has anyone had any experience of fixing diesel renault van engines?
My van engine is kicking out a bit of black smoke (93000 miles) and also using a bit of coolant.
I have taken it to our local garage who we normally deal with and they had to refer it to a diesel specialist.
they reckon the head gasket might be on the way out, although there is no mayo on the oil filler or any oil in the header tank. they also said the injectors might need replacing. cost would be about £1000.00.
i am thinking of having a go myself, i have built a few engines up in my time and also rebuilt a couple of bike engines last year when i had the indy!!!
never worked on diesel engines though so i am asking if anyone on here knows these engines and if they are o.k. to work on or if they are a pig and best left to the garages.
any advice greatly received.

thanks

Paul

What engine size, type and year etc.

No real experience of fixing them but we have them as our works vans and at that kind of mileage there best off Scrapped!.

If its the 1.9D there about the most tried and tested, they usually seem to see over 100,000 but become very problomatic and unreliable.

it is a 53 plate 1.5 dci.
would be a shame to scrap it!
the garage reckons the best bet is to chop it in for a new un.

or

i am tempted to stick some K seal in and injector cleaner to see if that improves things ?

[Edited on 6/9/07 by skydivepaul]

Is that not a turbo'd one then?

Our 1.5 DCi 80's are Turbo'd, is it a typical turbo kind of smoke its making under hard acceleration?. The local garage might not know its there, its well hidden lol.

Aparently there an all Alloy Nissan engine with quite tight tolerances, we've had 1 overheat ( Highly suspected driver incompitence) That had to be scrapped as they wanted about £3K to change the engine, and the same engine in a Megane that somebody filled with Petrol and that was a writeoff as well.

If it is the Cylinder head, the older diesels were skimable, not sure on the new ones.

it is the turbo engine version.
not entirley sure i've got the model number correct, i will check it tomorrow.
the black smoke appears when you rev the engine up from idle. you dont get tons of smoke coming out, but there is enough to notice it. also it lacks power when put under load, like going uphill on the motorway. you have to knock it down a gear to keep the speed up. we didnt have to do that when it was running o.k.

Hmm losing power up hills, does it make a Hissing turbo woosh when under load and it looses power?

We've had atleast 1 with a split hose.
Where the hose comes out of the Turbo on the high pressure side there is like rubber adapter, as the pipe is a larger diameter than the exit of the turbo. We've had 1 of those that looked whole and complete buy under closer scruitiny actually had a very small split in it. So when the turbo was making the most boost and most needed air was leaking out of there.

Chop in in mate. Then engines can be a sod and a bitch to get the head off. Theres so much crap bolted around them.

I would suspect the turbo is tired. If theres a hissing sound then could be a split hose. French stuff is common for the heater matrix to leak and not know so maybe this is your coolant loss?

When i read the title i thought whats new
Our kangoo freezer van has an injector problem aswell as loads of other problems.
There are places where you can get the injectors looked at and they can tell you which one needs replacing but i dont think there are many of them around. I think a £1000 bill for sorting is a bit steep we were quoted 250-500 at our local but it may be a different problem.
Kangoo's have so much character, i know how you feel about not wanting to get rid of it