Club 80-90 Forums

Guys, Gals

Replaced engine with a AEF 1.9 SDI 8V from VW Polo about 300 miles ago.
Suffered huge loss of power - loads of smoke on motorway run - assumed engine had blown - 2 cylinders now not functioning - but mechanic thinks is diesel injector pump.
Anyone any experience with this going wrong? Or replacing?
From what i read i think it maybe a Bosch VP37 (VerteilerPumpe) electronic distributor injection pump that i need - but i'm not even 100pc sure what engine i have - can these things be fixed ? Or sourced?

any help appreciated - D

I would be very wary of mechanics' comments like that. Injection pumps are very reliable (and expensive), and the rotary distributor pumps pump fuel equally to all four cylinders. Failure of the pump would usually affect all four cylinders.

It's also unlikely that two injectors will have failed simultaneously.

So you're left with engine problems, most likely compression.

If this was my engine I would try rotating the engine gently by hand for two complete revolutions using a spanner on the crank bolt. When you do this you should be able to feel serious compression on all four cylinders, and in order to turn over by hand you'll have to wait for the compression on each cylinder to "leak down" over about ten seconds. If you find some cylinders leak down much quicker than the others then you may have compression issues, for example head gasket gone on the thin bit between cylinders, bad valves (less likely if two cylinders are affected), or broken rings (also less likely). Then it would be time for a proper compression test at a garage. I have found the "leak down" test to be a pretty reliable indication of diesel compression problems.