holes in pistons

HI there , sorry to hear about your misfortune , Im guessing you had pulled the engine apart ? This may be a problem if your trying to claim any type of warranty as the installer is not able to inspect the car and settings and then pull down themselves .....

was there any warranty terms specified on the invoice they provided?

Boc

Hi mate, sorry to hear about it.
Usually over fuelling will cause this in a turboed vehicle or if the pump had the pressure wound up and the injectors not replaced, a previously dribbling injector becomes a weak sort of an oxy and over time holes in pistons occur.
good luck with it, try fair trading, if they (the installer) don't have reports on your vehicle and it's settings you may get warranty.
Regards
Dave

X-man

That is not a 'good look' at all.

I had a DTS now MTQ turbo fitted to the Troopys 1HZ in 2001 and have done 50,000kms since being a mixture of long touring to get to the interesting places, such as Simpson, Googs Track and 'nice 4WD sites'

The vehicle weighs 3.5t when fully loaded and the turbo gets worked to its acceptable limits. Also pull a 1.5T CT on occasions.

End result - not a problem anywhere so far.

When installed, the pump and injectors were removed and sent off to a pump shop where the injectors were piffed and a 'matched set' supplied.

The pump was rebuilt to suit the the turbo.

Since then I have learned about 'overfueling' and the pitfalls of same and installed a Termoguard EGT guage which was a real eye opener on what the engine temp is doing under load etc etc.

I now drive by what that guage is telling m, so that I have the power I require whilst keeping the engiine temp within acce[table limits.

Excluding the cooling system, the main reason for diesels to over heat and do things like you have experienced - is over fueling either from excessive load on the engine along with high gearing or from the pump being 'wound up' via the manual fuel exterior fuel adjuster.

The later has been known to happen after a turbo has been installed and the installer has to show the customer how much the vehicle performance has 'improved by extra power gained'

The only other engine to experience a similar type of damage on a very regular basis is the Nissan 3.0l, however, ithese cases the fault is a design fault in the lubricating desiign, not over fueling.

May be they didnt adjust the fuel load, but have had a fiddle with the timing, and if you get that wrong on a turbo all that extra air and then fuel at the wrong time could really hammer the pistons.

I'm sorry to say but if the turbo mob never increased the fuelling it is not likley their fault the engine crapped itself.

For a deisel to burn pistons it has to have too much fuel and run hot, but only adding a turbo (more air) would actually lean out the mixture.

Not sure what caused your engine problem, maybe it tried to run on it own oil, or maybe really poor condition injectors but then the damage would have happened without a turbo being added.

John D - Disco 200 Tdi

Mate I feel for ya Xman and agree ya pay to get a job done properly and left wondering when it dies.

I fitted a turbo to my old lux (2.4) and at the time a lot of people said it was not a good idea...but I picked up the turbo 2nd hand, bolted it on and a straight thru exhaust, drove it, tweaked the pump by eye and ears a couple of times and had fantastic service for 50 odd thou kms before I sold her. I reckon some 90 % of those km were highway and I did not baby the old girl quite the opposite in fact with no dramas whatsoever following which I was a big advocate of turboing the Lux's so mate I really empathise with your situation and hope you can at least learn why th emeltdown occurred.