Pajero Owners Club of South Africa

I am at my wits end and it is actually depressing. I won't name the companies involved due to the legal action that is going to follow soon. I have a 1999 , 3.5L Pajero SWB. A pipe burst and the engine overheated. So I decided to send the car to a highly recommended Mechanic during June 2015. Long story short the engine rebuild started in August after a long wait for the Pistons out of Japan. So late September the car was said to be ok but when it started it leaked out petrol. The Engineers made a ballsup and so October they rectified it. The car was doing the same thing. So the engineer decided to build up the engine from scratch and mid December it made the same problems. So January I said ok get another engineer because I am going to take legal action. After another check-up they concluded that it was the Electronics. So early March they did the diagnostic and found nothing wrong. They assembled the car again and once again it does not want to idle with petrol flowing out of the exhaust. I am really angry, depressed and regret that I bought a Pajero. What puzzles me is that the mechanic and the engineer are highly experienced who did hundreds of these engines. Anyone with advice or a similar experience?

Depressed? Legal Action? And you call them Engineers! I will consider assassination. You'r talking big bucks!!!.

Hi I can't believe experienced mechanics cant solve the problem. It is a fuel system problem. Rebuilding the engine for a second time, definitely not something that you must pay for?
1) check fuel pressure with a guage should be around 350kpa.
2) See if the fuel pressure is holding at a constant pressure when you switch of the ignition. If the pressure drops quickly it could be an injector malfunctioning leaking fuel into the combustion chamber. This will effect the idling and can even cause petrol to be blown out of the exhaust pipe.
3)The electronic system can be malfunctioning causing the start mixture, or the mixture in general to be extremely rich.
4) Are you getting any warning codes?

Personally I own a 1997 SWB. I replaced the normal 3l 12 valve unit with a 3l, 24 valve import engine. I took control of the engine management system by installing a Spitronics ECU system. On my laptop I can now see exactly what is happening. Fueling, cold starting, timing can be adjusted. Fuel mixture can be monitored and regulated with the use of an installed Bosch lambda oxygen sensor.
The system is reliable and I can make checks to see what is wrong.

Regards,
Markus Fourie

No advice but can imagine what level of desperation and despair you are in after such a long time. Hang in there and hope you get everything sorted soon!

Thank you all and especially Markus. Will show the mechanic what you wrote tomorrow.

Thank you for everyone concerned. The problem was that the camshaft was an import and the configuration was for an original one. So much problems for such a simple solution.