406oc.co.uk

hi new to the site and 406 ownership,i have just brought a 406 (97) exec dt, the car has 140k on the clock and pretty tidy, the reason i brought it was a friend of a friend was selling it due to a mechanic diagnosing a knackered pump, he was told just to scrap it as it was going to cost around £600 to but right, the thing i needed help with is can i just fit a pump at home (no dealer re coding etc) and also seen quite a few second hand pumps for sale for around £70 ish, do all pumps from 1.9dt's of the same sort of age fit?, thanks in advance for any advice

Welcome Blue!
As long as it's off another 1.9 you should be fine; I haven't had a diesel 406 though so I'd wait for some of the other guys to chip in.

If it's off a 1.9 it ought to be a Bosch. This is superior to the Lucas pump used in the 2.1 since a) it's not nearly as sh1te and b) can run pretty much any old rubbish if you wanna use veggy oil

This is my understanding, at least ^^

And welcome to the board!

cheers guys sounding promising so far , take it these pumps don't give much trouble then , that was one of my worries with buying a second hand, its just the fitting i'm concerned about , i'm pretty handy with spanners but not touched one of these so far

finally got the car home today and managed to speak to the guy who owns it and was driving it when it broke down, hopefuly i can get to have a proper look at it this weekend, still not sure its the pump though, had a quick look and the rac guy hasn't removed any electrical connecters on the pump or cracked any injectors open to bleed through there, the guy told me it was driving fine then started to smoke a bit and loose power then just stopped, he called the rac and they primmed it with the hand primer bleed it then it drove home fine, next day it wouldn't start at all and the next rac man came to have a look and told him the pump was knackered, i'v turned it over today and nothing out the exhaust at all but battery wasn't the best but no unusuall sounds, any ideas as to what to try please as dont want to get new pump etc to find out it wasn't that

Replace the fuel filter and ckeck the strainer in the tank as if these block it can have a simaler effect, then bleed the air out of the system.
RAC men often miss-dignose diesel engines and blame the pump when it's got nothing to do with that.
If you do end up changing the pump (I doubt this is your problem) they have the immoberlizer unit on them which is under some very heavey gauge steal plaiting, this will either need to be re-coded by a main stealer (read big cost) or you can remove the unit with an anglegrinder and just run the stop valve from the ignition.

thanks for the info, so if i had to remove the stop valve which is linked to the keypad, which replacement valve would i use? and would that bypass the key pad then

IF you have to change the pump it's the immobalzer unit that has to be removed, the stop valve can be left alone, you just need to give it a supply from the ignition and yes you bypass the keypad. But as I said I don't think it's your pump.

well finally got chance to have a look at car today and i'm not convinced its the pump, only had half an hour to mess with it and in the pitch black so i may have missed things, still not running but got it turning over and it was throwing plenty of diesel smoke out but just wouldn't quite fire up, i would have thought if it was pump it wouldn't be fueling, also noticed that the symbol on the dash with a fuel bowl was on, is this water? , to me that would help explain loss off power and smoke that the rac man reported,is it possible to replace the key pads as i took me at least 5 mins to get the code in, pressing buttons but nothing happening, thanks for all the advice so far

Hi
From your description - if it is turning over quickly and you see smoke from the tailpipe it is injecting, however, you have to check some specific things before you can determine why it does not fire up. You can remove the injector pipes to ensure they are all pumping as I suggested earlier. If it was that it was a bad starter then it would smoke because the pre-heaters are not working and it's too cold to fire. If it was running and then stopped it must be something else.
Before jumping to conclusions you need to eliminate things one at a time. One other symptom I have come across is when the primary pump has poor flow and this caused the internal pumping element (It's another small lift pump) inside the injection pump to vacuum up thus restricting the high pressure plunger to inject at the correct pressure - this causes the injector to dribble fuel in instead of atomising, so you get the fuel smoking instead of burning fully - there is only one pumping element serving all four cylinders and it relies on the feed pressure to push it out ready for each pulse so if this is held back through vacuum it cannot recharge. The RAC man will not be trained in pump room operations and will only diagnose it as a "Pump issue". You could rig up a temporary fuel supply from a fuel can, fed from the priming bulb just to test if the supply is ok, this rules out the supply pump.
To summarize - check pre heaters, check fuel supply and report back.

