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Water in diesel... please help!!!!


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Today, after 2 months of no using my TD5, I went for starting it.... completely died!!!!! after searching a little bit, found that somebody had stolen my fuel cap, getting a lot of water in my tank.... diesel is coming full of water. Took all the contaminated diesel out but after washing, blowing and cleaning all the system, it still doesn't start and a lot of water come from the system.... can somebody tell me how to take all this out?

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Ouch!... Got a feeling this aint going to be pretty? Sorry

1st. thing DON'T turn the engine over again till it's sorted!......Not sure about diesels, but water in the engine on petrol can bend valves!

Bleeding the engine at a guess and as water and diesel dont mix very well you may have to add something like a soap type solution,

Drain fuel tank, that way when you bleed the motor you wont have a load of carp to draw through.....

I'm sure some one will be along shortley and give names to products to add and the best way to go about this...

Hope it all comes good

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Any water that has got as far as the injector pump can't be removed without specialist dismantling I'm afraid. Any water left in the pump might start to corrode some rather expensive parts :( Do you know if water has got into the pump?

You might get away with putting fresh diesel in the tank and go through the priming cycle to clear the pipes of any water that's left. repeated cranking might get the engine running in the end.

Les.

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I would drain fuel tank, remove and change fuel filter remove all the fuel lines and if possible use a vac pump and suck them through, Leave engine to sit as long as possible and any water should drain down into sump providing you have not persisted in trying to start it. Even then the longer it sits the more should drain through. Put some clean diesel back in fuel tank and drain again. More clean diesel in tank, pump through using mech pump, fill fuel filter with clean diesel and again bleed through to injectors. (you could remove injectors and turn engine over to see if there is any water evident) replace everything and try for a start.

You should also change your oil.

Failing that you would need to remove the head.

Just my thoughts but someone may come up with other ideas.

What ever water will not compress and could do some serious damage.

Good Luck.

Frax

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Took all lines out, blowed them with air (6 bar), took out HP line from fuel rail and blowed it with air, everything that was in the rail went out, now only blows air. Fuel pump was removed and thorougly cleaned (it's new), as well as the tank. FIlter was removed, also we blowed the fuel cooler. However still getting water in diesel from the HP line (the one that goes to the fuel regulator)..... we are thinking in doing all the procedure again tomorrow and using some anti corrosion aditive from Stanadyne......

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Try removing fuel filter and filling it with clean diesel and prime that through to the injectors, remove and refill the filter and if your glow plugs are OK there should be enough clean diesel so she should start - that is if there is no other damage.

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If you are still getting water through after you have done all the above, then i would guess you still have water in the tank. You could try cleaning everything again, but put the pump in bucket of known good diesel before trying again. Td5's can be a pain to get running after running out of diesel, i spent a whole afternoon once trying to bleed one without sucsess, then towed it and it fired up withing a few yards!!!! On an auto once i had to used easy start, to coax the engine to run for a second or to before it got the diesel, but be VERY CAREFULL, it can cause damage if you use to much, im not a fan of it normally, but sometimes needs must!!!! Good luck with it.

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diesel floats on water? if you leave it to settle for a day then remove the tank drain plug to let a bit out see if you have water in. The repeat until water has gone (diesel will be evident) repeat with the fuel filter etc etc.

Must have a lot of water in the tank if the pick up pipe has pulled it through to the filter. A small amout wouldn't hurt as all fuel tanks sweat and have a small amout of condensation which builds into an egg cup full or so.

if you are worried about hydraulicing the cylinders unscrew the 5 glowplugs before cranking.

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diesel floats on water? if you leave it to settle for a day then remove the tank drain plug to let a bit out see if you have water in. The repeat until water has gone (diesel will be evident) repeat with the fuel filter etc etc.

Must have a lot of water in the tank if the pick up pipe has pulled it through to the filter. A small amout wouldn't hurt as all fuel tanks sweat and have a small amout of condensation which builds into an egg cup full or so.

if you are worried about hydraulicing the cylinders unscrew the 5 glowplugs before cranking.

diesel is heavier than water it sinks to the bottom - hence why the water drain is in the bottom of the fuel filter ;)

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Water is heavier than diesel - that's why drain plugs are at the bottom. If diesel was heavier than water - the diesel would be at the bottom and there would be no point in a bottom drain.

Les.

Sorry I wrote it wrong, should really read what i wrote :blush:

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I have a new set of fuel lines, will try them later today. We had to use a different filter due to here in Colombia only can get a TD5 filter in Bogota (we already ask for it, must be here today in the afternoon). Starter motor is OK, everything seems OK, fuel pump, fuel regulator, CKP sensor, ECU (Nanocom doesn't report anything), all of them, but engine still not running. We'll try today with a new ECU. Starter motor crancks fine, but engine doesn´t decide to run.... Tried all the priming methods....

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If there's any hint of water in the diesel on a TD5 you need to drop the tank and give it a *proper* clean-out. I mean dropped, drained, then rinsed-out with something like Acetone or 99% Ethanol that absorbs water, then dried off with an airline and rinsed out again with fresh, uncontaminated Diesel.

Same goes for the entire fuel-system: in-tank lift-pump, fuel-filter [in the rear wheel-arch on a 90], pressure-regulator on the side of the block, fuel-rail, fuel-cooler...

A set of TD5 injectors are truly horribly expensive and water-contaminated-diesel _will_ trash them.

Don't bother swapping ECUs until you are 101%-sure the entire fuel system is clean. If you do swap ECUs you will need to re-code the individual injectors to the ECU - which is a lot of hassle!

--Tanuki.

Dingo, Otter, or Weasel - which Beast is Best?

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Thanks a lot everybody. My beloved Defender is back in the road. We make almost every tip you give us for cleaning and starting it.... after running for a while, there is a little disbalance in cylinder 5..... I'll let you know when a few more miles are in the odometer.

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There are water-dispersing additives for diesel, boat suppliers should be able to sell you some. There are two ways they can work - encourage the water to separate out, or encourage the water to emulsify with the diesel so it's flushed out & burnt. You can also buy water-separating filters, we have a funnel with a mesh filter that will pass petrol/diesel but not water, very handy in Russia with the quality of their fuel supply!

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a tip for bleeding any diesel turn on ignition remove diesel filler cap from tank and blow compressed air into the tank slowly building up pressure using a rag as a seal round the cap if possible get somone to turn it over while u do this it has never failed me even on machines with primer pump.

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This works with petrol vehicles...... Add napthalene (moth balls to you) to the petrol and it will cause the water to mix with the petrol. I used this trick a lot when they introduced petrol with an ethanol addition. The ethanol caused problems because it attracts water (is hygroscopic) which would then corrode the float chambers of the carbs. The moth balls fixed this problem.

But I don't know what effect napthalene would have on a diesel vehicle. Maybe it could be tested by getting a jar and filling it with diesel and a bit of water and then adding the moth balls and see what happens....

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