After having to work on good Friday I managed to break down on my way home and needed to call the recovery people out. Basically I could get so far and then the car would die on me. The fuel supply couldn't keep up with demand and every time I primed the system it would leak diesel but I could get going again for another mile or so then it would die again!
It was too dodgy to try and nurse it home as my journey entails lots of fast country lanes interspersed with short bursts on major A roads.
I took the fuel filter housing right off after securing a supply of replacement hose and clips from my helpful neighbour. I stripped the heated bypass thing out of the housing, found an O ring that would fit (with a hefty bit of persuasion), made sure the plug for the (now defunct) water sensor was screwed in tight, cleaned up all the mating faces with a scraper and some emery cloth and cleaned up the big O ring on the bottom of the housing.
All O rings had a liberal spreading of silicone grease and it all went back together.
I checked the hoses and they all seemed sound so I only had to replace 3 hose clips. So far so good but I don't want to speak too soon as I am about to go out and try starting it again but I gave it a good test drive and the strange loss of acceleration in 3rd at around 2500-3000revs seems to have disappeared although the general acceleration could still do with improvement but I'm pretty sure that is an intercooler problem.
One thing that does remain is that sticky fuel cut-off solenoid. It doesn't happen all the time but it does seem to happen occasionally. If it persists or gets worse I will have to check the solenoid housing but for now I'm going to leave it alone.
Next jobs: Sort out the clutch pedal height, glue up the sagging roof lining and fix the new, custom made gear stick when it arrives.