John

only just got to read last post on hear , had a quick tinker in the daylight today and almost had it running (it did for a few seconds anyway) ,i've tied cracking the injector pipes and fuel coming from there, one thing i did notice though was on injector 4 its spraying fuel out of the place where the return line is on the others as there is no cap on it, this wouldn't cause any issues would it?, i have but my test light on the glow plugs and the re is a very dim glow so must be some power there, one think i did notice though was there is no relay click on previous diesels i have always waited for the relay to click before trying to start it rather than the dash board light, also one other thing is when i've been turning it over for a while i notice the hand primer is soft again , i can pump it 7-8 times and it gets pressure again would this mean the engine isn't pulling enough fuel through and the filter always needs topping back up?

Hi
Your getting closer - the priming bulb is indicating that you may have a primary pump fault (The one in the tank) If the flow pressure is not high enough it wont push fuel up and through the filter (assuming you have replaced the filter) to the pump. It is essential that it is getting to the injection pump with enough flow and pressure. As I said there is another pump inside the injector pump main body that forces the high pressure plunger fully out and charged ready for the cams to push the fuel up to the injectors at the extremely high pressure needed. Lucas did have some problems with the main plunger seizing ( happens to all diesels when not enough care taken changing filters) through dirt ingress. Don't even think about putting additives in to free it off - waste of time and money, there is no better freeing agent than diesel fuel itself but nothing will shift grit if it got in. It's the last thing to worry about at this stage.

John

thanks for the info, so the is a pump prior to the hand primer?, i knew the hdi had one which can be troublesum but didn't realise the td did too, how do you access this , is it under the back seat or do you need to get underneath or even drop the tank , i have to admit i have only changed 2 glow plugs so far and did change the filter, i had a quick look at the parts prices is the pump inside the injection pump the vacume pump? as these are £125+vat , sorry to be a pain

Longintooth I beleave the 1.9td doesn't have an in tank pump and has a Bosch IP.

Bigblue2 Have you tried rigging up a separate fuel supply straght to the pump to make sure it's not pulling air into the system somewhere as this can be a problem on the 1.9.

Hello Mark
Well I wasn't not sure which pump exactly but some were fitted with the Delphi I understood. But the same principle applies which ever pump is fitted except common rail of course. That's one reason I suggested a jury rig to make sure fuel was getting round as you too suggest. Mark, it's not a vacuum pump it's just a small pressure pump to push fuel into the radial plunger built into the main body but what happens is if fuel gets starved any where from the tank it creates a vacuum as it sucks that prevents fuel flowing into the single plunger - the plunger is free floating on some and relies on fuel pressure to push the plunger out - some pumps like the Bosch have a return spring but it's very, very easy to get jambed with grit. But hey, we are only trying to find the cause just yet. Diesel pumps of all makes are fitted to many different manufacturers not just a specific one so they are all the same to us. Now different manufacturers do set up their primary feeds in different ways - some put pumps in tanks , have external ones and in early models mechanical ones on the engine, some use just the internal vane pump in the injection pump body. Mark or someone else may be able to tell you where the primary pump is on yours but you just need to trace back along the fuel line to find it and if it is working you car hear it buzzing or clicking dependant what they are using. If you don't find a separate primary pump assume it's in the main pump - the most vulnerable. When you try to start it keep squeezing the priming bulb.
On the side - Injection pumps are precision pieces of kit and the Lucas DPA was one of the first of it's kind (Distributor type) and fitted to just about every diesel on the market at one time they only had a simple lift pump on the engine and worked perfectly, with the onset of faster running diesels they would not cope, the problems only started when the emission controls came in with electronic controls being the bug. You can just look at the plate on the side to confirm which one it is for what it's worth. Incidentally I have not bothered you to look at the stop solenoid since you have said the fuel is spitting out when you crack the unions, however, anything is possible and will need to be checked in due course. Oh and make sure the accelerator is fully open when you bleed the system.

John