dbox wrote:Now when I start in the morning, I'm getting copious amounts of white smoke, low idle that will even stall if I don't rev it a bit. If I try to rev it a lot, it chugs and struggles for a while before kicking up to the higher RPM. It gets better once I hold it there for about 30-60sec.
It's fine for the rest of the day.
Having experienced these same symptoms first hand, it sure sounds like the IP seal to me. I picked up a L400 last summer and it started/ran nicely until about mid-September when the rough starts, smoke clouds and stalling showed up (mornings below 8 celcius).
The van would feel like it was losing power and end up always stalling at the same place every day - the first hill about 500m up the road from the house). Tried some the usual things like cleaning the busbar and changing plugs which needed the attention anyway but the problem remained until I had the IP seal replaced. If it hasn't been serviced by the dealer/importer I'd suggest getting that looked at since it really is a well known problem with dozens of threads on both the Oz and UK (and this one to some extent) sites.
I had mine serviced by CC Autos and there was an immediate and dramatic improvement (i.e. no more stalling!) in the mornings and the smoking issue cleared up after a tank of diesel worked through. From what I've come across, it seems like the dying seal actually causes some mixing of the oil and diesel and can sometimes be spotted by sniffing your oil, although in my case I didn't actually notice anything.
//rant on
Since these vans are fairly new to Canada I suspect that we'll start seeing more and more of these sorts of discussions until this becomes a standard item to service on all new 400s coming into the country. With the long history on a known and common problem I hope that more dealers do start getting this changed on all new vans coming in because it can be an incredibly frustrating problem for a new owner who may not have much experience of knowledge of the mechanical aspects of the vechicle yet. Ends up taking a long time to get it sorted out (i.e. where the heck do I start?) and doesn't leave a great impression.
end rant//
Good luck with it and if you want to hear more about the symptoms that I had on mine, feel free to drop a note.
