DarrenH 1989 astra merit D estate

[Kev Read]

Mate!!! My estate handled the bollocks round the ring they really do go round bends quite well.

[Harvey]

Sounds scary removing the injector. I had similar when removing the X30XE crank bolt and doing the new one back up, they are silly tight as the 2 foot break bar with extension was bending. You're all set for the 18th then...happy days.

[DarrenH]

Sounds scary removing the injector. I had similar when removing the X30XE crank bolt and doing the new one back up, they are silly tight as the 2 foot break bar with extension was bending. You're all set for the 18th then...happy days.

i'm thinking with 57bhp, sub 1 tonne kerb weight, and those tyres, i probably wont have to slow down for corners 3rd gear it whole way round

[DarrenH]

we had an eventful day at the astra-mk2 track day at blyton park. up at 4am, on the road at 4.40am, arrive at blyton at 8.15am. did the sighting laps on the 13 inch steels, went to change to the 15 inch steels with R888 and noticed coolant everywhere in the passenger wheel arch. Found zero leaks in the engine bay, but it was dripping from the bottom of the A pillar ???

Laurie suggested heater matrix, lifted the carpet and sure enough streaks of water down the foam sound deadening Laurie found a random hose from his bottomless luton van, plus tools from laurie, paul and harvey, made some blanking bungs on the engine end of the coolant channel then it was water tight ! big thanks to them as i'd basically bought my lightweight sports travel trolley jack and a breaker bar, that was it! why would i need anything else for a standard road car turning up and driving round

after that the car "performed" great, i.e didnt break anything else managed a heady 70mph down the back straight !

[DarrenH]

yesterday at work i noticed a damp patch under the engine bay i popped the bonnet and noticed the header tank was empty, so then started looking around for coolant leaks, but found none ! bit annoying as i thought i had isolated the "leak" at blyton, i.e the heater matrix !!

i topped the header tank up then started the engine to see if the leak would resume, then noticed something splashing on my foot. Big sigh of relief when it turned out to be a massive leak from the high pressure diesel pump, rather than the coolant hose or the pump, phew !! diesel was falling out about a drop a second.

the leak was coming out of this big nut, no idea what it was so i spent about an hour googling and trying to find out if the pump was gonna explode like dropping a cookoo clock off of a balcony, if i undid it. turns out theres a plunger behind it and a weak spring, a hydraulic cross shaft for the governor

the other issue is that it was behind all this, and measured across the flats at "nothing in my tool box, ffs !


so after dropping the coolant, removing the radiator and the pointless inlet resonator (i mean lets not spoil refined engine note with a bit of induction noise) in granddads box of random i found a 3/4 whitworth socket which was almost perfect fit, tentatively wound it out to find a simple O ring.


replaced that, wound it back in with some lube, no leaks !!


after that i stripped the centre console out to get access to the matrix, no doubt about the leaks



i'd already managed to get this off of german ebay for not too terrible 65 quid. Had to pack up for work but got as far as taking the heater hoses off the engien bay side and everything in the cabin removed.

[DarrenH]

i've been having a bit of trouble with cold starts, rough running and bad smoke. originally i blamed this on a partial miss fuel with petrol, however it carried on into the next fresh tank of diesel, and the one after that. it runs great after about 2 minutes, smoke stops. obviously poor cold start is glow plugs, but the black smoke gave me a curve ball for a couple weeks, enough to completely discount them. then i read on wednesday that knackered glow plugs COULD cause smoking too.

found some tests on youtube that involve taking the plug out and measuring with a digital volt meter, set to ohms, between the body and the tip (green and red arrows below). With the meter set to 200 ohms (lowest setting) the plug should read under 1 ohm. my 2 centre plugs were off the scale even on 200,000 ohms. the upshot of that is they don't glow at all or would take minutes to start glowing and therefore patently useless

the purple wire here comes from a glow plug relay on the bulkhead, which i think is fed directly from the battery. the flat strip of copper joins 3 plugs in series then theres a piece of wire daisy chaining to the 4th.



