I am fairly new to the Land Rover Life. I bought Larry a little over three years ago knowing nothing about cars other than they have four wheels and an engine. It’s been a steep, but amazing, learning journey and Larry has been decently reliable. He has only had one catastrophic breakdown, which was ten days into ownership. That was an interesting adventure on Pennine section of the M62!

Since then, I have tinkered and learned, maintained and spannered my way through ownership. Doing as much as I can to make sure the same never happens again. Of course, Land Rovers often have ideas to the contrary. The Three Amigo lights flash up intermittently to remind me I need to look at that faulty earth cable, and the occasional odd noise keeps me on my toes. Fortunately, I have enough knowledge to mostly keep us on the road and moving forward (or backwards depending on the situation.).

There was that twitch back in February though, where I went to start him up and he stalled. Unusual. He then refused to start at all. The engine would crank, meaning the battery and starter were fine – you could hear it clicking and spinning, however the engine just wouldn’t fire up.

I scooted off to work and left Spare Dave to see if he could get him going. He plugged in the nanocom, fired each injector to ensure they were working and then sure enough, Larry turned over and fired up. Not had any issues since then.

Until last week…

This week, the gate to work was opened late. Everyone was queuing up to get in while we awaited the bearer of the keys to let us in. I turned the engine off and was quite happy daydreaming until it was time to go in. Larry refused to start. It was the same situation. He cranked over but wouldn’t fire up.

I flipped on the hazards and waved my co-workers passed before throwing up the bonnet. Everything looked fine, the battery was connected and nothing looked as though it had come off. At this point, my boss Ryan – who has an Overfinch Range Rover (a story for another day perhaps?), had come to assist. He asked if I had tow ropes, which I did – so we could move if we couldn’t get going again. I cranked Larry over and he agreed that the battery was fine. As he began looking for the manual bleed for the fuel system, he announced, ‘At least is has a proper engine!’ I do love the TD5.

Above – At least Larry has a proper engine!

If a car needs air and fuel at the right time to start, it was pretty obvious this was not happening in this case. The term, ‘manual air bleed’ and ‘fuel system’ struck me and I remembered that you can manually purge air from the TD5 system using the accelerator pedal. Ryan looked on while I pumped the pedal until the engine management light flashed up. I turned the key and Larry came back to life, kleking away as though nothing was wrong.

I pulled into the carpark and got along with the day. There have been no further problems since either. I suspect this issue is from an injector that has a slight leak. We redid the seals last year and put the same ones back in, however at 24 years old I think they may need swapping out and refurbishing.