An URGENT CALL FOR HELP! Stuck in LA!

[Grungle]

Has anyone seen the movie "The never Ending Story"?
This one features a green Delica instead of that giant flying dog thing...

So we actually got to drive it yesterday, although the experience wasn't very reassuring. The pump went on, the engine ran and it idled ok, but under load it went nowhere. It was SUPER-SLOW.

Basically, initial take-off felt OK, but as the revs built nothing really happened. It continued to build revs (slowly) until about 3000rpm then it would rather roughly change gears. After a bit of thinking and looking around they found some kind of plate that could have been on backwards - I'm not sure of the location of this "plate" (I wasn't there), but they were saying it had something to do with the turbo. This part was assembled by the pump rebuilders, not the garage where the van is.

Now, from these sketchy details I have come up with some ideas. I'm assuming the fuel pump has to have some kind of turbo pressure feedback system, so when the turbo is boosting the engine will receive more fuel. If this "plate" is somewhere in the connection between the turbo and the fuel pump and it's leaking, the fuel pump would not see the rise in boost pressure and would not be delivering fuel accordingly.
So although the turbo may be spinning, it's not delivering enough fuel to generate any useful boost, and we've effectively got a non-turbo 2.5L D lugging around a 2 tonne van.
Once again, I should know more in a couple of hours - I'm just guessing with all of this.


As for our previous problem with the bench test - you know how manufacturers have tiny, tiny percentages of manufactured parts that just fail immediately? Well, we got one of those parts when the pump was rebuilt. They changed it and it's fine - passed the bench test without a problem.

[cordom]

sorry to hear of your problems, i am not sure if my experience was the same as yours after a diesel pump repair ,
engine started ,pulled away okay, the engine revs started to increase but the speed did not,the gears start to shift only as the
revs got very high. if these are you symptoms, Try adjusting the transmission Kick down cable the one with the reddish rubber
cover on the end that connects to the diesel pump,if to tight it deleys the transmission shift, back it off completely you
should notice the difference when pulling away from stop. adjust by trial and error until you find overdrive kicks in at around
65kp/h to 75kp/r. there is a more precise way of doing this but i cannot find the link at the moment. Hope this helps
good luck dominic

[Grungle]

more problems. big ones.

Mardy, I've given him your number, he should be giving you a call now - hope you don't mind. He can't find parts and can't see what has happened so hopefully you can shed some light on it.

EDIT: thanks Mardy, looks like we're getting somewhere!

sounds like the belt that drives the balance shaft broke. with parts from Mardy we might be going early next week.

It's like being in a car accident that takes 2 weeks - things just keep breaking and there's nothing we can do to stop it!

[MardyDelica]

anytime no problem.
will send it tomorrow rightaway,
cheers;
Mardy

[CVI]

There is a fuel enrichment valve located right on top of the injection pump where a vac hose is connected. The other end goes to the turbo (pressure side). When you go on boost conditions, the pressure actuates the enrichment valve on injection pump and enriches the fuel to the injectors.

Low power could be misadjustment of the full load on the injection pump. Does it ever emit any black smoke on sudden acceleration on park? or no signs of smoke at all?

[Grungle]

I know I've said this before, but it looks like it's all fixed.

18 days after our poor delica ground to a halt just North of Malibu we should be back on the road this afternoon - thanks in no small part to Mardy!

The initial problem was the failure of the fuel pickup pump - most likely caused by the low sulfur diesel over here - but it DID have 150,000km on it...
While being re-installed "something" was put on incorrectly and caused a severe loss of power. Most likely a connection between the turbo and the fuel pump.
While tracking down the cause of this problem, the belt driving the balance shaft broke, and (somewhat inexplicably) the water pump started leaking.
Thanks to Mardy's help we now have a new drive belt, a new timing belt, a new water pump and a new tensioner. Oh, and the rebuilt fuel pump.

The shop doing the work is called "Diesel Performance Shops", and the has exactly the kind of attitude us Delica owners need:
"if it's mechanical, i can fix it", rather than the "sorry, that model isn't coming up on my computer" attitude that we ran into a few times. He may not know much about Delicas but he knows his way around Diesels, and he wasn't about to give up on ours.

Thanks to everyone that helped out in this thread...it just goes to show what a great community we have here. We'll be around BC for most of December before we head back to Australia, so hopefully I'll see some of you around.

Thanks again,
Mark

[Golf Cart]

Sounds like a good escuse to have a get-together.Keep us posted on your progress North

Glad to hear youre rolling again

[mararmeisto]

Ya, if you drive through Victoria be sure to knock me up!

Did you grab a picture of the shop and the guys who worked on your van? Might be a bit of advertising to throw them up on the forum (if they don't object).

[Todd64]

Holy crap...just reading this now. Good thing you got it all fixed and running fine.

So what was the total bill for the fix?

[konadog]

Happy day! Great to hear you're back running again. If you pass through Campbell River let us know

[Grungle]

So what was the total bill for the fix?

US $2400
Which is like...CA$3000 or $400,000 AUD. Damn Aussie dollar!

The van feels great. More power, better throttle response and I'm assuming better fuel economy (i was tracking the fuel economy and it was down 10-15% when it failed).
The gear changes are a bit rough and the idle is higher, but it might just take a while to get used to it again. We could still do some careful adjusting if we really need to.

We're just happy to be mobile again - and I'm keen to meet up with a few Deli owners on our final tour around BC: we're going from Vancouver to Whistler (12th dec), then Revelstoke, Sun Peaks and back to Vancouver for Christmas.