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
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
