My Trusty Freelander failed after covering 156,000 trouble free miles, the timing chain between the camshafts broke causing valves to strike the piston, I had the engine rebuilt by a local engine shop having a recon head new pistons valves, turbo and the like.

Once rebuilt it was a pig to get started, (never a problem before failure) eventually started with a lot of smoke, once running ran fine and started first touch of the button all through the day and ran ok with a small misfire around 15-1800rpm.

Next morning no start absolute pig and eventually started with clouds of smoke and then the same thing again fine all day apart from the slight misfire, three month later having changed injectors, common rail sensor and switch, leak of rail, high pressure pump, fuel pipes and full mongoose diagnostics with no faults found.

Timing all rechecked and found ok, I am now struggling big time any idea's would be greatly received.

Look at the transparent fuel lines between fuel filter and the high pressure pump and see if there is air there.
As the engine doesn't have a fuel pump in the tank and the fuel is lifted by a small pump inside the main high pressure pump, it's possible that the lines get slowly emptied during night...

Thanks Alex, this is linked to the question you answered for me on compression testing, we changed all the fuel pipes from the filter and the return pipes and leak off rail in case of poor connections, we also fitted a one way valve before the filter to ensure all the fuel in the filter and common rail did not drain back over night made no difference at all.

We are now looking at compression as the numbers we are getting are considerably lower than what you are suggesting


Thanks again

we had this problem on a mondeo,slight misfire on tickover smoking on start up,after broken cambelt and valve replacement.turned out that when one of the valves hit the piston it slightly bent the con rod

Thanks I will re check as we are in the process of stripping again

When you say you fitted new return pipes, you meant a new ensemble together with that valve at the end?
Because that valve is supposing to keep about 10 bars into the return lines, pressure needed for the proper injectors' functioning.
If the valve is malfunctioning, it's possible to have problems...

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this post, to close it out ,the problem turned out to be the wrong pistons fitted apparently there is 2mm difference in the combustion chamber area, who would have thought it could cause all that trouble.

All rebuilt with correct pistons and running and starting fine

Thanks again

Glad to hear it got sorted. How in h3ll did you find out that the wrong pistons was fitted??

keith1725 wrote:

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this post, to close it out ,the problem turned out to be the wrong pistons fitted apparently there is 2mm difference in the combustion chamber area, who would have thought it could cause all that trouble.

All rebuilt with correct pistons and running and starting fine

Thanks again