Accidents/Breakdowns

ihana.com - big trip - the landy - accidents/breakdowns - injector cracks

 

Lots of smoking and clonking but not much power...

...due to cracked injector (now welded up)

Our 'campsite'

Aug 27th 2001

Driving through the central desert of Baja with the temperature at its usual 40-odd Celsius, the landy started to make some severe sounding knocking noises and pumping out clouds of black smoke. Looking under the bonnet revealed no sombrero stuck in the fan so it must be serious. There was still 100kms to drive to get to the nearest town so we had no choice but to carry on, slowly, and with the stereo turned up to drown out the racket.

Los Mecanicos get to work

The 'Full Injection' specialist knew his stuff

Fitting it back

Arriving late in Guerrero Negro, which is the north/south state border of Baja, we found a place to camp and started reading the Haynes manual. Fortunately it seemed that the symptoms pointed towards a faulty injector rather than a broken valve so the next morning we landied into town to find a mechanic. He took off the inlet and exhaust manifold and tested the injectors and came to the same conclusion as we had. The local 'Full Injection' specialist lived arouind the corner and examined the faulty component which turned out to be cracked. He welded it up and the following day we fitted it and all was well.

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