only the turbo that has been letting the truck down since I bought it 2years ago.

It seems to be about £450-£500 for a new turbo (unless anyone else has some good leads) for that I could get another engine from a discovery but would need to spend money on a conversion pipe and have the hassle of an engine swap. What would you do?

Cheers

Ruu

[Retroanaconda]

A good used turbo would be my first port of call.

Or there are companies around who will recondition yours for you, AR Turbo for example.

Would seem a shame to ditch the engine, if it's in good nick then at 180k it should have plenty of life left in it

[matt bristol]

Either get a second hand turbo to replace yours or strip and rebuild it,IMHO buying a new one would be ridiculously expensive for what you gain in terms of peace of mind

[Ruuman]

thanks guys, I'm having no luck finding a 2nd hand turbo anywhere. it's so annoying the disco 200tdi turbo is different as they are ten a penny. I'll give some reconditioning places a bell, any comments on who might do a good job?

[Gremlin]

thanks guys, I'm having no luck finding a 2nd hand turbo anywhere. it's so annoying the disco 200tdi turbo is different as they are ten a penny. I'll give some reconditioning places a bell, any comments on who might do a good job?

A disco one will fit, just remove the exhaust section off the disco one and fit your defender one. I read it some where so no first hand experiance.

maybe others will confirm this

G

[Les Henson]

Disco manifolds will fit, but then you have to mess about with exhaust downpipe, turbo inlet pipe/tight angle, etc.

Les.

[Ruuman]

that's the way I understood it les, I could pickup a good disco manifold/turbo for say 100-150quid, I'd then need a pipe to convert it to fit my exhaust, at least another 100quid. I assume I'd need a disco inlet as well due to the change of turbo position, possibly some change of intercooler pipework and turbo oil pipe work. That probably means a bill of at least 300quid all in. that must be getting close to a recon turbo costwise.

[Les Henson]

I have some old turbo's in my shed - I'll look to see if I have a 200TDi one.

Les.

[landkeeper]

you can fit the disco turbo to the defender manifold easily enough it's a direct fit ,we did one a few years ago to get a lad out of trouble and it was self explanatory

or look for a 300 turbo and manifolds afaik that is a direct fit too

[Ruuman]

thanks les, I'm getting a bit worried something more serious has happened, just checked the oil level now it's had time to settle. it wasn't being blown into the intercooler, it's now very very high up the dip stick. So I now seem to have low oil pressure too. Also what I though was a sticking throttle cable seems to be the injection pump being slow to return to idle posistion. sigh....

The way I'm writting this now makes my truck sounds like a dog, it wasn't and was running quite nicely (if a little bit smokey)

[Rich_P]

Either get a second hand turbo to replace yours or strip and rebuild it,IMHO buying a new one would be ridiculously expensive for what you gain in terms of peace of mind

I thought that the home mechanic cannot rebuild turbochargers because of how they are balanced?

[jbs]

If you undo the four bolts that hold what look's like 2 C plates that clamp's the turbo to the exhaust manifold then it'd be a straight swap over from a disco manifold to a defender one, they're the same turbo just different exhaust manifolds that's all

HTH

John

[mike4444244]

I got mine reconditioned by the turbo centre, can recommend excellent service and a great job

Mike

[Ruuman]

I think I'm going to try the disco route, I've found a chap on ebay who will sell a complete disco setup including mainifold for 40quid. I'm pretty poor at the moment so this will be the cheapest route, I'm just very worried about my low oil pressure.

Cheers all

[nicks90]

if the bearings in the turbo are totally shot - this could explain your low oil pressure. To keep the oil pressure up the tolerances between bearings are very fine, hence it has to squeeze quite hard to get the oil through, therefore you have high oil pressure. Make the gap really wide and it gushes through easily and your pressure drops.

Google search for Bernoulli's equation in fluid dynamics and he will explain all.

fit a new / recon / 2nd hand turbo and see what happens. My bet would be your oil pressure will be fine.

