Monday, Nov 14, 2005 at 23:06
There was a problem with the timing belt mechanism in the early 300Tdi engines.
Well, not so much the timing belt itself, but the injection pump mounting bracket which, it assembled wrongly at the factory, would stress the timing case and cause mis-alignment of the pulleys and idlers, causing the belt to run off the front of the pulleys and rub against the case - and eventually break...
Depending on the build date of the vehicle (VIN number), there were two rectification kits produced. [If you wish to send me your VIN (click on my Thermoguard logo to get to my email link), I can let you have the VIN ranges concerned.]
The No.1 kit was quite extensive (and expensive!) and included a complete new timing case, injection pump bracket, new crank pulley, tensioner, idler and timing belt. The No.2 kit (for later VIN nos. which presumably already had the modified pump bracket) had 'only' the new crank puley (with flanges either side of the toothed pulley), plus new tensioner, idler and belt.
As far as I know, there are no ongoing problems with engines with the correct kit fitted [ours has done another 110,000 km and another replacement belt - the old one showed no 'odd' wear, since being 'kitted']. BUT, if an early engine had belt problems and was NOT fitted with the No.1 kit , it would continue to wear belts prematurely. The LR Technical Bulletin says the new timing case should be marked with a 1cm square of yellow paint near the injection pump - but I've never seen one so marked, even though I know the No.1 kit has been fitted.
So, if you happened to have one of the early engines which had a problem (and not all did - it depended on 'luck of the draw' on the assemly line, AFAIK) AND it's had the correct kit fitted, it should be quite OK.
Now, just in case the large and vocal anti-Land Rover faction out there is about to start frothing at the mouth about 'unreliable Land Rovers' again, I would point out: All the information about these problems (including the official factory technical bulletins) is readily available on the web - is this the case with similar problems with Toyotas (for example: 100Series IFS diff failures) and Nissans (Patrol ZD30 engine failures)?
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393118