Piston failure

[Springate’s]

I’m researching before buying in the Spring. Looking at a budget of upto £15K for a 150.
Trawling through various forums/FB here and in Oz has revealed the issue with piston failure. I’m struggling to assess what the possible causes are, I’ve seen the following opinions:
Injector issues
EGR blanking/delete
ECU re-flashing
Tuning chips
Long, hard towing
Poor maintenance
Weak Piston design

So quite a list!
Is this issue confined to the 150 version of the D4D or are earlier iterations also affected?

Should I be concerned or are there many 150 owners out there happily running up galactic miles?

 

[karl2000]

120s can suffer as well, but i wouldnt be overly concerned if its well maintained

Do you plan to use a tuning chip and/or heavy towing?

 

[Springate’s]

Thanks. No intention to tow or chip/re-map. It’ll be a daily driver, transport me to a variety of fishing venues, a bit of off roading and some long road trips in the UK and possibly abroad.

 

[karl2000]

Rust is the main issue as im sure you already know. Its good that youre here doing research BEFORE buying! You can always post links of potential purchases here to get everyones opinion!

 

[Dave]

Probably a mixture of all those things, but with the addition of possible injector problems with dodgy spray pattern burning the piston.

 

[Tractionman]

Not sure, but I think Rob on here, had injector problems on a new 150, which were addressed under warranty ?

 

[Springate’s]

Cheers, I’ll certainly take you up on that nearer the time. Probably have more questions too!

 

[Rob Cowell]

If you're buying a 150 for £15K it's going to be an early one, almost certainly with the 1KD-FTV engine that the 120 has. Like any other common rail diesel the injectors wear out, spray too much fuel and things get hot, and maybe pistons crack. Injectors should have around 100K mile life. I changed mine at around 120K and they are still going strong at 210K. It's going to cost around £800 to change them if you use recon injectors and do the work yourself. And closer to £2000 for new injectors fitted at a decent garage. You can check injector wear by hooking up Techstream diagnostics and looking at fuel trims.

My new 150 had all injectors changed under warranty at 8000 miles. That's a completely different engine on 2020 and later models. That fault was linked (although I don't quite understand how!) to the DPF.

As Karl says, the thing you want to worry about is rust. Find a clean one, and pump it full of cavity wax and get your favourite flavour of underseal sloshed all over it.

 

[Springate’s]

Thanks, Rob! I won’t be touching injectors myself-way above my abilities. I’ll certainly be looking at service records/receipts and budget accordingly.
Ss for the rust, I’m not scared of dirty, hard work if this could be performed on ramps? Any specific tutorials/youtube recommendations on how to carry this out would be much appreciated!

 

[karl2000]

You can certainly do it yourself, and its probably better if you do - then you know whats been done and to what standard. Nobody else will spend the same amount of time messing with it that you do. Make sure you start with a good one then thats half the battle. Loads of threads on here about rust prevention / treatment.

 

[Tractionman]

+ 1 on that. Get stuck in !

Don't buy one that originated in Scotland, or from a coastal area that may have been used as a boat launcher.