[Ruuman]

thanks nick, I was hoping this might be the answer, just got hold of a complete disco turbo and manifold. I'll photo everything as imagine there will be a few people in my posistion soon

[ajh]

Pull your sump plug and see if you get both oil and coolant, a rise in oil level of about a litre is a good indication of a blown head gasket. Had this happen on a just purchased 300TDI last week less than 100 miles down the motorway, one described as having a "Brilliant Engine" in the sales ad.

[Ruuman]

Right fairly good news, a friend of mine gave me an old disco turbo complete with manifold so I decided I would have a crack at swapping the exhaust housings as suggested. I photograhed the whole thing so hopefully others will find this useful in the future. Les's turbo tech article was very helpful too http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=2049

Obviously anything this high precision and involving oilways needs to be as clean as possible and having access to an air duster or air line is great. I also degreased a lot of the parts before reassembly.

First the defender unit in the car, after reading les's article and all the trouble he and others had with sticking bolts I'd spent 3 days coating every nut and bolt in WD40 and penertrating oil. I then cracked every accessable bolt on the truck as it's mounted nice and solid. There's a mix of 1/2" and 13mm nut's so be careful. I didn't have a single nut shear on stick on any part of this. Basically the second the nut cracked I sprayed on WD and did it up again, repeating a 1/2 turn at a time and it all came to bit's perfectly

The discovery unit complete with manifold, I only soaked the bolts for an hour, but using the same technique as above it came to bit's ok. Just required a bit of time

defender on the left, discovery on the right

same again but view of the inlet section

and the exhaust section

The defender turbo broken down to it's basic layout

the different waste gates, defender on the left

the two turbos, disco on the left

view of the different exhaust housings

same again

and the manifold joint, disco on the left

[Ruuman]

to split the exhaust section from the turbo core you need to remove the 2part retaining ring and 4 bolts. only two of the bolts actually hold the ring so concentrate on getting those out, once the turbo is split you have full access to remove the other two. With the ring removed it took a bit of effot to seperate the core from the exhaust housing. A good vice really is a god send doing this job.

after stripping off the defender exhaust housing I was able to see how bad the damage was

luckily the exhaust housing wasn't damaged, I guess as it's a harder metal than the impellor

more damage

stripping the disco unit I found it to be in nice condition

To remove the inlet housing it is just a single massive circlip, you need some seriouly big circlip pliers to get this off, be aware of the thin o-ring running round the lip of the turbo core

the two inlet housings, disco on the left, the boost control union needs rotating 90deg

strange damage to the defender one, the disco unit was perfect

side by side rear view, note the wastegate actuator mounting holes are different

taping new holes in the disco housing m6 x 1.0 I think

reassembling the turbo, disco inlet and core, defender exhaust side

all back together

and back in the truck

and the news is good, turbo is working fine, your need a boost or pressure gauge to setup the actuator to the correct pressure, 0.9bar for a factory 200tdi I believe. I just need to fix the other issues now. i've uploaded a gallery to google of every photo I took,might useful as reference http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/101497202247388631569/Converting200tdiDiscoTurboToDefenderTurbo#

Cheers

Ruu

[Gromit]

Excellent - one for the tech archive.

[jbs]

Glad my advice on removing the "2 part clamps" worked as I've done this before and it worked well then too

[nicks90]

i take it your oil pressure is now back to normal?

[Guest noggy]

isnt stock 200tdi boost 0.7 bar? and a 300tdi 1bar?

Im a noob

[Ruuman]

i take it your oil pressure is now back to normal?

yes seems to be good again, changed the oil and filter to make sure all was good. Annoyingly there's now a taping coming from somewhere so may have caused some damage. The worst part is my injection pump has deffinatly got issues. The throttle leaver is slow to return and I'm having to use a bungie to pull it back.

I took the top off the boost diaphram cover and the piston is stuck inside the pump, also was very hard to rotate. I don't seem to be getting any extra fueling when on boost so engine is sluggish as hell and toping out at around 50mph. I'm hoping the taping might be related to the fuel pump not injecting correctly. any ideas?

on plus side I repaired my snapped canvas hood stick so it's not all bad news