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Defender intermittent starting problem help


Farcombehall
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Has anyone had this problem, Ives got 2008 defender 2.4 puma and have an intermitant starting problem wether it's cold or warm, the engine turns over fine and runs fine but every now and then fails to fire up.

Ives changed heater plugs and fuel filter the ecg valves working fine and there's no smoke white or black from the exhaust when cranking over and there's no lights on or fault codes come up it's only done 60000 and been serviced regular by land rover any thoughts

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No certain, but think yours is the TD5 engine?

 

If so, I had a similar problem on my Discovery when it had around 90,000 miles on the clock and seems to be quite common; It could be one of a number of reasons but seems you have already covered the easy fix possibilities..

 

Check for oil on the injector harness where it plugs onto the ECU. Again not sure if yours is exactly the same, but my ECU is located just behind the battery and its the big harness going into that. Two phillips screws hold the ECU in place (need to take one of the battery terminals off so you can pull it out), unplug and check if there is any oil in the plug. If that's the case, you can spray it with oil cleaner which will get you out of imediate trouble but the harness will need changing. Mine had this but that wasn't the reason mine had an intermitent starting issue.

 

The injector seals wear and can leak, allowing for the diesel to mix with the oil (check your oil levels, but won't be lots of loss). These aren't expensive, was about £10 a few years ago, but the rocker cover has to come off to change them. If you're gonna change the harness which is the only way to stop oil ingress if it has it, I would suggest changing the injector seals as a matter of course since the rocker cover needs to come off anyway.

 

I took mine to an indipendant LR centre and they charged £250 to change the injector seals, if you're handy with a set of spanners, its not difficult to do and there are loads of tutorials on the net to tell you how. I didn't do mine myself because I thought you need a special tool to remove the injectors, in hindsight I realised it could have been done without the special tool.

 

This fixed mine and have not had it happen again after another 60k miles since.

 

 

Hope this helps

Cos

Edited by Cosd
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2008 will be the 2.4 tdci engine or transit engine.i believe the last td5s were 2006.i would lean more towards a electrical fault.the on board computer talks to a lot of things on your vehicle before it allows it to start.if one of the sensors has an intermittent fault this will give your symptoms. Not had it with my 2007 defender but did with a Ranger with the same engine after spending a lot of money chasing the problem I gave up and sold that particular pup.

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Just read up on crank case sensor and it has elongated holes in bell housing so it has to be placed right next to flywheel teeth, so set it up and it and now seems to be working fine as this had a new clutch fitted recently the garage had left the heat shield off which protects the sensor so we reckon the heat from the exhaust manifold damaged the sensor. Hope this may help someone else many thanks for all your thoughts

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Just read up on crank case sensor and it has elongated holes in bell housing so it has to be placed right next to flywheel teeth, so set it up and it and now seems to be working fine as this had a new clutch fitted recently the garage had left the heat shield off which protects the sensor so we reckon the heat from the exhaust manifold damaged the sensor. Hope this may help someone else many thanks for all your thoughts

Good news 👍
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Yep crank sensor, had a few transits do that, usually the end of the sensor builds up with metal dust, occasionally the sensor fails, it may be that the garage fitted a new flywheel and the sensor air gap was boarder line so not always providing a clear signal

Edited by Paul223
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