Ooooooh!

[Gripper]

No guys, it's not the valves, or the pump, though I was willing to believe.

I just took the head off, between snow showers, and, hmmmm, what is this chunk of metal sitting on top of #2 piston?

Being a diesel virgin, I assume the item is the swirl chamber/hot spot. Whatever it is, int ain't where it should be in the head

The ticking noise was this bit tapping up and down against the deck of the block and the piston. The deck looks buggered beyound belief and the piston could be better, it has Stegosorous style bits sticking out if the crown! The head, apart from all the hot spots being cracked and sad looking, looks reasonable.

Am I in a total loss situation here?

Oh the joys of old cars.

Back to the reject Oz wine.

[jozg44]

Ah- that explains a lot.

Alas, this a fairly common problem with old, knackered diesel engines- the fuel pump gets out of adjustment, the combustion chamber temperatures get into silly-zone and the hot-spot / pre-combustion chamber / swirl-chamber / whatever cracks. If the engine last's long-enough, the crack grows, the hot spot ceases to cling to it's recess in the head and then it falls out. Normally this results in your engine become an internal-destruction engine, so you have in fact been lucky.

If the head is not warped, cracked or anything like that, you can get it skimmed (carefully) and new pre-combustion chambers fitted. Pistons are cheap and easily available in a range of over-bore sizes. The only proplem may be that having a pre-comb chamber clattering around in thare has probably slashed the bores open so much that the block can't be over-bored enough to do good the damage.

Get the engine down to someone who does re-honing / cylinder head skimming and ask them if it's possible to repair. If not, an engine replacement isn't hard or expensive- you can get 3-bearing 2.25 diesel engines in good condition for £100.

The thing with Land Rovers- they may break a lot, but at least they're cheap to fix.

Jack