Life is like a box of chocolate...

...in so much as you want to smash it's stupid chocolate face with a hammer.

Sometimes, at least, my life is. All work on both the TR-2 and the Spitfire have ground to a tedious halt whilst I repair the Land Rover.

I thought I'd recount the story of how it died as a part of the grieving process and to give you something to read whilst I sort through my photos from the Eifelrennen.

Firstly, I changed the cam belt, oil and filters then drove it to the Nurburgring, it was a bit smoky but was running well. Then I drove it back from Germany to home and then onwards south to St Stropez via Lauzerte and some time towards the end of this journey it began to lose power and smoke more.

On the way back it blew it's radiator and generally ran like a dog. Coughing and smoking and wheezing and dying. It took 17 hours to get home.

My first thought was that it must have slipped a tooth on the new cam belt, so I pulled the cover off and the belt looked a bit loose so I assumed it had and started the procedure for lining it all back up. But no matter what I did it wouldn't start.

Then a retired mechanic decided to take a look, after some general banter, poking around and him generally taking the piss out of my mechanics skillz he said 'turbo's f**ked'. He was, of course, correct.

What had happened is the bearings in the turbo had gone causing it to suck oil out of the sump and blow it into the intake manifold, the engine had run low on oil (but not too low as to cause any damage) but the smoke wasn't being caused by over-fuelling from the cam belt slipping but rather by oil being blown into the engine :S

Actually, it's rather lucky that the engine didn't begin to run on it's own oil, as then it would really have blown up!

So that's that. My options are to get a reconditioned turbo unit, new radiator etc. and rebuild the engine I have or to try and find and fit a 200tdi.

I'm going to try and do the latter, it's a better engine with the same (but strengthened) bottom end, Bosch direct injection an intercooler blah de blah fap fap fap. Should give the old sausage 25 more horses and it's a very popular and relatively easy conversion. I'll let you know how it goes.

First step is to visit a local(ish) Land Rover dealership and see what he's got kicking about; the dream would be a decent 200tdi engine on a crate, quite good would be a rotten or crashed Defender.. *fingers crossed*

Cheers,

Richy