12mm socket gets the plugs out of the head real easy. as above the coloured arrows show where to measure the plugs. 2 of mine were off the scale at 200,000 ohms, the other two still about 8 ohms, so on the turn. i got a new set of bosch plugs on ebay, 14.99 delivered so hopefully thats the end of it !

[AndyGee]

Until recently, I had a Peugeot 106 Diesel that used eat the Glow plugs.
I replaced them 3 times in the 5 years I had the car. Same grief as yourself, naff starting and a smoke trail behind the car.

The dammed things should be a service item.

[DarrenH]

After the triumphant leak stopping in september the fuel injection pump sprang a brand new leak from the accelerator shaft at the top, literally 2 days later. After that i thought bollox and carried on living my life. not sure whether its a protest to the petrol missfuel, or just what happens when you press a car into daily use thats been laid up for 8 years.

2 weeks ago i spotted something in the "you may also be interested in this...." thingy at the bottom of ebay. it was a new lucas DPC pump, but at just under 200 quid it was a no go, the land rover had just thrashed my bank account, again.

then a week later i got a notification from ebay saying the price had dropped on the pump to 125, which if i do say so myself is an absolute bargain for a lucas/delphi diesel fuel injection pump. so the pump is now mine ! this also signifies a commitment to keeping the car standard for the foreseeable future. its providing ultra reliable and ultra frugal daily transport since i bought it, as of right now the car has paid for itself in fuel savings (compared to if i had continued my previous petrol car)

[Astra Dan]

Nothing quite new stuff!
Reckon you can rebuild the old as a spare?

[Harvey]

Nice find Darren, looks like the derv will live on a whole longer.

[DarrenH]

Hold the phones, i did some work on a mk2 astra !!

the damp diesel patch on the drive has grown to about 4 foot square now so i thought i better do something. the simple fuel pump swap i had originally planned went a bit sour, mostly when i found out that the pump pulley is two piece vernier as standard, the pump needs a special rod and guide dropped down a special timing hole in the pump, and a DTI gauge to measure pump lift at engine TDC, this lift is a specific manufactured tolerance to each individual pump. to be frank i just couldn't be bothered. that new pump, well its still gonna keep nice shiny in its box and oiled paper for the future

plan B i found an exploded diagram of a DPC pump, then found an ebay listing for throttle spindle O ring seals which actually said at the bottom its dead easy and can be done in situ. first step was to get the karcher out and turn a black sodden oily mess into a nice clean pump !



step 2, remove the throttle lever and return springs



step 3, undo these 4 allen bolts holding the top plate of the pump on. this is non pressurised reservoir, so its all safe but obviously got about 200ml of diesel in there



step 4, lift the top plate while at same time pushing the spindle shaft down, then it pops off revealing the knackered O ring. when i levered the O ring out of the groove it actually cracked apart, so thats kind of cool diagnosis. after reassembling with a new O ring no more leaks, lets see where the next one springs up !

[Pigeonrat]

Interesting stuff Darren, surprising the difference that the condition of things like that make. Always good when they fall to bits, gives you a bit of confidence you're on the right track! I recently helped a mate do a similar job on a straight-six Mercedes diesel that wouldn't start, the O-rings were intact but a bit hard and plasticky so I was pretty certain it wouldn't be causing such a major problem...well, it started right up and was fine, which showed me!

Any idea what the electrical connection on the pump is for, just out of interest? I assumed these were 100% mechanical.

[DarrenH]

I assumed these were 100% mechanical.

bang on, they are. all the time the engine is spinning its injecting diesel, and all the time its injecting diesel you have combustion. so, pop quiz, what do you think its for

[Pigeonrat]

Ah, good old simple diesels...I'm going to hazard a guess at some kind of cutoff solenoid or similar in that case. Can't think of anything else it could be!

[AndyGee]

I'm guessing that it's a Fuel Cut off Valve so that the engine can be stopped.